*Track 10 (continued)

Jan 15, 2023

Having made a new commitment to speed quizzing, Stuart was conscious of the need to restrict his usual statistical analysis to a matter of seconds:

- ‘Challenge 31’ was no more expected, or unexpected, than any of the preceding nine month’s numbering variations. This would surely prove important at some point, but not now, and

- Just six hundred qualifiers, this was getting serious.

The nature of the clue itself however meant that he couldn’t fully get away from the numbers (as The Jam had once proposed). This ‘Challenge’s obvious pithiness was matched, on equal terms, by its incomprehensibility, certainly on Anne’s math-phobic part, “bloody hell, all those numbers,” she exclaimed, “think you can put me down for moral support and tea making on this one.”

It wasn’t the strings of digits that were perplexing Stuart though, he was hoping these might simply prove some modification of the ‘numbers as letters’ clue structure they had experienced for November’s ‘Challenge 12’. It wouldn’t be the first time a previous formula had been revised and revisited. Instead, he was more concerned by the three unexplained ROs that appeared in between the four number chains (which presumably constituted the described ‘four options’.)

Stuart decided it could be worth spending a few minutes on this question before diving straight into his number theory. There was so little other content to work on (with a seeming absence, this time around, of the usual cryptic header and footer pointers) that it seemed highly likely these ROs must have some significant part to play. His initial assessment suggested there could be two possible options on this:

- Either, RO was another new adaptation of the type of ‘two capital-letter’ clues that were now becoming commonplace,

- Or, it constituted some form of reverse engineering; with three sets of ‘letters as numbers’ slotted in between the four contrary formations.

Some freshly acquired web wisdom, having based his search methodology around their recent ‘Challenge’ experience, provided a few possible interpretations of RO; it might stand for Royal Ordnance (the armaments manufacturer), for Romania (where it was the top-level internet domain), or it could be an Egyptian unit of measurement.

None of these seemed particularly helpful in linking the four sets of numbers though. The only possibility that Stuart conjectured might ‘have legs’ was RO potentially standing for ‘read only’, a term familiar to anyone who worked with electronically stored documents. He was unclear though what, if anything, could be done with this fact, so, reluctantly, decided it was best to park this strand of enquiry for the moment.

His separate ‘letters as numbers’ theory proved equally unhelpful. RO would convert to 1815. At least it would under their previously used code. This in turn might refer to either the year (the Battle of Waterloo?) or possibly 6.15pm. Again, Stuart couldn’t readily imagine how either might help.

Anne, bringing him what Stuart was beginning to suspect may need to become the first of many required caffeine hits, also attempted to fulfil her other self-proscribed role, “just keep calm,” she said, “you’re good with numbers, you’ll get this sorted.”

This seemed like sound advice, and helped persuade Stuart it was high time to test out the four strings of digits, to see if they could be easily converted to words. He could always revisit the conundrum of the ROs relevance afterwards, if required.

Using the A = 1 etc. methodology (remembering that later letters can be signified by numbers in the tens and twenties, and that a zero may mean a word gap) Stuart started to translate the various alternative solutions suggested by the clue’s four number combinations, and transcribed these lists onto his trusty A4 pad:

5244132181819

=

EBDDACBAHAHAI

EXDACBAHAHAI

EXDACBAHAH

EXDACBAHRAI

EXDACBAHRS

EXDACUHAHAI

EXDACUHAHS

EXDACUHRAI

EXDACUHRS

EXDMBAHAHAI

EXDMBAHAHS

EXDMBAHRAI

EXDMBAHRS

EXDMUHAHAI

EXDMUHAHS

EXDMUHRAI

EXDMUHRS

5141981131

=

EADAIHAACA

EADAIHKCA

EADSHAACA

EADSHKCA

ENAIHAACA

ENAIHKCA

ENSHAACA

ENSHKCA

9741126

=

IGDAABF

IGDAAZ

IGDKBF

IGDKZ

521183208152121911

=

Way too many options!

This exercise took much longer, with significantly more variables, than Stuart had expected.

“More tea vicar?” Anne enquired, trying hard to introduce a note of levity, clearly having picked up on the increased volume and frequency of huffing that had begun to accompany Stuart’s lack of progress. Her attempt failed, proving a mere pebble of optimism scattered ineffectively at the base of a mountainous cliff of frustration.

“I’m getting nowhere, slowly,” Stuart replied, ignoring the question, “spent half an hour researching RO, with no joy, and now it’s taken just as long to come up with all these word options. Can’t even do the final one, it’s too long. None of them make sense anyway.”

Reliably calm in a crisis, Anne simply absorbed this diatribe before trying again to defuse the situation, “there’s only an hour gone, I’m sure we can work it out. Having glanced at Stuart’s A4 sheet though, as she was talking, she did backtrack a bit, “I see what you mean, none of those mean anything. Not in English anyway. Are you sure it’s the same code this time?”

“I’m beginning to suspect not,” Stuart conceded, “but I don’t know where to start if it isn’t. We’re not in Bletchley Park, we don’t have a spare Enigma machine laying around.”

