*Track 16 (continued)

After his e-mail had been successfully distributed (without any technical hitch), and the ‘Challenge 58’ text remotely digested, Joe was the first to break the WhatsApp linked silence, “we only need to make the top 80% this time, that’s a lot better.”

While proportionately accurate, this still meant there were just eighty places available, in competition with a growing hardcore of persistent ‘Challengers’. As they had pre-agreed therefore Stuart dispensed with any niceties and plunged straight into his assumed summation of their task, and an allotment of responsibilities, “this looks to me like a three-part ‘Challenge’. First, we need to solve the nine clues, to find three-letter abbreviations or acronyms. Second, we will have to rearrange those into three nine letter words or phrases, with the ‘signing up’ line giving clues as to what we’re looking for. And last, something ‘in the midst’ of those should then give us some sort of award. I’m hazier on how that bit will work, but we can worry about that later.”

“Anybody disagree?” he enquired, more to take a breather after what had felt like a lengthy tirade than from any genuine expectation he might receive a contrary view.

The other call participants were probably the four likeliest people in the world, in any other scenario, to dispute any proposal Stuart put forward; but here, for the moment, they seemed to have willingly accepted a support role. Like worker bees ready to contribute to the collective good. They all stayed silent, awaiting further instruction.

“OK, let’s see how quickly we can solve the nine clues. Anne and I will take the first three lines, Charlie you try the next two, starting with the ‘state provision’ one, that gives Ed ‘Cairo and cave dwellers’, leaving Joe the bottom two. Shout out as soon as you’ve got one. We might not need all nine before moving on to step two.”

Initially this formed the strangest conference call Stuart had ever attended. Just the perceived hum of a set of fully engaged, geographically dispersed minds.

Encouragingly this silence soon started to be punctuated by a series of successful pronouncements. While everybody had accepted collective endeavour was paramount, there had still been a perceptible, if unstated, desire to be the first to come up with an answer.

They all realised Ed would, later, be laying claim to that title after he was the first out of the blocks. “It’s all down to the quality of your search construction,” he started, but the others allowed his boast to pass unchallenged as he quickly followed it up with, “there’s an aquatic salamander, found in the caves of the Slovenian Karst, called an Olm. So, OLM must be the answer to number seven.”

Charlie, not convincingly suppressing his obvious frustration at finishing such a marginal second, immediately added, “and it has to be STO for number four. It’s the commonly used abbreviation for Statoil, the Norwegian state-owned energy provider. Their HQ’s in Stavanger.”

Stuart’s unscientific, randomised distribution of the clues seemed to be working out swimmingly as Joe chipped in with a third straight sequential solution. “I’ve got eight. I realised, with Boston, the clue must be talking about American cities not British ones. So I looked up the US work permit. It’s called an employment authorisation document, or an EAD card for short.” He was unable to resist following this up with, “so what about you guys Dad? You need to be keeping up with the rest of us!”

Fortunately, Stuart was able to avoid any ignominy of failing leadership by adding a fourth solution, “well, as Mum spotted, an olfactory infection would be treated by an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. Add that to the talking trees from ‘Lord of the Rings’ and number three has to be ENT.” Four successes within the first quarter of an hour was brilliant progress, but not yet enough to move on to the second stage. So Stuart added a rallying call, “great start guys, but we need a few more yet. Keep ‘em coming!”

Having each solved their easiest clue, and perhaps finding themselves a little perplexed by what remained, the call then started to reverberate with cross-party alliances. First Ed, who had been learning to speak German for longer than Stuart could remember, clearly fancied his chances more with Charlie’s second clue than his own. “A precursor’s a vorlaufer in German,” he started, although they all suspected he had needed Google Translate to establish this (which frankly was of no use anyway).

Astoundingly though, this uninvited incursion onto his territory, and a perceived need to defend against it, somehow shocked Charlie into looking at his second clue afresh, in a more contrary manner. “What if an incision’s a slit,” he said, sounding like he was surprising himself with where his enquiry might be heading, “that could mean a member of The Slits. Didn’t they have a German singer?”

“Ari Up,” Ed jumped in, annoyingly beating Stuart to the answer, “and ARI could definitely be a Germanic precursor to an Up Slit.” Stuart allowed himself a brief smile, contemplating Ed and Charlie’s inevitable dispute afterwards about who had actually solved clue five, only to find his reflective pause interrupted by Joe, who had also jumped across an allotted divide to tackle one of his and Anne’s clues.

“Do you get a red moon with a lunar eclipse?” he asked, in open forum, and Ed immediately clarified that you did. None of them thought astronomy was one of his areas of specialist knowledge but, given he was the nearest thing they had to a scientist, they accepted his word. “In that case,” Joe continued, “number two must be TLE. I searched moon and added those dates. There was a UK Total Lunar Eclipse on both. There have been loads since though, don’t know why they chose such old ones.”

