*Track 18 (continued)

Stuart’s optimistic mindset was going to be needed. As he had predicted, the latest ‘Challenge’ included the return of jeopardy, this time relabelled as ‘unavoidable risk’, making its expected return after eleven months (as a counterpoint to ‘Challenge 17’).

“Hope you’re all feeling lucky,” he started, outwardly expressing his inward reaction, “looks like we’ll end up with three equally possible solutions, with just two chances to hit the right one.”

“If it’s totally random that could get rid of twenty people anyway though,” added Joe, “we just need to hope we’re not one of them. None of us believe in divine help though.”

“No,” Stuart agreed, “and that’s why I’ve brought along a new tool today,” taking a die from his pocket, and rolling it across the office desk.

“You’re not really going to use dice are you?” said Anne, not a born gambler, with a look of horror on her face, “leave everything to chance after all our hard work.”

“In the absence of anything more concrete, yes,” Stuart reasoned, “there will be no point agonising for ages over an impossible decision, I may as well be ‘The Dice Man’! Anyway, that’s jumping the gun, we need to solve the clue first, find our three options. Anybody got any suggestions?”

“The long paragraph in the clue’s really odd,” observed Charlie, “has anybody used the word ‘parlour’ since the ‘60s? It follows the pattern of the other one you sent us though. I presume we need to find three types of devotion, hidden in the weird text?”

“Sort of, but I’m not totally convinced,” replied Stuart, “wouldn’t that be missing our added layer of complexity?”

His time spent reinvestigating the previous clues, searching out musical references and timeliness oddities, had also served a further purpose. Stuart felt he now had a better, more informed perspective on the clue setter’s preferred methodology for trying to confuse the ‘Challengers’. He had noted how this often centred around words having multiple meanings.

Fittingly, this time, it was the word ‘alternative’ itself that Stuart thought looked suspicious. “What if ‘alternative’ doesn’t just mean we have to find three different types of devotion,” he explained, “but also suggests we need to use every second letter to uncover them? That would make the clue way more complicated.”

“Shouldn’t that be alternate though, rather than alternative?” asked Anne, always a stickler for grammatical correctness.

“Strictly yes,” Stuart agreed, “but it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve hung a bit loose with language. My instinct is there has to be a complication, and this feels the most likely one.”

“We could try both fairly easily,” suggested Charlie, obviously deciding the time had arrived for less discussion and more action, “how about I work through the alternate letters starting with M, one of you takes the second set, starting with Y, and the two people left can use the full text, which is twice as long, just in case Stuart’s talking bollocks!”

As ever, Joe’s keyboard dexterity delivered some astoundingly quick outputs. Within a minute or two he had split and redistributed the text, divided into Charlie’s two proposed, alternate subdivisions:

Firstly, MFTEWSOAOISRNERNETETDIOSOSOLAWYBWRHSIOTELVRYIGIEFADTRHCMSNOORALUSTDWOFRNAYIAGFERSORRSADRMSSOLPOPRAYERLTRUTSOGSOREUAISAMNSEPOPNUHSOMSIN - which, as suggested, Charlie took charge of,

And secondly, YAHRANFNFNUACOIVSMNAVSRYUHUDLASEAYEADFHCEELDSUSDRUSEWOOEITYUPRORISONFEIGCNCLITANYUTUTNPOIEYULRSEMNYASAEJSALNAYURGLRNTLETKETPIGPICMISO - which the home-based section of the team decided to allot to Stuart.

In theory, Anne and Joe’s role was to work through the original text, but their enthusiasm for this task didn’t get off to the most productive of starts once Joe had spotted something that stood out from Charlie’s letter set.

“I think Dad’s right,” he said, “isn’t that PRAYER about three quarters of the way through Charlie’s list?”

This discovery gave Stuart and Charlie some much needed encouragement that they were on the right track and with a redoubled effort, by twenty-five past the hour, they had each completed a list of ‘definite’ and ‘possible’ words.

Even after Stuart had triumphantly shouted out, “LITANY,” as he was halfway through, he still worked his way to the end.

Charlie’s completed list of options was: tew? ern, net, tet? law, fad, noor? oral, nay, agfer? sad, sol, pop, PRAYER, ayer? rut, ruts, sore, ore, sam? pop, and sin.

And Stuart’s read: ran, an, hud? lase? eel, sus, ruse, druse? use, sew, woo, pro, orison? LITANY, tan, any, tut, aln? nay, let, pig, and miso?

“So, we’ve got two definites,” Anne summarised, “PRAYER and LITANY, and there are only three other possible words with more than four letters. Has anybody looked up agfer, druse, or orison yet?”

“An ORISON is a Middle English word, with French origins, for a prayer,” Joe recited, courtesy of Google, “I think that means we’ve got our three solutions.”

“Which, unfortunately, is the point where our trouble starts,” Charlie reminded them all. “Have you got your dice ready Stu?”

“There’s no time to hang about,” Stuart replied, having quickly checked their competitors’ progress with a log off/on, “there are twelve people already through, just twenty-eight places left and, unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing else in the clue to tell us which of these three is the correct answer? I wish they had another counter showing how many people have already failed.”

