NG 231

New game 231 is now available.  For those in states which had Labour Day today, I hope you've had a nice long weekend.


Round 1: E U A O V T S T E

I had UVEA ("the middle tunic of the eye (iris, choroid, and ciliary body, taken collectively)"), correctly rejected OUTSAVE, and STATUE.

Six appears to be the limit here; the only candidate for longer is OUTEATS, but OUTEAT is not listed (although OUTDRINK is).  The other sixes are ASTUTE, OUTSEE, OUTSAT, OUTSET, ESTATE / TESTAE (plural of TESTA: "Botany the outer, usually hard, integument or coat of a plant seed"), VETOES, AVOSET (variant spelling of AVOCET, one of a few species of bird), and SUTTEE (variant spelling of SATI: "a former Hindu practice in which a widow immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her husband").

My selection: STATUE


Round 2: S I N O R W A R F

I had IRONS, SWORN, FROWNS, NARROWS, and FARROWS (I was thinking of FARROW as the grain product, but apparently that is spelled FARRO (and not in the Macquarie); it does have other meanings, though, and in particular a verb sense of "to produce a litter of pigs").

Those are the only sevens; as I've mentioned before, INSOFAR only appears as part of the phrase INSOFAR AS, so is not valid.

My selection: NARROWS


Round 3: Target 361 from 75 100 2 7 1 5

The nearby target of 375 has an offset of 14, and both parts are easily manageable: 361 = 5*75 - 2*7.  For good measure I also noted the solution 361 = 2*(100 + 75 + 5) + 1.

My selection: 361 = 5*75 - 2*7


Round 4: C I S S I E B C A

I had CESS, rightly rejected BICCIES (I'd checked this before when a contestant declared BICKIES in episode 362), BASES, and SCABIES.

SCABIES looks like the only seven; the sixes are ACCESS, BASICS, BIASES, IBISES, and IBICES (one plural form of IBEX).

My selection: SCABIES


Round 5: E U A O I D L S N

I had IDEA, AILED, ISLAND, UNLOADS, and DELUSION.  After time I noted UNSOILED as another eight.

Those appears to be the only eights; there's a decent spread of other sevens, of which I'll just mention NODULES, SUNDIAL, and DENIALS.

My selection: DELUSION


Round 6: Target 865 from 100 75 10 6 7 10

Getting to 850 was easy enough, and an adjustment to one away was not too hard; I wrote it down as a fallback: 866 = 10*75 + 100 + 10 + 6.  (Actually, I had started to write down the two-away 863 that used the 7 in place of the second 10, but then good sense reasserted itself.)  I spotted the option of making this as 875 - 10, but got too hung up on various non-working ways of attempting to get to 875.  Making it as 5*175 was particularly desirable, but not achievable; 7*125 would also have been an option but I was not able to make it work.  In the end I had to stay with one away.

A little after time I spotted an unusual line for making the 125 after all; 125 is 5*25, which is 5*75/3.  We don't have either a 5 or a 3, but multiplying top and bottom by 2 gives a much more helpful 10*75/6.  The resulting solution is 865 = ((75*10)/6)*7 - 10.

There's quite a few solutions, as it turns out.  My favourite is perhaps one demonstrated by Sam, making the 875 as 975 - 100 to give the deceptively simple 865 = (7 + 6)*75 - 100 - 10.

Other options end up adding or subtracting the 75, and with those 10's around I should have considered this possibility.  A straightforward application of that idea gives another solution: 865 = 10*(100 - 6) - 75.

My selection: 866 = 10*75 + 100 + 10 + 6  [1 off]
Best: 865 = ((75*10)/6)*7 - 10


Round 7: O A A E E D R H M

I had ROAD, HORDE, REAMED, HARMED, and a late find of REHOMED (REHOME: "to find a new home for (a pet)").

The other seven is the baseball term HOMERED (insert your own Simpsons reference here).  The other sixes are HEADER / ADHERE, ROAMED / RADOME ("a domed cover over an aerial system designed to allow the free passage of radio waves"), DHARMA ("(in Hinduism and Buddhism) essential quality or character"),REMADE, OEDEMA ("effusion of serous fluid into the interstices of cells in tissue spaces or into body cavities"), and HERMAE (plural of HERMA, a variant form of HERM: "a kind of monument or statue, common in ancient Athens, consisting of a head, usually that of the god Hermes, supported on a quadrangular pillar corresponding roughly in mass to the absent body and furnished with genitalia, in the case of the male, and often with projections near the shoulders on which wreaths might be hung").

My selection: REHOMED


Round 8: Target 684 from 100 25 5 9 10 6

The target is near 9*75, and the offset of 9 means a factorisation of 9*76.  From those observations it is easy to find a solution of 684 = 9*(100 - 25 + 6 - 5).  Then I pulled out the factor of 6 instead (with cofactor 114) to get an alternative solution of 684 = 6*(100 + 9 + 5).  Finally I continued the investigation of factors to determine that the target was 36*19, and hence 684 = (25 + 5 + 6)*(10 + 9).

My selection: 684 = 6*(100 + 9 + 5)


Round 9: SEEK MUTER

I don't have much helpful to say about the thought process here; I happened to see MUSKETEER fairly early on, and that was that.

My selection: MUSKETERR (1.8s)