*Track 20 (conclusion)

There was clearly no intent to make these clues any more complex to solve, every ounce of intrigue being left to sit entirely within the mechanics of their game strategy. As a result, it proved no harder to unveil today’s works and their authors:

• ‘The Light Pours Out of Me’ by Magazine,

• ‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik Ibsen, and

• ‘How I Wrote Elastic Man’ by The Fall.

“We’ve got a bloody playwright as well now,” Ed observed, “though I suppose Devoto always thought he should sit with the literary giants.”

“While Mark E Smith just did,” laughed Stuart. “On a less Morley tack, it looks like that makes today’s letter an E. Could have been more helpful. I spent some more time yesterday going through all of Joe’s 774 words again though, and I’m pretty confident there aren’t any other candidates we’ve missed.”

“We’re down to 226 word options if you add an E,” Joe confirmed, “but if you just work from our shortlist, that’s come down to Males, Omega and Teams from our ‘possibles’ list, plus Cream, Mecca and Mensa off the ‘unlikely’ one.”

“Surely those last three are more than unlikely,” chipped in Charlie, “and if we go by our rankings, then we’ve got Omega, followed by Males, with Teams last. How lucky are you feeling Stu?”

“Where are we with the Poker now Joe?” Stuart asked, mainly to give himself some more thinking time.

“I reckon this is like a pair of Jacks,” was Joe’s assessment, “we could still wait longer, for a better hand, but we might run out of chips. It’s probably time now to go ‘all in’.”

That was a lot easier to say, Stuart thought, if you weren’t the one who had invested well over a year building up such a big stack of expectation. But he knew that Joe was right. Another three ‘Challengers’ had ‘chanced their arm’ and gone through yesterday, and however gutted Stuart would feel if he was eliminated now, entering an incorrect answer, it was nothing to how pissed off he would be if they simply prevaricated until it was too late.

“To bastardise Tennyson,” he declared, “tis better to have gambled and lost, than never to have gambled at all. I think it’s time to go for it.”

“Just one more question first though Joe,” Stuart continued, and he could almost sense, even from Hawaii, Joe trembling at the perceived accountability, “who put Omega at the top of their lists?”

“Mum and Charlie,” Joe quickly responded, glad to be back off the hook.

“So why was that guys?” Stuart asked, perhaps unfairly.

Anne was the first to accept the heavy burden of responsibility thrown her way, “I just thought the Greek letters were the most logical, and the reprise bit made me think that Alpha and Omega, first and last, made the best pair.

Charlie simply added an understandably hesitant, “same for me.”

“Makes sense,” said Stuart, thinking out loud, “I had it behind Males, that’s a better-known phrase, and I found a few songs called ‘Alpha Males’, but I do like the logic of a beginning and end, and the more I think about it, the less happy I am why the other options would be pluralised. I’m going with Omega.”

“What’s my chance of winning with a pair of Jacks, Joe?” knowing he had his poker app to hand.

“78%,” Joe replied, cagily.

“That’s good enough for me,” resolved Stuart, and without further hesitation he entered OMEGA into the overall solutions box and pressed enter, which, in that moment, really felt like the living definition of going ‘all in’.

“Omega, on the other hand,” he continued, after pausing for effect, “appears to win 100% of the time. We’re through guys! In about ninth place. It comes with a pretty scary message attached though,” which he now read out:

“A one in twelve chance of winning the big prize then, in theory at least,” Charlie responded, “but I’m still worried about those two Challengers who went through on the first day. Like I said, we need to find a way to catch them up.”

“And overtake them,” Stuart added, “and I’ve got a strong suspicion next month’s final question won’t be much more complicated than, “what has this all been about?” If so, as we stand, we’ll be stuffed.”

“Don’t you think they might have given something more away this month, consciously or not,” Ed pondered, “it’s been a weird list of artists, such an odd collection of songs and poems, and a play. If we work on those, maybe we can find the link we need.”

“That would be easier to do face to face,” suggested Charlie, “we’re going to The Forum in a couple of weeks, for Stiff Little Fingers. It’s on a Sunday, why don’t you both come down early and we can go through everything together? There’s no bloody prize, after all this effort, for coming second.”

Having agreed to Charlie’s proposal for a quizzical gathering they called it a day. Stuart knew he would start following up on Ed’s latest linkage idea later, and he suspected that he wouldn’t be the only one.

Once the others had departed, Stuart felt the spirit of Cocker creeping back out from the shadows, with something to say (as was his wont) on their current predicament.

‘Something Changed’ drifted back to him from earlier, the song whose words always spoke to Stuart directly, with their prescience to meeting Anne. While Jarvis acknowledges his characters had, “no way of knowing,” which, “way (they) were going,” he then (with less certainty) questions whether there could have been, “someone up above?” who was “directing acts of love?” It was this more existential enquiry that now resonated with Stuart.

This was a paradox where he usually found himself in the Cave camp. While reasonably convinced there was no, “interventionist God,” the simple absence of such an all-knowing deity couldn’t entirely rule out, “some kind of path,” we seemed destined to walk down.

Transposing this stream of thought back to ‘Challenge 69’, Stuart couldn’t deny they were currently running behind some of their opponents but, despite this disadvantage, he still held an unexplainable, fatalistic conviction their game was far from lost.

He remained strangely confident there was time yet to be dealt Joe’s elusive pocket Aces.

###

(‘Track 21’ will follow on 8th July at 9am. In the meantime, it’s good to get reader feedback, so please add a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 20’)