*Track 12 (continued)
“So, it definitely looks different,” Anne observed, “but other than that, not a lot seems to have changed.”
“Yeah,” Stuart agreed, “in fact, with a simple one-line clue, it’s almost like it has gone back to the start. Guess the new font is another unknown to add to our ‘must mean something, but don’t know what’ pile though.”
“You’re missing something big,” Joe corrected them both, “It’s only giving us two chances now before we get locked out. That’s a lot more dangerous.”
Stuart, slightly peeved he hadn’t noticed this first, shared Joe’s concern, “you’re right, we’ll need to make sure we’re pretty certain now before we enter anything. Seems we’re back to a straight cryptic clue though.”
“Not sure that needs three of us,” Anne pronounced, “think I’ll leave this one to you boys. Shout me if there’s anything you need,” with which she left to refocus her attention on matters speleological.
Joe wasn’t going anywhere. Despite having previously self-declared a cryptic deficit he was determined to play as big a ‘Challenge’ role as he could while his summer break lasted. “Any ideas Dad?” he asked, “anything you want me to do?”
The first thought that had jumped into Stuart’s mind was famous theatrical sayings. To start with there was, “break a leg,” to express good luck, and wasn’t there some superstition about never calling a production by its title, although on reflection that maybe just applied to Macbeth (or the Scottish Play)? He decided this was probably over thinking the question, in construct this looked like an everyday cryptic clue.
“On the face of it,” he eventually answered Joe, “if this was in a crossword, then ‘to mess around with’ would indicate an anagram. I assume we either need an anagram of ‘not an expression’ with its answer meaning something ‘in the theatre’, or the other way around.” Stuart wasn’t entirely convinced by his own summary however, and added, “my gut feel is it can’t be that simple, but it would be a good starting point.”
“How do we go about it then?” Joe asked impatiently, clearly keen to stop talking and start acting.
“The good news is anagrams are a lot easier to solve these days, there are loads of cheat sites online,” Stuart advised, “my suggestion is you take ‘not an expression’ and see what anagrams you can come up with. Remember it could be a phrase we’re looking for, not necessarily just a single word. I’ll do the same for ‘in the theatre’ and we can compare notes afterwards.”
At 10.18am, Anne arrived with refreshments, and the latest rescue update, “the ninth boy’s been brought out safely. How are you two doing?”
“I’m not sure we’re safe yet,” Stuart replied, “but your timing’s perfect. We were just about to compare notes on our anagram analysis. What have you got Joe?”
“You gave me the hardest one. Fifteen letters, compared to twelve in yours, so the options expand exponentially. I had two thousand to look through but, like you suggested, I’ve only listed the most sensible ones,” with which Joe passed over his written list of possible ‘not an expression’ anagrams:
EXPANSION TONERS
TENOR EXPANSIONS
APRON EXTENSIONS
PARSON EXTENSION
ANNEXE IRON SPOTS
SANE PERSON TOXIN
SPEARS NEXT ONION
EXTRA NINE SPOONS
TEXAS NEON PRISON
PENIS TORSO ANNEX
“I know the last one doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it made me laugh,” Joe admitted, “but I can’t see how any of these link to ‘in the theatre’.”
“Well, the illegal use of a ‘sane person toxin’ could get you banged up in a ‘texas neon prison’, Stuart replied, “but that aside, I agree. If you look at mine though it’s no better.”:
EATEN THITHER
HAIRNET TEETH
HIT NEAR TEETH
THE HEN ATTIRE
THE NEATER HIT
THE RAIN TEETH
TRITE HEATHEN
“Yours are just boring,” Joe observed, “I’m glad I got the penis one now. I didn’t even know thither was a word.”
“It’s biblical, means towards a place” Stuart explained, “but these aren’t really getting us any nearer to anything.”
“It looks like you’ve got a bit of a dental obsession,” Anne unhelpfully added, “and I quite like the idea of a trite heathen, but none of these are anything to do with ‘not an expression’. Think you need to go back to the drawing board.” Following which constructive advice, she departed again, having apparently concluded that her Thai caves made for a safer bet.
“What’s our fallback strategy then?” Joe asked, seemingly undeterred, his positive attitude helping to keep Stuart’s mood on an even keel.
“I had suspected as much really,” Stuart explained, “a straight anagram at this stage just seemed too easy. It’s probably still at the heart of the clue, but I think this one might be a two stager.”
Realising Joe’s blank look demanded a deeper explanation, he continued, “we may need to swop out another word for ‘expression’, ‘definition’ for example, and then, if that was the right substitute, we would need to solve an anagram of ‘not a definition’. I reckon the theatre bit is far more likely to be the answer we need to find.”
He could spot Joe’s commitment visibly slipping away as this explanation lengthened. “That sounds more your territory,” Joe conceded, “there are a few people I need to message, I’ll check back after that.” While reluctant to lose his chief cheerleader, Stuart accepted that a solo attempt might now be best. There were, he feared, likely to be an awful lot of synonyms for expression.
10.37am brought a further cave diving bulletin, “ten down now, or should I say up. Just two more to go, plus the coach,” Anne reported, “any joy with you yet?”
