*Track 15 (continued)
Stuart’s pre-briefing hadn’t been in vain. As he had suggested to his co-diners earlier today’s ‘Challenge’ seemed, as predicted, to be a knottier variation on the ‘numbers as letters’ quiz structure they had first encountered almost a year ago, back in November 2017. The one that had resulted in a pillow fight.
But the accompanying small-print detail also brought good reason, as Joe’s reaction eloquently pointed out, to be grateful they wouldn’t need to spend any significant time trying to fathom out the nature of the ‘Challenge’. “Bloody hell,” he exclaimed, noticeably tempering his language in front of his mother, “only one hundred places available. A fifty percent cut in one go. That’s brutal. We’d better get shifting.”
He was looking to Stuart for instructional guidance as he said this, an expectation Anne reinforced by asking, “what do you reckon Stuart, what’s our plan of attack?”
Having read the clue through twice (which didn’t take long), Stuart realised he had already formed an idea how this clue may have been ramped up for its encore appearance. Increasingly, he thought, these ‘Challenges’ required fundamental decisions to be made, sooner in the process, regarding the clue setter’s mindset, which then, right or wrong, drove the solution methods they chose to employ. So far, he comforted himself, he seemed to have made the right judgement calls, which to a large extent was why they were still in the game. As fearful as Stuart was of the swathing qualification cull Joe had accurately highlighted, now wasn’t the time to start losing his nerve.
Trusting to his instincts, Stuart summarised his initial thinking; “my gut feel is the code itself won’t be different. It will still be A = 1, B = 2 (like your sheets), but the big new problem here is that we don’t know where to start, or which way round to go. At least the overall clue that needs solving seems reasonably clear, we probably require a word or phrase that means ‘a fresh perspective’.”
“And depending on our starting point, and direction, that means the letters can change,” Anne continued, picking up on his theme. Stuart allowed himself a wry smile, heartened that she had remembered this conundrum, the same one he had struggled to explain, from first principles, last time it had appeared.
“No point debating how hard it is,” Joe intervened, pushing for practicality, “if there are eighteen possible starting numbers, and we can go round either way, that makes thirty-six different options. I suggest we pick six numbers each and work them through, both ways. Even if they take five minutes each, we can do that in an hour.”
Stuart was pleased with both the logic and positivity of Joe’s plan, adding just a single caveat to his support, “agreed, but I think there are only seventeen possible starting numbers. Don’t think it can start with a zero. Your plan sounds good though.”
While he was explaining his thoughts on the nought, he was struck by a further implication of its positioning. “The zero could easily be a word break,” he added, “like it was last time. Especially given the numbers either side of it. Neither thirty nor eighty make any sense as letters of the alphabet.”
Once again Stuart found himself impressed with how quickly Joe processed this information, and used it to suggest an updated recommendation on their optimum practical approach, “which means our most likely starting point, if the zero is a break, will be as far away from it as possible. We should start from the number one, towards the bottom right, that’s directly opposite, and then, if that’s no good, start working our way outwards from there.”
“Sounds perfect,” Stuart agreed, “let’s get going. You take the ‘1’ Joe, remember we need to go both ways. I’ll take the ‘5’ to its left, and Mum can take the ‘6’ to its right. It’s ten-past already, as Joe said earlier, let’s get shifting! From memory, before, it only took about three numbers to spot when these were spelling out nonsense words. If we are getting nowhere with a number we should give up quickly, and move on to the next one as a new starting point.”
As Stuart and Joe prepared to pitch straight in, their alphabetical ready reckoners already to hand, Anne unexpectedly interrupted their flow, suggesting a halt to proceedings, “whoa, hold on a moment. Isn’t there a smarter way we could try this?”
This wasn’t the first time Anne had attempted to halt a stampeding process, she had proposed something similar in Budapest. This probably explained the slightly embarrassed look the other two gave her as they waited for elaboration. “If Dad’s right about the clue,” she continued, “ then we are looking for two words that mean ‘a fresh perspective’. How about we look for alternative words for ‘fresh’ and ‘perspective’, there shouldn’t be that many. They would be simple to convert back into numbers, and then we can see if those sequences appear on the grid.”
“Genius Mum,” Joe spurted out, failing miserably to hide the tone of surprise in his voice. Stuart simply nodded assent. This was a great idea, and potentially a transformative time saver.
“Best not to put all our eggs in one basket though,” Joe warned, “what if we don’t come up with the right alternative word. I’ll carry on with the numbers, starting with the ‘1’ as we agreed, and work through them as quickly as I can. You two can try out Mum’s plan.”
