*Track 7 (continued)
At risk of stretching his earlier AA analogy too far, Stuart thought, it was funny how it only needed one new conspiracy theory to cause you to fall off the wagon. His first read through had prompted a few more largely unhelpful observations; the numbering system was getting ever more bizarre, why did the clue setter have such a compulsion with capitals (was that a clue in itself?), and, more worryingly, what was this new, specific warning message all about? The one presaging unavoidable jeopardy.
Anne’s initial reaction, being as big a fan of cryptic puzzles as Joe, was no more promising, “what’s all that charity gobbledygook?” It was true, the mid-section of the clue was largely nonsensical and seemingly contained nothing to lead them to the solution or, more correctly, the four solutions required. But if Stuart’s reading of the situation was correct, then it was exactly this lack of cohesiveness that might make the resolution of ‘Challenge 17’, or the first part of it at least, relatively easy.
“Given it’s so random,” he explained, “all I can think is the four capitals, capital cities probably, must just be hidden somewhere in the text.” Anne looked more comforted by this explanation than Stuart himself was feeling, so to level the anxietal playing field he added a warning, “I suspect that might be where our problems start though.”
The next ten minutes proved him right on both counts. The mechanics of unravelling the four required capital cities was, as he had predicted, relatively painless. In their text order:
- “Comparisons” contained Paris,
- “A full-on donation” revealed London,
- “Barometer” held Rome at its heart, and
- “Remember linking” while harder to spot, spread over two lines, yielded Berlin.
Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin, but the real difficulty started there. Four equally correct solutions with no secondary clue to guide which of them should be used, and only three chances available before being locked out of ‘Challenge 69’, forever. Unavoidable jeopardy indeed.
If Joe were around, Stuart knew, he would already have worked out the odds and probability this quandary left them facing. But, despite feeling far from calm himself, Stuart realised, Anne needed a fuller, more rational explanation of their dilemma.
“This is now a complete game of chance,” he explained, “four answers, but only one can be right. If we get it wrong on our first three goes, we’re out,” reinforcing this risk by adding, “By the laws of probability 25% will miss the right answer on their first three attempts. It’ll be goodnight to them, through no fault of their own.”
“So how do we make sure that’s not us?” Anne asked.
“We can’t.”
“Well don’t ask me to choose. I’m not gonna be the one responsible.”
That was fair enough. Stuart accepted he needed to make this decision, although he thought Anne’s follow up comment was maybe a bit harsh, “what’s more I’m going out, taking the dog. I don’t want to be here if you get it wrong.” With which she gave him a kiss on the cheek and a final, “good luck,” on her way out. Her well wishes clearly wouldn’t be extending to any greater moral support, “message me when it’s done,” being her parting shot.
Once alone, Stuart reasoned it was best not to jump to any quick decision. It wasn’t 9.30am yet and a logoff/on told him only sixteen ‘Challengers’ were through so far, which was comforting, although for the first time he found himself wishing there were a corresponding ‘failure counter’. Finding the four capital cities hadn’t been difficult, so that part wouldn’t be holding up many of their rivals, but he suspected most would now, like him, be taking a circumspect approach. Especially given the one in four probability of choosing the nuclear option.
It also struck Stuart there were sound, supportable mathematical grounds for not rushing. If this were truly a game of chance then around 625 of the remaining 2500 Challengers would likely fail, leaving just 1875 left on the lucky side of the equation, only fractionally above this month’s qualification hurdle. This gave little imperative, he figured, to jump in before first assessing if there was any further logic that could be applied to the problem.
The only remaining question to answer was whether, as he had framed it earlier, this was truly a game of chance alone?
After careful consideration, Stuart could only come up with two additional filters that might constructively be applied to this otherwise random decision; firstly, how difficult had it been to find each answer (rightly or wrongly this logic seemed to have helped back on ‘Challenge 7’s word search)? and secondly, had there been anything thematically within any of the previous ‘Challenges’, or their solutions, which lent greater support to any of the four options?
He didn’t hold out great hope for the former. Unlike the word search, once you had established the ground rules these four possible answers were all relatively easy to find, but if pushed on an order of difficulty, ranging from hardest to easiest, Stuart reckoned it would have to be Berlin (split over two lines), followed by London (spread across three words), then Rome, with Paris in last place (having featured so prominently up front).