“Not really,” Stuart groaned, his earlier positivity failing him fast, “I’ve tried ‘phrase’, ‘remark’ and ‘definition’ but none of them work. What if I’m barking up the wrong tree?”
“Can’t you tackle it from the other end?” Anne asked, as usual proving the living epitome of calm, “if you’re confident the theatre bit is the solution, come up with options for that and then see if you can sort the anagram backwards. What about that musical link you keep banging on about, maybe that can help?”
It wasn’t a bad suggestion, and frankly Stuart was running out of ideas of his own. He decided this could be worth a stab. Given his unproven theory had always been based around live music though, rather than musical theatre, he tried out a Google search on, “theatres famous for live music.”
The most promising looking return Stuart received was a site that listed, “twelve classic London music venues,” categorising these as; The 100 Club, The Astoria, Brixton Academy, The Dominion Theatre, Hammersmith Apollo, The Lyceum Theatre, The Marquee Club, The Rock Garden, Ronnie Scott’s, The Roundhouse, The Royal Albert Hall, and The Scala Cinema.
He was a little worried restricting things to London might cause a problem, but having already determined that the ‘Challenges’ were largely UK centric this could probably be argued as a justifiable theory extension. “In for a penny …” Stuart thought, and carried on regardless. The Dominion and The Lyceum were the venues that jumped out from the list, courtesy of having ‘Theatre’ affixed to their names.
The second stage of this highly speculative plan was to cross reference these venues against the wider list of ‘expression’ synonyms that he had, ineffectively, been working through. This was a pretty long list though: announcement, articulation, assertion, commentary, communication, declaration, definition, emphasis, enunciation, explanation, formulation, idiom, interpretation, intonation, language, mention, phrase, pronouncement, remark, speech, statement, term, utterance, and voice.
With twelve venues and twenty-four expressions, Stuart realised, the maths of cross-referencing them all added up to a mammoth task. Just as desperation was about to win the day though, that old Wembley crossword apprenticeship miraculously kicked back into gear (Margaret and Jim would be proud of him). Stuart’s cryptological neurons suddenly connected, prompting one entry from each of his lists to coalesce.
DOMINION and IDIOM had so many letters in common, Stuart realised, there surely had to be some anagrammatic link between them. He quickly crossed off the letters of IDIOM from DOMINION and found himself left with NON.
“Got it,” he shouted, the exclamation intended to serve as a team summons. While confident in his assertion, Stuart knew he would prefer the others to validate his solution.
It was 11.20am. “The eleventh one’s out now,” Anne declared as she entered the office, closely followed by Joe, “but I take it you’ve had some success as well.”
“I think I have. ‘Non idiom’ can mean the same as ‘not an expression’, and it’s also an anagram of Dominion which, of course, is a famous theatre,” Stuart declared, unable to stop himself from unnecessarily adding, “I saw Elvis Costello there once, supported by John Cooper Clarke. What do you think?”
Satisfyingly, they both agreed this solution worked perfectly. “We’d better get it entered then,” Joe suggested.
Stuart still felt slightly nervous however, and explained the root cause of his doubts, “I’m worried about the new ‘two entry’ limit. There are several ways you could phrase this. Do we just put in ‘Dominion’, or ‘The Dominion’, or maybe even ‘The Dominion Theatre’? I don’t want to get us locked out.”
“You’re just being chicken,” Joe laughed, “it’s obviously just DOMINION. That’s what your anagram spells out. Here, let me do it,” and he took charge of the keyboard.
While partly freaked out by this loss of control, Stuart agreed with Joe’s logic (and accepted his ‘chicken’ charge was a fair one) and allowed him to carry on with the entry. He was still mightily relieved however when the anticipated congratulatory message followed. Their now obligatory check on the success counter provided an approximate finishing position of 130th, which wasn’t too shabby, with its accompanying prompt to log back in on the tenth of August serving as a further reminder they would by then be in Budapest.
By the time Anne had clocked off from her rescue reporting shift for the day at 12.51pm, announcing the last Wild Boar’s release, along with his Coach, Stuart had spent a further hour reflecting on their latest ‘Challenge’ success.
This clue had initially looked innocuous, but subsequently proven to be one of the most complex yet to solve. There had been a greater depth to it than the clues they had experienced to date, and Stuart now suspected that the site’s previous exhortation to ‘expect changes’ may have been the harbinger of a worrying new trend.
If this assumption of added complexity were to prove correct, he reflected, then, as David McComb had once suggested, “nothing good is going to come of this!”
Stuart couldn’t be sure if they had just been lucky in using his musical theory (he had certainly been fortunate with his choice of ‘venue listing’ website) or whether his wild hypothesis had just been further vindicated. If so, might this provide an ongoing key? Only time would tell. For the moment all they could do was chalk this morning up as an overwhelming success, for both them and the Wild Boars.
“They’ve all been invited to the World Cup final now,” Anne added, closing off her final update.
“Wow, that’s brilliant. When I was thirteen,” a prematurely wizened Joe responded, “I’d have happily swopped eighteen days in a cave for that!”
###
(‘Track 13’ will follow on 11th March at 10am. In the meantime, it’s always good to get reader feedback, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 12’)