NG 22

New game 22 is up.  Enjoy!  Also the longer results for new game 21.


Round 1: G A T I R N E E P

I had GAIT, RATING, TEARING, INTEGER, TAPERING, and REPEATING.  I almost missed that nine, so phew!

The other eights are PETERING (PETER as a verb: "(in whist) to signal or call for trumps"), PERIGEAN (adjective derived from PERIGEE: "the point at which a satellite orbit is the least distance from the centre of the gravitational field of the controlling body or bodies"), and APERIENT ("[...] a mild laxative").


Round 2: P S R O E A M S I

I had SPORE, SIMPERS, and PROMISES.  For a moment I thought that PRIMROSES was there, but alas not.

The other eights are IMPOSERS and PROSAISM ("a prosaic expression").


Round 3: Target 109 from 100 75 25 3 3 7

A rather straightforward target; I went with 109 = 100 + 3*3.


Round 4: N F S I E U C M L

I had FINS, FINES, INFUSE, and MESCLUN ("a salad of mixed edible leaves and herbs").  My "there's something here that you've seen before" sense was going nuts in this round, but I could not see any better.  I kept circling back to the not-there INFLUENCES, or rather the non-repeated letters of it; those were the right ones to focus on, as it turns out.

That almost-memory was related to a similar mix from NG 15, which produced FUNICLES (plural of FUNICLE: "(in plants) the stalk of an ovule or seed").  That's the only eight; the other sevens are FUNICLE and probably LEUCINS (LEUCIN being a variant spelling of LEUCINE, a particular amino acid).


Round 5: H W U A B I K C E

The good mixes come to a crashing end with an ill-fitting assortment.  I had BACK and HACKIE (colloquial for a taxi driver).

HACKIE is the only six, as it turns out.  The fives are HAIKU, BEACH, WHACK, WACKE ("a soft rock of fine texture, derived from disintegrated basaltic rocks"), and my favourite diacritical mark, the HÁČEK.  (It's my favourite because it is the only one that is used in its spelling.)


Round 6: Target 783 from 50 100 1 3 10 2

The offset of 17 can be awkward, and the 33 looked somewhat more promising.  Still, I started by trying to get close (800) and then realised that the leftovers got me handily to the remaining 17.  The resulting solution is 783 = (10 - 2)*100 - (50 + 1)/3.

There's a few other solutions; in retrospect using the factor of three might have been the most obvious working approach: 783 = 3*(2*100 + 50 + 10 + 1).  A somewhat trickier option is to make it as 2*390 + 3 via 783 = 2*(10*(50 - 1) - 100) + 3.


Round 7: D R I O T B A T O

I really wanted a final A for ABATTOIR, but an E would also have been fertile territory.  As it was, I had TROD, ORBIT, and ADROIT.

There is one other six: TOROID.  But also a seven of RIDOTTO ("a public ball or social gathering, often in masquerade (common in the 18th century)").  That's a new word to me.


Round 8: Target 323 from 25 50 75 4 3 3

The target is 325 - 2, but that 2 does not seem easily acquirable after getting to 325.  I wrote down a fallback one away 324 = 4*75 + 25 - 3/3, then thought that there must surely be a useful tweak from the 4*75 start.  It turned out that there was, giving me the solution 323 = 4*(75 + 3 + 50/25) + 3.  This turns out to be the only way to solve this game.


Round 9: AH TEATIME

I got to this by considering the -ITATE ending, and producing HAEMITATE out of it, which was pronounceable but nonsense.  Then I realised that swapping the I and the second A produced the much better HAEMATITE.  (Total time: 14.7s.)