Meanwhile Anne had clearly been considering some ‘out of area’ action of her own, though typically she was more polite about it than the guys had been. “Ed, I’ve been thinking,” she started, “when we’ve had place names in these clues before the answers are often transport related. The airline code for Egypt Air is MSR, and their national railway service is abbreviated ENR. Can you link either of those to Norwich?”

Stuart later suspected that Anne had already completed this next step, but wanted to allow Ed the opportunity to discover the now defunct East Norfolk Railway company, which he soon did. This meant ENR was nailed on as their solution to number six.

All equally stuck in solving the two remaining clues, they tentatively agreed to try moving on to stage two. Could they make anything of the seven already sorted?

For consistency Stuart got them all to write these out in the order they had been solved: OLM, STO, EAD, ENT, ARI, TLE, and ENR. “Remember guys,” he said, prompting himself as much as the others, “we need to put these together into three nine-letter words. With ‘signing up Alex’s tutor for Ian’s group’ being the overall clue.”

“How about Aristotle?” Ed responded, without missing a beat, “it’s just jumped out at me!” An internet revelation that the great philosopher had (amongst many other pupils) taught Alexander the Great seemed to put this beyond doubt.

It was still only 9.30am (in the UK at least) and they had already made an inroad into part two. This left them with OLM, EAD, ENT, ENR, and two unknowns.

This shortened list, allied to a stroke of luck (that it required neither of the unsolved clues), allowed Anne to make another breakthrough. “How about enrolment?” she asked, “that would fit OK for ‘signing up’.” Collectively they agreed to run with this, which left them with EAD and two unanswered clues to make a third nine-letter word.

Dividing, in order to conquer (with Caesar entering the Greco-Roman ring), they agreed that their three remote contributors should refocus on re-inspecting the last two clues, while Stuart and Anne used a crossword solver website to come up with a list of all possible nine-letter words that contained EAD at the beginning, middle or end.

By 9.45am they had prepared (and emailed out) a hopefully exhaustive list, containing twenty-five options: beheading, rereading, spreaders, spreading, threading, toreadors, arrowhead, beachhead, bedspread, blackhead, blockhead, braindead, cheerlead, cornbread, crackhead, flatbread, Hampstead, homestead, outspread, proofread, Radiohead, roundhead, spearhead, trailhead, and whitehead.

While Ed’s immediate reaction was a disparaging, “might’ve known fucking Thom Yorke would worm his way in somehow,” Charlie had employed a similarly musical approach, but to more productive effect.

“I think I’ve got it,” he exclaimed, just minutes after receiving the list, “if Ian’s group means Ian Dury’s band, then Blockhead fits perfectly.” Nobody could dispute Charlie’s logic, and they agreed it was now supportable to park any further consideration of how the two remaining clues led to BLO and CKH, and move straight to stage three.

“Aristotle, enrolment and Blockhead,” Stuart restated their three solutions. “If the ‘midst’ reference literally means the middle that gives us T, L, and K. Can anybody think of an order you can put those in that gives an abbreviation for an award?”

At which point Joe surprised them all by declaring, “you’re wrong Dad. We’ve been working in threes all the way. If you just use the middle set of letters from each of these, that gives us STO, OLM and CKH. It’s easy to see what that can spell!”

“STOCKHOLM,” Ed answered, “and isn’t that where they give out the Nobel prizes?”

Stuart had always thought it was Oslo, but it turned out that was just the Peace prize. The rest are all presented in Stockholm, which, after a short debate, they all agreed to enter, successfully, as their solution at just after 9.53am.

“Collectively, we’ve just become a ‘Super Challenger’,” Stuart informed his team, after a log off/on established they had secured a top twenty finish. “I’ve just checked next month’s date,” he continued, “Joe will be home by then, but it’s on a Monday. We need to keep this going though. How are you guys fixed for throwing a sicky?”

“Should be able to organise my diary around it,” Charlie responded, which, given how flexible his working day seemed to have latterly become, sounded more than feasible.

Ed clearly didn’t want to miss out on the puzzle party either, “go on then,” he added, “can’t have you floundering in the dark without me,” before finishing off with an unexpected concession, “I must say Stu, thought you were talking bollocks with your musical guff. But this one needed us to know about The Slits and The Blockheads. There’s definitely something there, and it revolves around a certain type of music.”

“It’s our era as well,” observed Charlie, picking up the theme, “and like Joe asked earlier, why use Lunar Eclipses from 2007 and 2008 when we’ve had so many since?”

It seemed his two friends had moved beyond ‘Challenge’ intrigue, and were fast approaching Stuart’s level of obsession. There might be no need to book the Albert Hall just yet, but it looked as if their onward assault on ‘Challenge 69’s final eighty had officially become a group commitment.

They would need a band name though. Maybe The Five Degrees of Separation!

###

(‘Track 17’ will follow on 13th May at 9am. In the meantime, it’s great to get reader feedback, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 16’)