There was no answer forthcoming to Stuart’s request for assistance on which solution to choose, nor any new suggestion as to how. He had known there wouldn’t be, and he entirely understood why. To whatever extent they were now tackling these clues as a team exercise, it remained an unspoken truth that ‘Challenge 69’ would, in the end, be regarded as Stuart’s baby. Whenever a choice needed to be made that could result in their ultimate failure the others were always, understandably, going to leave the final decision with him. At least without Ed on the call they were!

This realisation stirred Stuart into no-longer-avoidable action. Having anticipated this moment arriving he had a pre-determined plan ready for implementation. “Charlie, give me two numbers between one and six,” he requested, as he tossed his die in the air and re-caught it.

“Two and five,” his friend reluctantly replied, “are you really doing this?”

Stuart ignored his plea and turned to Joe, “that leaves you with four numbers, can you pick two please?” He had deliberately left Anne unasked, knowing she would be the one who felt most guilty, however illogically, if her random choice of a number subsequently proved disastrous.

“One and three,” Joe replied, staring at Stuart with that unwilling yet fascinated look usually reserved for car crashes you pass on the opposite carriageway.

“OK,” Stuart concluded, slipping into magician mode, “I’ve already written down our three solutions in an order none of you could have known. So your choices have given us a two or a five for LITANY, a one or a three for ORISON, leaving a four or six for PRAYER. I guess, like Julius Caesar said, it’s time to, “let the die be cast.” He could sense their collective intake of breath, with a virtual contribution from Charlie, as he set his die rolling across the desk …

… only for them to exhale again as Stuart unexpectedly snatched it up before it had completed its final tumble, before revealing its fateful number. “You don’t wanna do it like that!” he exclaimed, simultaneously both amused and ashamed with his Harry Enfield impression, “you didn’t really believe I’d turned into ‘The Dice Man’ did you? But the process has served its purpose.”

As he had anticipated, it was Joe who got there first, “OK, it’s like that coin thing you’ve always told me about isn’t it? If I’m ever stuck between two difficult decisions, I should toss a coin to choose between them. Not to decide by how it lands, but because I can trust my judgement on what I really wanted to happen while the coin was in the air. Whichever way, in that moment of panic, I realise I want the coin to land, that’s the decision my heart is telling me is right.”

“Exactly grasshopper,” said Stuart proudly, although he realised he would need to explain his ‘70s ‘Kung Fu’ reference later, “and in the split second my die was rolling across the desk I knew what decision I need to take, and to stick by.”

“Go, on then,” Charlie prompted him. This must have been an even stranger scenario experienced remotely, but he sounded impatient to hear Stuart’s conclusion and the explanation behind it.

“There’s no deliberate clue as to which solution is correct, so the only option left is to try second guessing the clue setter’s mindset. My thinking is ORISON is way too obscure, it sounds like it has just been dug up to find another six-letter word for devotion. Plus, it doesn’t fit a musical theme. I doubt you would find it in any band name, song title, or lyric,” (a supposition he knew he would have to double check later, whatever the outcome).

“Sounds logical,” Anne replied, “but what about the other two.”

“If I’m right about ORISON then ultimately it won’t matter,” Stuart replied, “but my money’s on LITANY in first place. Just like ORISON’s too obscure, I think PRAYER might be too obvious, it would certainly feature in too many songs. But there’s only one way to find out.”

“You thought all of that, while a die was rolling across a table?” Anne laughed, trying to lighten the tension, “you’re demented.”

Whether her assessment was correct or not, Stuart was aware, in addition to optimism and self-contentedness he had also inherited his Dad’s decisiveness. Once a decision was made there was no point fretting over it further. Voicing his actions out loud, for Charlie’s benefit, Stuart entered LITANY in the solutions box and pressed Enter:

“Shit,” said Anne uncharacteristically, yet succinctly enough to make the outcome clear to Charlie without him being able to see the screen.

“Are you sticking to your guns then Stu?” Charlie enquired.

“Too right,” Stuart replied, “if we’re going down, we should do it all guns blazing.” Knowing if he stopped for a moment to reconsider he could end up in paralysed inaction, Stuart quickly entered his second-choice solution PRAYER and, having to force himself to keep his eyes on the screen, conscious Anne had already looked away, pressed Enter for the second and possibly last time.

On this occasion it would have been Joe’s uncontrolled cheer that updated Charlie on the stress relieving outcome.

They had survived again, reaching ‘Challenge 69’s ‘final forty’ halfway through the qualifier count, but by the skin of their teeth. Less than an hour later Stuart tracked the full quota being filled. The mathematical chance of a randomised ‘excess elimination’ of ‘Challengers’ hadn’t come to fruition, which he suspected showed he hadn’t been the only one to reach the same conclusion regarding ORISON’s obscurity.

If his timetabling estimation proved correct there were now only two or three ‘Challenges’ remaining. Given today’s latest success they could now approach the competition’s pointy end with confidence. Drawing one final bucket from his earlier well of Oberst ordained optimism, Stuart was able to reflect on how, sometimes, the most improbable of events can still come to pass.

If Bright Eyes could manage to record a highly unlikely Billboard number one with ‘Lua’, he thought, then what was to prevent them (to use another ‘out of time’ phrase) from seeing off the ‘two score’ of remaining ‘Challengers’ to reach the end. To win that long promised prize ‘with no likeness’.

###

(‘Track 19’ will follow on 10th June at 9am. In the meantime, it’s good to get reader feedback, so please add a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 18’)