NG 38

New game 38 is up.

My thoughts and best wishes for anyone affected by the fires today.


Round 1: U S I A R E F U L

I had ARISE, EARFULS, and FAILURES.  I did wonder about AIRFUELS, but was not surprised it was not listed.

FAILURES looks like the only eight; the other sevens are FAILURE and REFUSAL.


Round 2: C R T A E S E E N

Good-looking letters, although that third E was a bit much.  I wanted it to be an O instead for RESONATE, but CAROTENES would have been the nine.  But as it was I had CART, CRATE, CRATES, CREATES, and TRANCES.  There's a lot of sevens here, but I was not able to find a plausible longer word.  Some hours later I thought of RE-ENACTS, but was pretty sure (correctly so) that the hyphen was required.

There are two eights, though.  Victor found SERENATE (one plural form of SERENATA: "a form of pastoral cantata, often of a dramatic or imaginative character") and the other is SARCENET ("a very fine, soft, silk fabric, used especially for linings").


Round 3: Target 925 from 100 50 7 8 6 2

The target is a multiple of 25, so I was pretty set early on on the idea of using 50/2 to get a 25.  The rest of the numbers cooperated reasonably well to give the solution 925 = (8 + 7 - 6)*100 + 50/2.

There's a few other solutions, most of them involving a division by 2 at some point.  The exception is the entertaining 925 = (7*8*100 - 50)/6.


Round 4: G F W O I I L C U

I had FOIL, COWL, and LOGIC.  A tough mix, for sure, and longer than five seems dubious.

There are some other fives, though: WOFUL (a rare variant spelling of WOEFUL), the radio communications term WILCO (as in "Roger, wilco"), and OCULI (plural of OCULUS: "Architecture a circular opening, especially one at the apex of a dome").


Round 5: E D H A D O E H T

Lots of duplication here; I had HEAD, HEADED, rejected DEATHED, HOTHEAD, and an uncertain HOTHEADED.  I felt it was more likely to require a hyphen, but it was plausible enough that I risked it.  That was the right decision; although the main entry is listed with the hyphen, the unhyphenated form is given as an acceptable variant.

HOTHEADED is the only word longer than seven, and HOTHEAD is the only seven.  The other sixes are HEATED and DOATED (DOAT being a variant form of DOTE).


Round 6: Target 740 from 75 100 8 1 3 1

I played around with working down from 8*100, but working up from 8*75 proved more fruitful, eventually leading me to 740 = 8*(75 + 3 + 1 + 1) + 100.  Then I did manage to get the original plan to work with 740 = 8*(100 + 3 - 1) - 75 - 1.


Round 7: I O S R A R R L O

I had SOAR, ROARS, ORRIS (a type of plant) but I accidentally wrote it down as ORRIL, and SAILOR.  I knew from looking it up for NG 17 that SORORAL was not valid, so six was where I stayed.

It does seem to be the best possible, and the only one.  If the next vowel had been an E then a fifth vowel would have allowed the unlikely full monty of OORARRIES (OORARRIE: "a hopping mouse [...] of the Australian interior").  That is supposedly a name for the fawn hopping mouse in particular; it does not seem to have a great deal of usage, but I guess that's inevitable.


Round 8: Target 174 from 100 4 9 8 1 7

I footled around with a couple of ideas here; the first that I got to work was 174 = 100 + 9*8 + 7 - 4 - 1.  Then I noted that 74 was 84 - 10 and that led to 174 = 100 + 7*(8 + 4) - 9 - 1.

After time I put the 7 - 4 - 1 = 2 to different use with 174 = (7 - 4 - 1)*(100 - 9 - 8).


Round 9: MEANIE SEX

I buzzed in at the 2.3s mark with the incorrect EXAMINES.  The correction to EXAMINEES was not too hard, but I doubt that I had it in time.  This seems like the kind of conundrum where one player would buzz in with the wrong answer and the other player would then solve it.

Also, it is a plural ending in S.  I was trying to avoid those, but somehow I get confused and let them through far to often.  Apologies!