NG 25

New game 25 is now available, and the writeup for new game 24 is now in place.


Round 1: T N N A E E L D L

Ergh, a lot of duplication to start with.  Another vowel instead of the L would have been tempting, with an I giving ANNELID or an A giving ANNEALED... but it was just as well it was not, since the next vowel was an E and I might have erroneously tried LATEENED.

As it was, I had NEAT, NEATEN, DELATE, and DENTAL.  I wondered about EDENTAL, but did not like it and was correct to avoid it.  The related word that is listed is EDENTATE ("lacking teeth").

Six is the best to be done; there's a few of them, of which some of the more common ones are TANNED, LEANED / LEADEN, and ELATED.


Round 2: K S P E H O E S U

I had POKES, wondered about PEKOES (I'm still unsure, to be honest), HOUSES, and PUSHES.

There's some other sixes -- SPOKES was one I saw but did not write down -- but there is a seven: ESPOUSE.


Round 3: Target 839 from 75 50 7 2 7 10

I started off a bit too keen on using 875, but that did lead me to a one-away 840 = 7*(75 + 50 - (7 - 2)).  I then got hooked on trying to make the target as 825 + 2*7; it feels like an approach with a lot of potential, particularly with the 2 or 7 available for tweaking, but I ran out the rest of the time without finding a way to make it work.

Looking at other approaches after time, I finally considered 850 - 11 and managed to get that to work: 839 = (10 + 7)*50 - (75 + 2)/7.  Later checking shows that this is the only solution.


Round 4: S G D I I C N O O

The -ING fragment was there, but hard to use.  I had DIGS, DISC, and DINGOS.  I toyed with CODINGS and COOINGS, but correctly rejected them.  After time I noted two other sixes in CODONS / CONDOS.

Some sources allow DISCO as a verb, and hence DISCOING, but the Macquarie does not.  There is a different eight, though: ISOGONIC ("having or relating to equal angles").

There are some sevens, too: INDIGOS, DISCING (DISC as a verb: "to prepare (soil) with a disc harrow"), and CONOIDS (CONOID: "a geometrical solid formed by the revolution of a conic section about one of its axes").


Round 5: C T M A I U W R N

My brain was telling me that there was something here that I should see, but I could not pin it down.  For a long time all I had was WARM.  I wrote down NATRIUM a bit late in the piece -- it's the Latin name for sodium (and the reason why the chemical symbol is Na) -- and that was all I had.  I was a bit uncertain about NATRIUM, which I know is listed in some sources (it's in my copy of Chambers) but I had a half-memory of encountering it before and the Macquarie not having it.  That was correct, as it turns out, with episode 32 being the likely candidate; NATRIUM is not valid.

After time I noted TUNIC and TUNICA (another word for TUNIC in the anatomical/zoological/botanical sense).

There were sevens here, though: CURTAIN, CRANIUM, and MANTRIC.  It's not the first time that I've struggled to see CURTAIN -- bother.


Round 6: Target 814 from 25 75 7 6 2 4

I looked at getting to 800 first, and a tweak finished things off: 814 = (4*(75 + 25) + 7)*2.  Then I took a kitchen sink approach of 814 = (6 + 4)*75 + 2*(25 + 7).


Round 7: A X B S D I I L A

I had DABS, AXIS, SALAD, AXIAL, BASAL, correctly rejected DIBASAL, and was uncertain about LABIAS and BASILIA before settling on ALIBIS as a safe six.  Just as well, as LABIA is already plural and there's no such thing as BASILIA.  After time I saw BIAXIAL as a seven; Jan did rather well to find this within time, I'd say.

The other seven is BASIDIA (plural of BASIDIUM).  And the adjective derived from it is the eight: BASIDIAL.


Round 8: Target 568 from 100 25 2 2 7 10

I realised that the target was 8*71, and got hung up on that for a while -- there's ways to get 8, and ways to get 71, but both at once is beyond me.  Fortunately I found the alternative of 4*142 with 568 = (100 + 25 + 10 + 7)*2*2, and then switched tacks to descend from 600 with 568 = (10 - 2 - 2)*100 - 25 - 7.


Round 9: HARSH REST

I decided that -ERS was worth investigating at some point, and eventually found THRASHERS from that after 8.4s.  Unfortunately, I forgot that I was supposed to be rejecting conundrums that end in S (well, those that are simple plurals or participles formed by adding an S, anyway).  Apologies to all.