Any further information to be gleaned from the previous clues (or their solutions) was, as his repeatedly failed attempts at research had shown, a far more nebulous concept. Given this might be an entirely false premise anyway, Stuart decided it wasn’t worthy of hours more introspection. With the clock still ticking he could quickly reach a point where any further effort he was choosing to dress up as analysis would become no more than prevarication in disguise.
He concluded there was only one definitive thing they knew about ‘Challenge 69’, giving a definite filter he could apply, with a second more conjectural option, based around nothing more than a growing suspicion. Given the only alternative was pure randomness however both were probably worth a punt.
It might be impossible to confirm, but the whole of ‘Challenge 69’, since launch, had always felt UK centric. Some of the clues and answers may have travelled further afield but, overall, they seemed to hold a British bias. The clinching factor for this argument was the split of contributors Joe had found on the Facebook forum; a few overseas outliers but largely home based. Stuart thought again of the, “carefully chosen recipients,” from, “selected databases,” descriptions from the initial launch and felt these must predominantly have been UK lists.
A filter applied in this way would clearly have London top, but how could you best rank the others? In the absence of anything more scientific, he decided to go with their relative popularity for UK visitors, and settled on the following ranking: London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin.
Stuart’s more speculative bet, on the other hand, was based on his growing suspicion there could be some form of musical theme underlying the ‘Challenges’. This was a thought he had kicked around a few times, but never pinned down, only to see it re-emerge, significantly reinforced, last month. Whoever was setting these clues, Stuart’s logic ran, had to know; a) about Sheffield’s Limit Club, b) that the infamous Dylan “Judas” heckle had been shouted out at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, and, within the same clue, c) that the Sex Pistols had played the Lesser version of the same venue.
There were lots of people in Stuart’s pub quiz league who knew far more stuff than him. They could certainly remember it much better. But he would back himself against any of them, any day, when it came to music, his specialist subject. He could be reading more into this than was justifiable (or just hoping there was) but felt in his bones this was worth throwing into the gambling pot.
No Googling help was required for Stuart to order these cities according to their musical significance, certainly with regards to the type of music predicated by those earlier clues. His clear ranking would be London, followed by Berlin (at various times home to Lou Reed, Bowie, Iggy, and Nick Cave), with Paris some way behind in third (courtesy of Serge Gainsbourg and the recently departed Johnny Hallyday). Rome would be a very distant fourth. Unable to resist a quick search of, “musicians or bands from Rome,” Stuart was comforted to find this matched his expectations. Not a single return you had ever heard of.
That concluded his three filters. These were of dubious quality, and uncertain value but, Stuart thought, “as they say, in for a penny …” For clarity he laid all three conclusions out on a separate A4 page:
SOLUTION DIFFICULTY UK CENTRICITY MUSICALITY
Berlin London London
London Paris Berlin
Rome Rome Paris
Paris Berlin Rome
There was one clear and obvious winner. Of equal importance though, and in qualification terms quite possibly crucial, was the ordering of the minor places. To resolve this Stuart applied a simple four points for first, one for last, scoring system to all three lists, giving the following outcome:
LONDON = 11 Points
BERLIN = 8 Points
PARIS = 6 Points
ROME = 5 Points
For better or worse Stuart now had his order, but a big question remained. In the face of such jeopardy dare he use it?
Another logoff/on told him the success count had now risen above 380. Not down to the wire yet, but he knew the moment had arrived to stop fiddling while Rome burned; a saying he hoped wouldn’t shortly turn out to be prophetic. It was time to act, and hopefully not be damned.
It was difficult to type with crossed fingers, but having entered LONDON Stuart cowered his eyes and pressed return:
Only the second time this blunt message had reared its unwelcome head. Without allowing time for his already fragile nerves to fail completely, ignoring the devil on his shoulder now shouting about their increased 33% chance of elimination, Stuart steeled himself and ploughed on.
BERLIN, enter, (it was like saying, “final answer,” on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’)
The congratulatory message received in return might be one he was growing used to seeing, but it had never previously unleashed such a biblically proportioned flood of relief.
Stuart might have danced, if it had been a skillset available to him, but settled instead for messaging Anne, “it’s OK, you can come home now.”
###
(‘Track 8’ will follow on 10th December at 9am. In the meantime, it’s always good to get reader feedback, so please add a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 7’.)