With so little constructive progress made Stuart’s next move was unavoidable; an hour in (with half of his accelerated aspiration already expired) he could no longer resist checking on the progress made by their competition. “114 successes,” he announced, “not as bad as I feared, but it still means there are less than five hundred slots left.”

“Well, none of those 114 can be code-breakers either,” reasoned Anne, “doesn’t that just make it more likely we’re looking at this the wrong way?”

“Think you’re probably right,” Stuart replied, adopting a more positive tone than he had used for his earlier protestations. In truth, the success count had calmed him, he had been expecting something more panic inducing, in the three or four-hundreds maybe. “Tell you what,” he suggested, “I’ll make more tea while I think it through, and some toast. Need a bit of sustenance. You stay here, see if you can spot anything I’m missing. That worked well before.” He felt forced to turn back though, halfway to the kitchen, to add a warning, “but don’t go entering any bloody solutions this time.”

Taking five minutes to clear his head had been a good idea. As Stuart was returning to the office, laden with tea and toast, he already had a couple of germs of ideas on alternative coding theories it might be worth trying. “Any joy?” he asked Anne.

“Not on the numbers,” she said, “you know they’re not my bag. I did have one thought on the ROs, but it doesn’t seem to get us anywhere.”

“Go on, it might help.” Stuart had reached a point where he would willingly clutch at any straw. However flimsy, however strong the wind.

“The clue says there’re four options, which we’re assuming are the numbers, and the ROs sit in between these. Normally, if you had four options, you’d write them as A or B or C or D. So, I wondered if RO could just be OR in reverse.”

A broad smile started to creep across Stuart’s face, even as Anne continued, seemingly intent on destroying her own theory, “but that’s no use, it would just mean your set of gobbledygook words written backwards, and they make no sense that way either.”

“You’re a genius,” Stuart replied, failing to disguise an emerging smugness, “sit down, this shouldn’t take too long now.”

“Just told you. I’ve looked at them backwards, they’re still nonsense.”

“Yeah, but if we go backwards, and your logic makes perfect sense, then lots of the letters will change anyway. Just think about L, which is number 12, if you start at the other end that becomes 21 instead, that’s U, a completely different letter.”

“Bloody hell, I’d never have got that. So I might be right?”

“I think you are. That’s why you should stay. I can translate the words, but we’ll still need to work out what connects them. You can start working on that.”

RO did indeed prove to be OR backwards, and working the number sets through, in reverse, Stuart quickly uncovered four outcomes that all made coherent sense individually, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious what linked them collectively:

9181812314425

= IRRAWADDY (a river in Burma)

1311891415

= MARINO (an Italian town in Lazio)

6211479

= FUNGI (organisms that reproduce by spores)

119121251802381125

= KILLER WHALE (self-explanatory)

“So far so good,” announced Stuart triumphantly, as he finished translating ‘Killer Whale’. This whole conversion exercise, just as he had predicted, had taken little more than fifteen minutes, “but I still don’t see what links them. Any ideas?”

“I’ve got one,” replied Anne, who had made a head start while Stuart was still decoding. “It works for two of them, but not the others. The Irrawaddy’s not just a river, it’s also a type of dolphin; and instead of referring to mushrooms, Fungi could be that tame dolphin that lives in Dingle Bay. Don’t you remember, the one I went swimming with when we were on holiday in Ireland?”

This was starting to shape up as another potential success for collective, collaborative quizzing, especially when an educational Google return revealed that Killer Whales were, counterintuitively, the largest members of the dolphin family. Astoundingly not whales at all.

“But that still leaves Marino,” argued Anne, “that doesn’t fit. It’s miles from the Italian coast, I’ve looked at it on Maps. It’s on a lake, but you wouldn’t find any dolphins there either.”

“It can be a Dolphin,” laughed Stuart, “but only if it’s Dan Marino, the old Miami Dolphins quarterback,” giving Anne a congratulatory hug as he continued, “think we’re all sorted. Like I said, you’re a genius.”

After a brief semantic debate about whether they should be entering DOLPHIN singular or DOLPHINS plural, they settled on the former; working on the grammatical basis that the linking words, as Anne had so gloriously realised, were ROs indicating ORs (not DNAs which would, alternatively, have suggested ANDs).

Stuart insisted on Anne typing and submitting their answer, “you’re the one who sorted it.”

Pleasingly, if not in the slightest bit surprising, this generated, by return, yet another ‘first-time entry’ congratulatory message. One hour and forty minutes taken, in the end, meant that their late surge had qualified them comfortably within Stuart’s targeted timescale (which, after the event, he finally shared with Anne).

They had made it through to June, in around 215th place. It took less than four hours in total for the full six hundred cut-off limit to be reached. Obviously the remaining, hardcore ‘Challengers’ were no longer allowing any distractions like work to get in the way.

Fittingly, it appeared, with summer fast approaching, the competition seemed likely to carry on hotting up from here on in. With or without any climatic interference from the Chinese!

‘Challenge 31’ had proven another unqualified ‘team triumph’ though, Stuart reflected. A further successful collaboration from the sophomore squad.

###

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(‘Track 11’ will follow on 28th January at 10am. In the meantime, reader feedback can also help, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 10’.)

Challenge 69