Stuart took ‘fresh’, leaving Anne to pick up ‘perspective’, and they both went off in search of internet sourced synonyms.
“Given the limited set of numbers we’re working from,” Stuart suggested, “I suspect we can probably rule out anything longer than six or seven letters.”
Ten minutes later, at 11.25pm Hawaiian time, Joe, having already moved on to his fourth starting position (with no joy from the first three), allowed himself a pause to take a look at the alternative word options Stuart and Anne had each come up with:
Stuart’s FRESH list:
CRISP, GREEN, HOT, LATEST, MINT, MODERN, NEW, NOW, NOVEL, RAW, RECENT, and YOUNG.
Anne’s PERSPECTIVE list:
ANGLE, ASPECT, CONTEXT, HORIZON, MINDSET, OUTLOOK, SCENE, SLANT, VIEW, and VISTA.
“These look good,” said Joe, having somehow assumed the supervisory mantle, “if you both convert those into numbers, as quick as you can, I’ll crack on with my fourth try.”
It was a considerably easier process to go from letter to number, with none of the in-built ambiguity, and five minutes later Stuart, just beating Anne to the punch, was ready to present his fully translated list to ‘Captain Joe’:
FRESH
CRISP = 318919, GREEN = 7185514, HOT = 81520, LATEST = 1212051920, MINT = 1391420, MODERN = 1315451814, NEW = 14523, NOW = 141523, NOVEL = 141522512, RAW = 18123, RECENT = 185351420, and YOUNG = 251521147.
Having, in the interim, completed his fourth number, still unsuccessfully, Joe seamlessly switched streams, while maintaining full authority, “this shouldn’t take long. I’ll go clockwise, you go anti Dad, let’s see if we can find any of these?”
With Anne’s more methodical approach having completed her own list fractionally behind Stuart’s she found herself temporarily relegated to the solutioning sidelines.
It was surprisingly simple to rule out numbers that didn’t appear on the grid, and just as Stuart was about to exhaust all of his anti-clockwise options, starting to fear they may have chosen another dead end, there was a sudden triumphant shout from Joe.
“I’ve got one,” he beamed, “if you start from the number one, towards the bottom left, then you get 14523. That’s NEW!”
Excitedly, without drawing further breath, Joe jumped straight ahead to the natural next step, continuing, “so if the zero that follows NEW is a break, then we need a word from the other list that starts with an 8. Have you got one Mum?”
“I have. HORIZON starts with an 8,” Anne confirmed, looking pleased to have been called upon from the substitutes bench.
“And does it carry on from there 15, 18, 9, 26, 15, and 14?” Joe asked, as he completed the translation in real time, using Stuart’s much maligned crib sheet!
Both he and Stuart soon realised, from the broadening of Anne’s grin as Joe read out his list of numbers, that the sequence matched. There seemed little remaining doubt, NEW HORIZON must be the answer. “Mum comes up trumps!” Joe exclaimed.
It was still only 11.37pm as they successfully entered this as their solution. This meant Anne could get to bed much earlier than she had feared, and that Joe wouldn’t need to turn up for tomorrow’s match bleary eyed.
Their obligatory post solution progress-check confirmed that they had finished in around thirtieth position, a comfortable enough qualification mark but one that demonstrated, yet again, the stubborn rump of early responders. There was a hardcore of ‘Super Challengers’ they would eventually need to find some way to outwit, or outmanoeuvre, as the competition got ever tougher over the coming months.
Stuart allowed himself one final, celebratory, Kona beer after the others had retired, and reflected further on this month’s solution. It would wait until the morning now, but ‘New Horizon’ was an answer crying out to be Googled, to trace all its possible meanings and connections. Much like Pillow Fight (the solution from the first numbers ‘Challenge’) this wasn’t an entirely uncommon phrase, but it was still different enough from the other solutions to be similarly considered an outlier.
Remembering the surprising one-hundred or so song titles that Pillow Fight had uncovered, Stuart did allow himself a quick pre-bed Spotify search. There were again dozens of variations on ‘New Horizon’, though most of them (including songs by Echo & The Bunnymen and the Moody Blues) required a pluralising S at the end. One that patently hadn’t been there in the ‘Challenge’ solution.
This didn’t represent enough evidence yet to firm up on his much-proposed musical link, “but,” Stuart proclaimed, like some sad toast to an empty room (as he drained his glass), to paraphrase Babybird, “it feels like it might be coming back together.”
###
(‘Track 16’ will follow on 22nd April at 10am. In the meantime, it’s great to get reader feedback, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 15’)