*Track 17 (continued)
Ed immediately set the competitive agenda, with a timetable attached, “I’ve got a conference call at eleven,” he opened up, “a proper one. That gives us two hours, let’s get it sorted by then.”
“Come on then Stu,” Charlie continued, satirically fulfilling his allotted role perfectly by switching into full consultative mode, “given we’re on a tight timescale, let’s have your elevator pitch.”
Knowing they had all studied his pre-distributed summary of ‘Challenge 15’ (to which this was the expected variant) allowed Stuart to major on the perceived differences. “It looks like we need to find countries this time, not cities, using their last letters rather than the first. I presume these need rearranging in order of days, not months, but it’s odd there are nine. I also suspect the second half of each line gives the clue for the days, because I think the first part, the colours, will lead us to the countries,” at which point he hesitated, anticipating a contribution from close at hand which duly arrived.
“Definitely Dad,” Joe jumped in enthusiastically, “flying colours must mean flags. We just need to work out which flags are these colours.” This was a subject Joe had always been fascinated by; he could name more flags, on sight, than anybody Stuart had ever known, and was clearly intent on taking personal charge of this stream of the latest ‘Challenge’. “I’ll start work on that straight away,” he stated assumptively.
“I didn’t know we had a vexillologist in our midst,” joked Ed, demonstrating he knew more about trivia than tridents, “but Joe sounds confident. How about you guys work together on the flags and countries, while Charlie and I try sorting out the days?”
“Sounds good,” Charlie agreed, “but let’s drop off to do it, it’ll be less disruptive. I’ll call you direct Ed. We’ll dial back in once we’ve got something.”
Stuart noticed the subtle shift in group dynamics, nobody was waiting around to be given a job this month. Happy with these suggested arrangements, he wished the remote team good luck as they dialled off, and turned to Anne and Joe to ask, “so what’s the best way to sort these flags then?” only to find them both ahead of him.
Anne had already left and returned with a well-thumbed copy of the ‘Pocket Guide to Flags’ which, despite being way too large for any reasonable pocket, had been one of the only books (alongside the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ and a David Beckham annual) they had ever proven able to get Joe to show more than a passing interest in. “I thought this might be useful,” she declared.
“It’ll be great for double checking Mum, but we need a way to source flags by their colours first,” Joe responded, immediately proposing a solution to his own problem. “I’ve searched for websites and Wikimedia Commons looks the best bet. If we use this to investigate three sets of colours each we should be finished in a few minutes.” At just five past the hour, Stuart was hugely impressed, and not a little proud, with the speed and efficiency of Joe’s strategising. They pushed onwards as he had suggested.
In practice Joe was on such a roll, so buoyed by his beloved flags taking centre stage, he had completed five colour categories by the time Anne and Stuart had done two each. He then collated all nine sets of results onto one single list (highlighting their countries’ ‘last letter’ options) and had already emailed this out to Charlie and Ed before they dialled back in at 9.30am:
~
Yellow & Blue (4)
Kazakhstan, Sweden, Ukraine, or Palau
= N, E, or U
~
Orange, White & Green (3)
Ivory Coast, Republic of Ireland, or Niger
= T, D, or R
~
Green, White & Blue (1)
Sierra Leone
= E
~
Blue & White (6)
Finland, Greece, Honduras, Israel, Micronesia, or Somalia
= D, E, S, L, or A
~
Green, Yellow & Blue (3)
Gabon, Rwanda, or St Vincent & Grenadines
= N, A, or S
~
Red, White & Green (11)
Algeria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Burundi, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Lebanon, Madagascar, Maldives, or Oman
= A, S, I, Y, N, or R
~
Red & Yellow (4)
Macedonia, Vietnam, China, or Kyrgyzstan
= A, M, or N
~
Red, White, Yellow & Black (4)
Brunei, East Timor, Egypt, or Uganda
= I, R, T, or A
~
Red, White, Green & Black (10)
Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Syria, Kuwait, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, or Jordan
= Q, N, A, T, E, or S
~
“Great work on the flags Joe,” Charlie commented, as he rejoined the call. Anne and Stuart may perhaps have felt a bit slighted by this, but had to admit Charlie had properly placed credit where credit was due.
“We’ve got seven of the days sorted,” Ed then updated them, “but we’re stuck on the last two. They’re song titles, so we’re back to the ‘not-so-secret’ theme. Got to admit it was Charlie who cracked the code. He realised if it was music, as we suspected, then nobody ever says Reg without meaning Elton John. So ‘Barney time for Reg’ becomes ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’.
“Ed got the next one though,” Charlie took over, “I had no idea Lou Reed was christened Lewis, but that gave us the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ for the third clue. It would waste time going through all the explanations, but I’ve emailed you everything we’ve got,” which Stuart quickly opened:
Michael = Mick Jagger = The Rolling Stones: Ruby Tuesday
???
Lewis = Lou Reed = The Velvet Underground: Sunday Morning
Paul and Arthur = Simon and Garfunkel: Wednesday Morning 3am
Robert = Bob Geldof = The Boomtown Rats: I Don’t Like Mondays
Bob = Robert Smith = The Cure: Friday I’m in Love
Reg = Reg Dwight = Elton John: Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
???
Susanna = Susanna Hoffs = The Bangles: Manic Monday
“Pretty good guys,” Stuart declared, “so we’ve got two Mondays. That helps out with there being nine in total. How do we put these in order?”
“We’ve already discussed that,” added Ed encouragingly, “according to the internet different places regard Sunday or Monday as the start of the week, but you’ve always maintained these ‘Challenges’ have a UK bias, and we start with Monday. That would mean we’re missing another Tuesday, and a Thursday.”
