NG 39

New game 39 is up.


Round 1: W N G A E O N D E

I had GNAW, WAGE, WAGON, an unsure WAGONNED, and GOWNED.  Annoyingly, I correctly convinced myself that WAGON was also a verb, but then made the error of doubling the N.  WAGONED would have been good for seven -- the best possible -- but WAGONNED is not valid.  (I believe I was partly led astray here my the fact that WAGGONED would be OK; the letter that can be doubled is the G, not the N.)

The other seven is ENDOGEN ("any plant of the obsolete class Endogenae, including the monocotyledons, whose stems were erroneously supposed to grow from within").  I'm not certain, but my reading of that definition is that there was a group of plants thought to grow one way and so lumped into that class; then later they discovered that they were wrong about this and things were reclassified.  Why the word persists if that is correct is anybody's guess.

The other sixes are GNAWED, ENNEAD ("a group of nine persons or things"), WEANED, NONAGE ("the period of legal minority"), WONNED (past tense of WON, an archaic word meaning "to dwell, abide, or stay"), and WANNED (past tense of the poetic verb WAN: "to become wan").


Round 2: O T E E R C D I S

I had ROTE, ERECT, EDITOR, DIRECTS, and SECTORED / ESCORTED.  After time I noted DISCREET / DISCRETE as other eights.

No nine on offer, as it turns out; the other eights are ESOTERIC / COTERIES, CORDITES, and EROTISED (EROTISE: "to translate (emotion, etc.) into sexual feeling").


Round 3: Target 962 from 75 50 8 3 5 2

I noted that the target was near 13*75, and the difference was 13.  That meant that it factored as 13*74, and gave me the solution 962 = (8 + 5)*(75 - (3 - 2)).  With a little more fiddling I found another way to use that factorisation: 962 = (75/5 - 2)*(50 + 3*8).  Finally, I noted that the target was 960 + 2, leading to the solution 962 = 8*(75 + 50 - 5) + 2.


Round 4: O C A F N I M O T

I had FAIN, MANIOC (another name for a cassava), and FACTION.  I was reminded of the similar recent round from NG 36, but neither of the eights it had were here.

The other sevens are FOOTMAN and AMOTION (noun derived from AMOVE, a legal term meaning "to remove; remove from office").


Round 5: C P L A A A N B U

If only one of those A's had been an I for PUBLICAN.  Oh, well.  I had CLAP, CANAL, BANAL, and had speculatively written down PALACE and BALANCE in case an E turned up, CABAL, wondered about CABALA (I thought it might only be listed as capitalised, but it turns out to be acceptable), and settled on CABANA.

Six is the best to be done; the others are ALPACA and LACUNA ("a gap or hiatus, as in a manuscript").


Round 6: Target 152 from 25 6 2 3 8 9

I started with a straightforward 152 = 6*25 + 2, then tried to avoid using the 25 and found 152 = (3*9 - 8)*(6 + 2).


Round 7: T S R O U I R A S

I had SORT, TOURS, wondered about TSOURI (I may have been thinking of TSOURIS, a Yiddish word for trouble or distress; it's not in the Macquarie in any case), SAUTOIR ("a long ribbon, chain, beaded band, or the like, worn about the neck"), and SAUTOIRS.  That's one of those words I know only from playing this game. *chuckles*

SAUTOIRS looks like the only eight; the other sevens are SUITORS, ASSUROR (a legal version of ASSURER), AURISTS (ear-doctors), OURARIS (OURARI being a variant spelling of the plant and poison CURARE), and possibly AORISTS (AORIST: "a tense of the Greek verb expressing past action without implication as to whether the action was momentary, continuous, completed, etc.").  I'll note that there's a nut called the SOUARI NUT, but it only appears in combination so SOUARIS is not valid.

But there is a nine here!  It is SARTORIUS: "a flat, narrow muscle, the longest in the human body, running from the hip to the inner side of the shinbone, and crossing the thigh obliquely in front".


Round 8: Target 196 from 100 7 9 6 4 10

I started with a straightforward 196 = 100 + 9*10 + 6, then another simple option of 196 = (9 - 7)*100 - 4.  But I really wanted to use the fact that the target was the square of 14, and eventually found a way to do so: 196 = (10 + 4)*((100 - 9 - 7)/6).


Round 9: BEAR ICONS

I don't have a reliable time to report here; when I was generating conundrums I was presented with CARDNIOBE and found CARBONIDE after 18.8s; it's not in the Macquarie, but while checking on it I saw that CARBONISE was valid and decided that I might as well just choose it.