*Track 20 (part three)
It was, for the moment, a moot point whether the compiler(s) had ever meant the wording of their ‘Challenges’ to be so easily unravelled, but irrespective ‘Team Stuart’ (presumably in common with every other remaining ‘Challenger’) managed a complete list of today’s creative sources within a couple of minutes. In the order they had appeared, these contained elements from the following songs/poem:
‘Hairstyle of the Devil’ by Momus,
‘Silent, Silent Night’ by William Blake, and
‘We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning’ by Gram Parsons.
“I’ve never even heard of Momus,” said Anne.
“You’re not alone,” Ed replied, “he’s had less chart success than William Blake! These are another strange set of bedfellows though, which I guess is fitting given the subject matter.”
“It’s an M today then,” Charlie had already calculated, “we can say goodbye to Delta, but Gamma’s still in play. How many words does that bring us down to on your Scrabble site Joe?”
“There are 774 five-letter words containing an A and M,” Joe responded almost immediately, having anticipated the request, “do you want me to send them by email?”
Agreement was quickly reached that it would now prove manageable for everybody to at least take a quick read through Joe’s list, before making their next tactical decision. “Let’s list any we think fits alongside Alpha,” Stuart suggested, “I can’t see ten more people going through in the quarter of an hour that should take.”
They reconvened with two lists, both in alphabetical order: one set of ‘highly possible’ (including three more letters of the Greek alphabet); Gamma, Males, Omega, Prima, Sigma, Teams, and Woman, and a reserve list of ‘unlikely’ options, based around some degree of relevance to being primary, or related in some way to leaders; Ammon, Champ, Cream, Imams, Magus, Mecca, Mensa, and Swami.
“I’m not confident,” Ed conceded, neatly reflecting their collective mood, “you could make a decent case for any of the first seven, plus there were loads more words I didn’t know the meaning of. Looking those up could make the job even harder. Where does this leave us on your Poker scale Joe?”
“I think it’s something like a pair of Fours,” was Joe’s assessment, “we could go ‘all in’ with those, but we’d need to be desperate. The odds would be stacked against us. Left to me, I’d fold again.”
There was an unspoken truth underlying Joe’s final sentence, reasserting the principle that any final, cliff edge decision would ultimately fall to Stuart. He agreed with Joe’s logic though, it was time to fold for one more day. Having voiced his judgement, to enter M in the partial solutions box, and hearing no dissenting voices, he did the deed:
“Speak tomorrow then guys,” was Joe’s parting shot, “let’s hope we get a nice pair of pocket Aces.”
#
After they had regathered again at the same time, on the same forum, the following day (Tuesday), there was just enough time, before their third ‘hand’ was dealt, to submit the homework that Stuart had set them. He had asked everybody, without collaboration, to individually rank their seven ‘highly possible’ answers in an order of preference. Joe collated the scores from each list (giving 7 points for most likely, down to 1 for least), resulting in the following cumulative order; Gamma (31 points), Omega (29), Males (25), Teams (20), Sigma (19), Woman (9), and Prima (7).
“I guess we’ve virtually ruled out the bottom two,” observed Charlie, “but it’s tight at the top. You might need to dig your dice out again Stuart.”
Keen for it not to come to that, hoping that today’s clue would prove more decisive, Stuart logged back in:
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(To be continued, at 9am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 4 (reprise)’ in the meantime? Still hard, but if you think you have got the answer (or another partial solution), then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)