“I’ve no idea about the arachnid one,” Stuart conceded, “but there aren’t many famous Brians in rock. The only ones I know are Ferry, May, Eno, and Molko. How about we search all of them, with Roxy Music, Queen, and Placebo, alongside Tuesday and Thursday, and see what we can find?”
Charlie got there first. “Brian Eno’s got a song called ‘Thursday Afternoon’,” he declared, “and it’s an hour long, so that fits with the ‘lengthy pm shift’ bit of the clue.”
This gave them a fully reworked order, albeit with four possible alternatives (to cover the repeated days), and Joe, who had proactively jumped the gun while the others were working on the missing answers, quickly sent another email setting out the potential order structures for the final ‘Challenge’ solution:
NAS - NEU - DESLA - TDR - ASIYNR - AMN - E - QNATES - IRTA
or
QNATES - IRTA - DESLA - TDR - ASIYNR - AMN - E - NAS - NEU
or
NAS - IRTA - DESLA - TDR - ASIYNR - AMN - E - QNATES - NEU
or
QNATES - NEU - DESLA - TDR - ASIYNR - AMN - E - NAS - IRTA
“Bloody hell,” Stuart exclaimed, realising this outburst grossly understated his true level of consternation, “all we definitely know is it has an E at the seventh letter. There are a shed load of possibilities for everything else. I was worried earlier I couldn’t see how this was more complicated than ‘Challenge 15’, but I can now.”
Charlie had already done the maths, though his statistical clarity didn’t really help matters, “there are 58,320 options to be precise, and that’s for each of the four lists. Added together we’ve got almost a quarter of a million options.”
“We need another internet cheat,” Joe sighed, “badly!”
“Either that or we could just try solving the clue,” Anne suggested, befuddled as ever by all the mathematical permutations being bandied around, “has anybody got any ideas on something to ‘conclude their last wishes’?
It was a good point, but at a quarter to ten, with no immediate revelation forthcoming, they had to fall back on process. Joe had never actually paused, and had a suggestion, “I’ve plugged all thirty-four letters into an anagram solving site, boulter.com. It gives us 1,324 nine-letter words. That’s still a lot, but it’s better than a quarter of a million. I’ve cut and pasted the file onto an email.”
“We know some other things about the order though don’t we,” added Ed, “was there a way to refine your search?”, but Joe had to concede there had been nothing obvious.
Stuart decided it was time to divide responsibilities again. “Let’s do this in parallel,” he suggested, “Ed, you revisit Joe’s search, try some different sites, see if you can find one with a sharper focus. The rest of us will start working through Joe’s list. As a start, we know we only need to look at words beginning with an N, A, S, Q, T, or E.”
This reduced their potential pool of solutions again to 622 possible words, split as follows: 146 starting with A, 59 with E, 30 with N, 36 with Q, 222 with S, and 129 with T. “That’s only about 150 each,” Joe calculated, “sounds more manageable.”
“Agreed,” said Stuart, “you take the As Joe, Charlie the Ns and Ts, and Anne and I will do the rest. Work out your own plan, but remember, like Ed said, there is more stuff we can use as filters, for example it must have an E at the seventh letter.”
After another twenty minutes it was Charlie, appropriately enough, who found their golden ticket. “ I think I’ve got it,” he announced, just as the others were beginning to despair of the process.
Stuart had to fight his impatience however, as his friend seemed compelled to walk them through his entire methodology rather than jumping straight to the solution. On the presumption that Charlie’s confident claim of victory ultimately proved correct though, Stuart reasoned, another couple of minutes hopefully wouldn’t kill them.
“Of my 129 Ts,” Charlie started, “only thirty-nine had an E in seventh place,” (“let’s hope there aren’t thirty-nine steps,” thought Stuart)
“Of which just fifteen have a T, D, or R in fourth,”
“Ten of which have an A, M, or N in sixth place,” (“just get to the effing answer.”)
“But only four of those have a D, E, S, L, or A in third: tastiness, teariness, testament, and testiness,” (“you’re definitely testing me!”)
“And it can’t end in an S, which just leaves us with testament. As in ‘last will and testament’, which definitely fits the ‘last wishes’ clue.” (“Hallelujah!”)
“Brilliant,” Stuart exclaimed. “That’s the test-ah-meant,” he continued, in a truly dreadful Irish accent, latterly realising that only Charlie had any chance of getting his Andy White lyrical reference (from ‘Religious Persuasion’) anyway.
Albeit with more prevarication than necessary, Charlie had come up trumps. Stuart entered TESTAMENT as their answer without further hesitation and, importantly, without disappointment. By 10.05am he was able to confirm (and communicate) that they had again safely qualified in mid-table obscurity, in around thirtieth place.
“It’s still ages until my conference call,” Ed complained, “what’re we gonna do now?”
Once the others had departed, Stuart stayed on the line for a chat with Charlie, whose calendar commitments definitely seemed less pressing these days. After they had retrospectively solved the missing clue (by establishing that Spider Stacey had taken over The Pogues’ vocal duties on ‘Tuesday Morning’) Charlie made an unexpected, unprompted observation, “these clues never seem meant for the world as we know it today, do they? It always feels like they were designed to take days of brain trawling, and soul searching, not be knocked off in an hour or so on the internet like we’re doing.”
Stuart was confident he had never shared this ‘time-shift’ idea with Charlie. Surely his friend, independently, coming to such an identical conclusion must qualify as some form of collaborative affirmation of his theory.
There was now a growing body of evidence that ‘Challenge 69’ was both ‘musically orientated’ and ‘out of its time’. Perhaps some analytical amalgamation of those two factors might, like Aristotle’s parts, add up to a stronger whole?
###
(‘Track 18’ will follow on 27th May at 9am. In the meantime, it’s always good to get reader feedback, so please consider adding a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 17’)