*Track 14 (continued)
As Stuart had partly anticipated, a repeat visit Word Search puzzle appeared, no doubt with a new element of added complication.
It was as if the first eleven ‘Challenges’ had merely been a dress rehearsal and they had now moved on to the real performance. If Stuart’s assertion (and analogy) were correct, he quickly calculated, then the whole ‘season’ would have eight more months to run, with its final curtain due to fall in May 2019. A further hundred cast members were set to be axed from the performance again this month though, so if Stuart wanted to avoid that fate, if he planned on reaching the finale, he needed to get going.
The beauty of this repeating ‘Challenge’ pattern was that it avoided any initial need to spend time on tactical planning. Whatever additional complexity this clue was going to throw up, his first task would still be to work through the Word Search, in a logical pattern, to uncover all its possible words. In this instance, presumably, to reveal writers and artists. If these turned out to be ‘musical artists’ then Charlie’s ‘flimsy straws’ might just be starting to strengthen up again.
Familiar with the process involved, it took Stuart just twenty minutes to come up with an A-list of sixty-two possible outcomes, with a few obvious standouts for writers and artists. Searching for names (surnames he presumed) unavoidably broadened the scope of potential answers though, so he also kept a parallel B-list of options that sounded like they could potentially be writers or artists (whose work he wasn’t familiar with); Simec, Brei, Aniq, and Krol. Having run Amazon searches on each of these however, filtered for both ‘Books’ and ‘CDs & Vinyl’, they had all drawn a blank.
Stuart’s longer A-list still included lots of three letter words, which seemed unlikely surname candidates, so he focused attention on the remaining twenty-three: The Band, Klein, Merchant, Cohen, Urso, Vite, Item, Pail, Dick, Dickens, Bala, Bowie, Sago, Leap, Pest, Orwell, Well, Shake, Hake, Spear, Pear, Shakespeare, and Wino.
Having downsized his analysis to a manageable level, Stuart next decided to repeat his earlier Amazon search parameters for each remaining option (at least those not obviously writers or artists), not wanting to miss anything through cultural ignorance.
By 10.50am he had a fully researched and encouraging shortlist of four writers and four artists (who were indeed musicians). He had discarded Wino last, a little reluctantly, having speculated that it could arguably be used as a generic term for either group!
Writers
Klein (an American author)
Dickens
Orwell
Shakespeare
Artists
The Band
Merchant (could it really be Natalie?)
Cohen
Bowie
Stuart was pleased with his initial progress (and how quickly it had been achieved), but understood that this was going to be the point where phase two’s added difficulty kicked in. The ‘Challenge 48’ clue only required two of the solutions from each category it seemed, before then seeking to establish the link between them, but which two?
He didn’t have time to calculate the maths involved (and Joe wasn’t around to do it for him) but there were clearly a lot of potential combinations. Which were the real clues, and which were simply red herrings? It felt like he had inadvertently gatecrashed one of those Word Wall conundrum rounds from ‘Only Connect’.
To uncover the correct link or, more importantly, to be one of the first two hundred ‘Challengers’ to do so, was going to require Stuart to make some smart presumptions over which writers and artists it was best to prioritise, and to trust (or more accurately hope) that the choices he made turned out to be the right ones.
The first option that had struck him, reading through these lists, had been Bowie’s ‘1984’, a song obviously based on Orwell’s novel, but he hadn’t been able to establish any follow-on link to the remaining six (which was always going to be a historical long shot he guessed, for either Shakespeare or Dickens).
This pre-emptive false start had simply reinforced Stuart’s conviction that a more educated filtering process was going to be the solutionising order of the day.
His phone pinged. Anne had clearly sneaked some time at work to dash off a quick message, “how’s it going, anything I can do to help?” Pleased to receive her moral support at least, he quickly replied, “not yet, good progress, keep you posted.”
