New game 109 is now available.
Round 1: S E T E L I C C D
I had TEES, STEEL, ELITES, and SELECT. After time I noted other sixes of ELECTS and EDICTS, but could not better it. I did observe that LECCIES was in the mix; first-season viewers may recall that David suggested this in episode 41 but (as I pontificated) it should not be valid since the Macquarie does not list the plural form of LECCY ("a device powered by electricity").
There are a few sevens, though, of which the most common is DECEITS. The others are DECILES (DECILE: "Statistics one of the values of a variable which divides its distribution into ten groups having equal frequencies"), DELICTS (which I had actually considered but rejected; DELICT is "(chiefly in Scotland) a legal offence for which the person wronged has the right to a civil remedy"), and SECTILE ("capable of being cut smoothly by a knife").
My selection: SELECT
Best: DECEITS
Round 2: W R I E R H O L B
I had WIRE, WIRER, WHORE, ROWER, BLOWER, an uncertain BLOWIER (it turns out to be valid), and HORRIBLE.
That is the only eight; the other sevens are WHIRLER and BROILER.
My selection: HORRIBLE
Round 3: Target 453 from 75 6 10 10 7 5
An easy application of the standard method: 453 = 6*75 + 10 - 7.
My selection: 453 = 6*75 + 10 - 7.
Round 4: N P O A M O O T N
The multiple O's strike again, making life difficult. I had MOAN, MOON, and TAMPON. I pretty much talked myself out of anything longer being likely, but when I came back later and looked at it with a fresh mindset I saw PONTOON immediately.
That's the only seven; the other six is PONTON, a variant spelling of it (in the non card-game sense).
My selection: TAMPON
Best: PONTOON
Round 5: T E N U N L E T E
Ergh, lots more repetition. Oh, well. I had TUNE, UNLET, and TUNNEL.
There are two sevens here: ENTENTE ("understanding" or "the parties to an understanding"; most familiar to me due to the triple entente) and LUNETTE ("any of various objects or spaces of crescent-like or semicircular outline or section").
The othe sixes are NETTLE / TELNET (as I mentioned yesterday, this is "a program for opening a shell (def. 20) on a remote computer"), LENTEN ("of, relating to, or suitable for Lent"; I'm a bit surprised to see that a lowercase form is allowed), NUTLET, and ELUENT ("a solvent used in eluting").
My selection: TUNNEL
Best: ENTENTE
Round 6: Target 915 from 100 75 25 6 7 9
Getting near with 9*100 seems clear, but then the most obvious desire is to add 9+6 and that would reuse the 9. If we could make a 1 then we could tweak, but it does not seem possible. Fortunately playing around with the options guided me to a solution after I turned 75/25 into 3: 915 = 9*100 + 7*75/25 - 6.
It turns out there is just one other solution: 915 = 9*(100 - 75/25) + 7*6.
My selection: 915 = 9*100 + 7*75/25 - 6
Round 7: R A P O D I X E C
I had DROP, RADIO, OXIDE, and PARODIC / PICADOR. I also wondered about EXOCARP which should be the opposite of ENDOCARP (the various -CARPs have turned up a few times on the show), but recalled that the three types are ENDOCARP, MESOCARP, and EPICARP.
Later checking shows that EXOCARP is listed as another term for EPICARP, though, so it would have been valid (EPICARP: "the outermost layer of a pericarp, as the rind or peel of certain fruits; exocarp"). The other sevens are EXORDIA (one plural form of EXORDIUM: "the introductory part of an oration or discourse") and PERCOID ("resembling a perch", in the fish sense).
My selection: PARODIC
Round 8: Target 458 from 75 100 9 2 5 3
It's clear that 6*75 will be close, and making the 6 as 2*3 leaves tweaking options open. The 9 and 5 can make a 4, which is enough for the tweak to work: 458 = 2*(3*75 + 9 - 5). Then I considered working down from 500 and found a different tweak: 458 = 5*(100 - 9) + 3.
My selection: 458 = 2*(3*75 + 9 - 5)
Round 9: VETOES RED
I cannot report a time for this; after around half an hour of going through computer generated conundrums which were not able to be used I gave up and just chose one that I'd encountered recently in a puzzle. Here the OVER- fragment is a red herring and the actual answer of STEVEDORE ("a firm or individual engaged in the loading or unloading of a vessel") may have been more obscure than I thought. Oh, well.
My selection: [N/A -- conundrum chosen explicitly]
Best: STEVEDORE
4 comments:
Tough letters and conundrum today.
1. LISTED
2. BLOWIER/WHIRLER
3. 453 = (75-10) * 7 - 10/5
4. PANTO
5. UNLET
6. 915 = 9*100 + 75/25 * 7 - 6
7. PICADOR
8. 458 = 100/2 * 9 + 5 + 3
9. I eventually stumbled across it while looking up another guess. Supertough!
1. SELECT
2. BLOWER (was unsure about BLOWIER)
3. 453 = 6*75 + 10 - 7
4. TAMPON
5. TUNNEL
6. Sam's way
7. PARODIC
8. 458 = 5*(100 - 9) + 3
9. - (needless to say, I have never heard of this word before)
Yes, a tough set today. On the other hand, there were findable sevens on all of them (and longer in one round). If this had been a televised episode then David would have been making me wonder how I could have missed them.
Apologies for the tough conundrum; in retrospect I guess it was less well-known than I had thought.
I was more or less aware of what a stevedore is, the word was just hard to see. Neither STEVE nor DORE are common fragments, and the letters lent themselves to many other possible prefixes and suffixes.
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