NG 162

New game 162 is now available.


Round 1: L H E H I D A P A

I had HIDE, HAILED, and DAHLIA.  I wish that P had been another D as I noticed the potential for ALIDADE ("an instrument or part thereof which is used for the determination of direction and which depends upon a beam, equipped with sights, a telescope, etc., which turns within a circle with a graduated circumference").

The sevens are HELIPAD and APHELIA (plural of APHELION: "the point of a planet's, comet's, or artifical satellite's orbit most distant from the sun").

The other sixes are HALIDE (a chemical compound involving a halogen) and ALIPED ("having the toes connected by a winglike membrane, as the bats") / ELAPID (any snake of a certain family).

My selection: HAILED
Best: HELIPAD


Round 2: F I S I F O R E T

An unpromising start to this mix, but it did improve.  I had FIRS, RIFFS, FOREST, wondered if I could make a case for FIRIEST (no, I could not; the correct word is, of course, FIERIEST), and somehow FORTIFIES coalesced out of the mix.  Very pleasing to spot a nine, particularly in what seemed like a parsimonious set of letters to start with.

The eight here is FORFEITS; the sevens are FORFEIT, FORTIES, FIFTIES / STIFFIE, STIFFER, and EFFORTS.  Although IFFY is listed, IFFIEST is not.

My selection: FORTIFIES


Round 3: Target 166 from 25 75 1 2 8 4

I tossed up a few approaches, but when I looked at the factorisation 2*83 that seemed the easiest of them, giving 166 = 2*(75 + 8).  I looked around for other solutions and found the rather pedestrian 166 = 4*25 + 75 - 8 - 1.

My selection: 166 = 2*(75 + 8)


Round 4: B O C I D E D R K

I had CODE, CODED, ROCKED, and BRICKED (BRICK as a verb: "Colloquial to falsify evidence against (someone) to substantiate a criminal charge").  I also speculated about COBIDDER but wasn't sure that was even a concept, let alone a word.  After time I noted BEDROCK as another seven.

Those are the only two sevens.  I was a bit lucky with BRICKED; I was thinking instead of the colloquial meaning of firmware patches that break computer hardware (such as hard drives), thereby rendering them about as functional as a brick.  I was certainly rather displeased when a hard drive of mine was bricked through no fault of my own.

My selection: BRICKED


Round 5: T C E U R B E E T

I had CUTE, CUTER / CRUET, BRUTE, BUTTER, and CURETTE ("a scoop-shaped surgical instrument used for removing diseased tissue from body cavities such as the uterus, etc.").

The other seven here, familiar to chemistry students, is the BURETTE ("a graduated glass tube, commonly having a stopcock at the bottom, used for accurately dispensing small quantities of liquid, especially for titration").

My selection: CURETTE


Round 6: Target 150 from 25 50 7 10 9 5

This was so easy I made an error writing it down at first, as (10 - 7)*3.  Fortunately I caught that sillyness and corrected it to 150 = (10 - 7)*50.

My selection: 150 = (10 - 7)*50


Round 7: T D A A W U I S O

I had DATA, WAIST, STUDIO, and then took a punt on WASTOID.  I could swear that David once mentioned it on the show but if so it's not within the range of this blog, and the Macquarie does not list it.  Bother.

The actual seven here is OUTSAID, past tense of OUTSAY.  I'm not even sure what action that really corresponds to, come to think of it -- how does one outsay someone/something? *shrugs*

The other sixes are OUTSAW, AWAITS, AUDITS, AUDIOS, and STADIA.

My selection: [invalid -- WASTOID]
Best: OUTSAID


Round 8: Target 655 from 50 75 4 8 6 9

I started with the incremental approach from below, getting the solution 655 = 8*75 + 50 + 9 - 4.  Then I tried working down from 9*75 as a base and that proved unexpectedly difficult; I eventually got there with a tweak: 655 = 9*(75 + 4) - 6 - 50.  Finally I considered the technique of subtracting the 75 and making the result (580) a new target, which led to the solution 655 = (50 + 8)*(6 + 4) + 75.

My selection: 655 = 8*75 + 50 + 9 - 4


Round 9: GRIEVES AT

I chose this conundrum explicitly so I can't declare anything here.  That was after being presented with GRAVESHIP by my conundrum generator; I solved that in 3.4s but when I checked up it was not listed, so I went with the nearby GRAVESITE.  The anagram given was too apropos to resist.

My selection: [N/A -- chosen explicitly]
Best: GRAVESITE