From his writers list, Stuart decided to prioritise Shakespeare and Orwell, keeping some annotated notes on the logic he had employed in case it needed revisiting:
- Shakespeare and Dickens seem the most obvious candidates, but feels unlikely to be both,
- Go with Shakespeare, using the ‘diagonally upwards is hardest to find’ argument, and
- Klein seems too obscure (needed to look her up), so better to run with Orwell.
While for the artists he settled (with a little less conviction) on Cohen and The Band:
- Bowie and Cohen the standout selections, but both again seems counterintuitive,
- Of the two, Cohen’s work is likely to have more literary links, and
- Prioritise The Band rather than Merchant, as it would appear odd to include a two-word solution in the search grid unless necessary.
The logical next step was to enter all four of his selections (using their full names) into one single Google search, to see what it returned: William Shakespeare, George Orwell, Leonard Cohen, and The Band. Nothing conclusive was the immediate answer.
Unperturbed by this setback (it had probably been too much to ask), Stuart decided to try replicating his internet enquiry for each of the four possible writer/artist pairings (using his speculatively filtered ‘preferred’ list), hoping that one of these returns could then be reworked backwards to link up with the remaining pair:
Shakespeare/Cohen: There was an article which claimed Cohen’s ‘The Old Revolution’ was based, at least in part, on ‘Hamlet’,
Orwell/Cohen: A reviewer of Leonard’s album ‘You Want it Darker’ had maintained it drew inspiration from Orwell. This seemed way too tenuous,
Shakespeare/The Band: As well as the ‘Hamlet’ character there’s a Band song called ‘Ophelia’ (from their 1975 album ‘Northern Lights, Southern Cross’), and,
Orwell/The Band: Robbie Robertson (from The Band) once made a solo album based around ‘Animal Farm’.
Orwell/Cohen could probably be eliminated then, but the other three pairs had each produced one strong connection: ‘Hamlet’, ‘Ophelia’, and ‘Animal Farm’, all worthy of further exploration. With seventy-five minutes elapsed, and eighty-four Challengers already successful (an ironic Orwellian twist!), Stuart couldn’t afford to delay.
As he was starting to plan out his next steps though, it unexpectedly hit him, or rather she did! Natalie Merchant.
It wasn’t on any album Stuart owned, and he couldn’t fully explain how or why it had suddenly come to him, but he felt certain Merchant had a song called ‘Ophelia’. Spotify quickly confirmed that she did, it was the title track of her 1998 solo album.
He now had three solid links for Ophelia; Shakespeare, The Band, and Natalie Merchant. All he needed was a second writer. George Orwell drew a stubborn blank, and despite Stuart’s best efforts he couldn’t track down a single Dickens’ character who shared the name either. All of which, by default (or possibly desperation) led him back to Lisa Klein. Had he been too hasty ruling her out earlier on the grounds of obscurity?
He had. Klein (coincidentally, Stuart found, from Columbus, Ohio) released a novel titled ‘Ophelia’ in 2006. A reimagining of the life of The Bard’s original character.
“Two writers, two artists, but only one link,” was how the clue read, which surely now indisputably pointed to OPHELIA. Stuart was sufficiently convinced to risk one of his precious two ‘lives’ and, just before eleven-thirty, submitted this in the solution box.
He didn’t end up disappointed; either by the immediate congratulatory response or the subsequent establishment of their finishing position, at around 115th. “Not up to last month’s standard,” he said out loud, although Oscar (his only audience) appeared distinctly uninterested, “but none too shoddy for a solo effort.”
It seemed only right, afterwards, for Stuart to listen to the two ‘Ophelia’ songs that had just helped secure their passage into ‘Challenge 69’s final two hundred. The Band’s effort was some typical bar room blues, not really his cup of tea, while the Natalie Merchant version, despite those familiar sonorous tones, wasn’t her finest hour either.
It did contain one line however, about love at first sight, that served as a timely, if sentimental, prompt. He had promised to message Anne with the outcome.
###
(‘Track 15’ will follow on 8th April at 10am (an Easter edition!) In the meantime, I love getting reader feedback, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 14’)