NG 42

New game 42 is up.


Round 1: B L D M O E E Z A

That Z makes things a little awkward; if we could just rotate it by 90 degrees we could make LEMONADE.  As it was, I had BOLD, LOBED, MODEL, and AMBLED.  I also rightly rejected DEMOABLE.  After time I noted ELODEA (a type of plant) as another six.

There are some longer words, though.  The sevens are BELDAME (variant spelling of BELDAM: "an old woman, especially an ugly one"; or more nicely, "a grandmother") and EMBLAZE ("to adorn with heraldic devices").  That latter leads to the only eight of EMBLAZED.


Round 2: M N N O O E C T I

I had MOON, rejected NO-ONE on the grounds that the hyphen must be necessary, and MOTION.

I was pretty sure that six was not the best, but I could not unravel better.  It turns out that there are two lovely eights here: NOONTIME and EMOTICON.

There's also a few findables sevens, with EMOTION being one I should have found from MOTION.  The others are MENTION, CONNOTE, CONTEMN ("to treat disdainfully or scornfully"), ENTOMIC ("of or relating to insects"), and COONTIE (a type of arrowroot plant).

Well done to Jan on finding NOONTIME and congratulations to Victor for finding ENTOMIC, which otherwise I would have overlooked.


Round 3: Target 394 from 100 75 25 2 4 7

Starting from 400 seemed clear, and the remainder was able to produce the required offset of 6; that yielded the solution 394 = 4*100 - 2*75/25.  Then I wondered if I could solve this by keeping the 4 and 2 aside for that offset of 6, and that also turned out to work: 394 = 7*75 - 25 - 100 - 4 - 2.


Round 4: R N R A O O F G S

I had ROAR, ORANG (acceptable variant of ORANGUTAN), and ORANGS / SARONG / GROANS / ORGANS.

It turns out that the only other six is also an anagram of those same letters: ARGONS.


Round 5: R B T S E E A K E

I had REST, an uncertain BESTER (it turns out to be colloquial for "a fraudulent bookmaker"), and REBATES / BEATERS.  I also noted that it could split as STEAK and BEER; if that R had been an F then BEEFSTEAK would have been available.

Seven seems to be the limit; the others are BEAKERS, BERATES, BETAKES (mostly used in the form of BETOOK, BETAKE is archaic for "to go"), RETAKES, and SKEETER (colloquial for "a mosquito").  The American slang term KEESTER (perhaps more usually spelled KEISTER) is not listed.


Round 6: Target 638 from 75 4 9 6 3 5

I briefly flirted with the idea of making the target as (17*75 + 1)/2 or variants thereof, but it did not seem promising.  Instead I looked at the nearby 9*75, and the offset of 37 was ripe for tweaking.  That gave me 638 = 9*(75 - 4) - (6 - 5) relatively soon.  Then I tried working up from 600 instead, and found the alternative solution of 638 = (5 + 3)*(75 + 4) + 6.


Round 7: C L R M E O I L O

I had MOREL (a type of mushroom), MOILER (MOIL: "to work hard; toil; drudge"), RECOIL, COOLER, and COLLIER ("a ship for carrying coal").

The other seven is MORELLO ("a sour cherry [...]").


Round 8: Target 380 from 75 9 1 7 6 4

I'd done some premultiplying and so had an instant one-away 379 = 9*7*6 + 1, which I then managed to tweak to a solution of 380 = (9*7 + 1)*6 - 4.  Playing around with the idea of making this as 38*10 eventually bore fruit with 380 = ((75 + 1)/(9 - 7))*(6 + 4), and then I realised this was really just 76*5 which could have been easily made with 380 = (75 + 1)*(9 - 4).

Mike found the nicer 38*10 approach of 380 = (7*6 - 4)*(9 + 1).


Round 9: WIND SHEER

Not to be confused with WINDSHEAR, the answer here (which I did not get) is SWINEHERD.