NG 745

New game 745 is now available.


Round 1: S T G I S K I E N

I had GIST, KITES, got confused about which letters had been duplicated and wrote down STINKING (and a dubious STINKINGS and SINKINGS), realised my error and wrote down SKITING, was uncertain about SKITINGS (it turns out to be valid), IGNITES, and KISSING.  I decided against SKITINGS, alas.

SKITINGS is the only eight.  The other sevens are INGESTS / SIGNETS, INKIEST, SKIINGS, KINESIS ("the movement of an organism in response to a stimulus such as light"), and SEISING (SEISE: "to put in seisin or legal possession of").

My selection: IGNITES
Best: SKITINGS


Round 2: O G E U R H T R A

I had ROGUE, TROUGH, OUTRAGE, GARROTE, and TOUGHER.

The other sevens are ROUGHER, URETHRA, and GROUTER (colloquial for "an unfair advantage").

My selection: OUTRAGE


Round 3: Target 338 from 25 75 7 2 8 10

The offset of 12 is 10 + 2, and the remaining 350 is easy enough to get to, yielding 338 = 7*(75 - 25) - 10 - 2.  (Note that the offset of 13 is also 8 + 7 - 2, leading to 338 = 10*25 + 75 + 8 + 7 - 2.)  Then my thoughts turned to making this as 676 / 2; I could not quite get that to work, but a minor modification of it did: 338 = 8*(75 + 7)/2 + 10.

My selection: 338 = 8*(75 + 7)/2 + 10


Round 4: O E D M U C E N T

I had DOME, OUNCE, and DOCUMENT.

The other eight is DUECENTO ("the 13th century, used commonly with reference to Italian art and literature of that period").  The sevens are COUNTED, MOUNTED / DEMOUNT, and EUDEMON ("a good demon or spirit").

My selection: DOCUMENT


Round 5: D R O Y W U I N L

I had DORY, WORDY, and DURION (variant spelling of DURIAN).

The other six is DOURLY.  However, there are three sevens: ROUNDLY and WORDILY / ROWDILY.  I'm a bit vexed to have missed them all.

My selection: DURION
Best: ROUNDLY


Round 6: Target 681 from 25 1 5 7 7 1

It's easy enough to get to 700 with 25*(5 - 1)*7.  A small adjustment gets that to 675, and that leaves 7 over to add to get to one off: 682 = 25*((5 - 1)*7 - 1) + 7.

The target is unreachable, and that is the only way to get to 682.  There's also a unique way to get to 680: 680 = (25 - 7 - 1)*(7 + 1)*5.

My selection: 682 = 25*((5 - 1)*7 - 1) + 7  [1 off]


Round 7: F S A A N E B L T

I had FANS, BEANS, STABLE, and amused myself a little with FASTLANE (not valid, of course).  After time I thought of FANBELTS and a bit later of SEALANT.

FANBELTS was not in the Scrabble list that I use, but it turns out to be in the Macquarie, and is the only eight.  The other sevens are FANBELT and ABLATES.

My selection: STABLE
Best: FANBELTS


Round 8: Target 221 from 100 2 7 5 6 8

I started with the tweaked option of 221 = 2*(100 + 8) + 5, then tried to get the factorisation of 13*17 to work.  The 13 was easy enough with either 7 + 6 or 8 + 5, but I had to work harder for the 17.  I did manage to get it to work eventually, with 221 = (8 + 5)*(100 + 2)/6.

My selection: 221 = 2*(100 + 8) + 5


Round 9: DRY RAVAGE

I chose this conundrum, but in any case I am dubious that I would have solved it.  Compound words are often hard to unscramble.

My selection: [N/A -- chosen]
Best: GRAVEYARD