NG 263

New game 263 is now available.


Round 1: N Y E A C S T O R

I had CYAN, CANES, STANCE, CORNETS, ANCESTOR, and ANCESTRY.

The other eights are ENACTORS and ENACTORY.  There are a lot of sevens.

My selection: ANCESTOR


Round 2: P C D I T E T A W

I had CITED, DEPICT, PITTED, and WAITED.  I flirted with DEPICTA and PATTIED, but not seriously (nor are they valid).

There is a seven, though: DICTATE.

My selection: DEPICT
Best: DICTATE


Round 3: Target 152 from 25 6 7 2 8 8

Sadly easy; I started with 152 = 6*25 + 2, then noted the factorisation 8*19 and an alternative solution 152 = 8*(25 - 6).  Finally I used more numbers but avoided the large one with the solution 152 = (2*6 + 7)*8.

My selection: 152 = 6*25 + 2


Round 4: S A T R K D R O E

I had STAR, STARK, STREAK, STARRED, and ROADSTER.

ROADSTER appears to be the only eight; again, there's quite a few sevens (such as DARKEST and STROKED).

My selection: ROADSTER


Round 5: I B O E T F G M L

I had BEFIT, BIOME, MOTILE, and OBLIGE.

Six is the limit, which is not surprising given these letters.  The others are FOIBLE, MOBILE / EMBOLI (plural of EMBOLUS: "undissolved material carried by the blood current and impacted in some part of the vascular system [...]"), GOBLET, GIBLET, GIMLET, and FIMBLE ("the male or staminate plant of hemp [...]").

My selection: OBLIGE


Round 6: Target 844 from 25 75 50 100 7 5

I worked my way towards a solution, perhaps a little fortunately.  Regular readers may recall that I like 875 as an intermediate because it can be made as either 7*125 or 5*175, and it was the former I considered here.  I was actually thinking of this as a fallback one away via 875 - 25 - 5; I started to make the 875 as 7*(100 + 25), then realised that this would use up the 25 that I wanted.  Switching that to 7*(75 + 50) left me 31 away, which is 35 - 4; 35 is 7*5 and 4 is 100/25.  It all went rather fortuitously to give me the solution 844 = 7*(75 + 50 - 5) + 100/25.

That turns out to be the only solution.

My selection: 844 = 7*(75 + 50 - 5) + 100/25


Round 7: D D O A O L O C R

Gah, what a mix.  I had LOAD, COLOR, and CORAL / CAROL.  I noted that a T instead of one of the O's would allow DOCTORAL, and observed the American state of COLORADO in the mix.  But neither was a useful observation and so five was my limit.

It turns out that there is one word longer than five to be had.  It is... COLORADO, which has a lower case meaning of "(of cigars) of medium colour and strength".  I wish I had known that!

My selection: CORAL
Best: COLORADO


Round 8: Target 645 from 75 100 50 8 9 3

I toyed around with both 9*75 and 8*75 as starting points, but struggled a bit to use them.  Then I realised that the offset of 45 from 8*75 was divisible by 9, and it fell out handily from that observation: 645 = 8*75 + 9*(3 + 100/50).

My selection: 645 = 8*75 + 9*(3 + 100/50)


Round 9: SCARY TREE

I was presented this in a slightly less helpful form, but in either case the -ARY fragment was tempting.  Extracting the remaining letters leads to SECRETARY.

My selection: SECRETARY (5.0s)