*Track 8 (continued)
By now accepting of his inability not to look at the numbers first, confident he had built the discipline to keep their immediate importance in perspective, Stuart’s first thoughts were:
- ‘Challenge 24’ (up from 17 last time), that’s easily the biggest jump we have had so far, and,
- 1,200 ‘correct solutions’ sounds remarkably small, not far above four figures. Getting through this would place them in the top 5% of all the ‘Challengers’ that had started.
The key phrase in these reflections was, “getting through.” As Anne had astutely pointed out earlier, this was no time for daydreaming.
“These are getting more ridiculous,” Anne said, “I’ve no idea where to start.”
Sorely tempted to riposte with, “I think we should start at the heart,” Stuart thought better of it. Discretion was the better part of valour and he was going to need her onside. He settled instead for a more truthful reply, “me neither I’m afraid.”
His words to Joe at Heathrow, as ‘Challenge 15’ had been revealed, came back to him, “you either see it straight away or you don’t.” This was a helpful concept when you were sitting on the right side, the smug side, of its equation, but a worrying one when you weren’t. On that occasion he had spotted the key to unlock the ‘Challenge’ immediately, while today, on the other hand, not only was a key nowhere in sight he wasn’t even sure he knew how to find the door.
“So, what do you think we have to do?” Anne asked, almost pleaded.
Painfully aware that, “not the slightest fucking clue,” while accurate, wouldn’t be particularly helpful, Stuart deemed it best to sum up the limited amount he did think he had been able to glean, “I think we’ve got to navigate our way around the square of letters somehow, probably starting with the D, given it’s in the middle, to find a word that means confusion.”
Conscious of how incomplete and inadequate this explanation sounded he felt compelled to follow it with a bout of honesty (leaving out the swearing), “those areas of London must help us find the right letters to use, but if you’re asking me how I haven’t a clue.”
###
Four hours later, with little progress made beyond that unpromising start, frustration had long since turned to irritation. Anne had stayed with him for the first hour but sensing Stuart’s blackening mood she had since decided to employ some discretion of her own and drifted away to get on with some more mundane, if wholly more productive, tasks. Occasionally popping her head around the office door to check on Stuart’s progress she had now stopped asking for verbal updates, his increasingly pained expression presumably telling her everything she needed to know.
“Stop doing that, it’s not helping,” she chided him, her latest visit having coincided with another of Stuart’s log off/on progress checks, which, admittedly, he was now doing with increasing, unhelpful frequency.
“But it’s over five hundred now, almost up to halfway. I’m still nowhere. This might be the one that finishes us off,” he replied, adding, even though he realised it sounded a bit pathetic, “that’s the trouble doing these at weekends, there’re too many people not at work.”
“That’s just defeatist,” Anne observed fairly, “Keep at it, you’ll crack it.” Stuart felt a little buoyed by her confidence, despite his own continuing to drain away.
Various attempts to ‘crack it’ had already been and gone since 9am. You can forget about this, “ending in confusion,” he thought, “I’ve been there from the start.”
Stuart had begun by trying to treat this ‘Challenge’ like another word search. He knew this was unlikely, but it just looked like one. This new set of letters had proven too randomised though, and the best he had managed to come up with was eleven three letter words, none of them helpful. This strategy also ignored the list of London locations, which had to be important.
The most likely key seemed to be that the geographical spread of the places named could help you to work your way around the letter grid, spelling out the solution. To test this theory Stuart had added each of the locations, in their specified order, to make a route on Google Maps. The result looked a bit like a child’s attempt to draw the Star of Israel, but any method he had tried to transpose it back onto the letter grid had failed miserably. At least he had established that walking this route would take thirteen hours, “less than this Challenge is likely to take me,” he had observed ruefully.
“Aren’t they all Tube stations?” Anne had suggested on one of her progress checks, and Stuart had spent a good half hour exploring that possibility (finding it more productive than his default tactic of staring into space). Initially he got excited that either the lines they were on, or the number of stops between them, may hold some clue:
Brixton = Victoria
Paddington = Bakerloo/Circle/District
Hackney = North London
Highgate = Northern
Whitehall = ?
Chiswick = District
Camden Town = Northern
Whitehall not appearing on the Tube network may have dealt the fatal blow here, but in truth it had only really compounded Stuart’s acknowledgement that he had no real idea what he was going to do with the information anyway. Another tunnel that led nowhere.
His morning’s journey from confusion, via frustration, to arrive at irritation had also, at one point, made an unscheduled stop at paranoia. Stuart had got it into his head, irrationally, that the clue setter may have picked up on his fledgling musical linkage theory and was using it to gently mock him. Four of these places had been regular gig-going haunts; Brixton (Academy and Ace), Hackney (Empire), Whitehall (ICA), and Camden (Palace, Electric Ballroom, and Underworld), and fast approaching a state of desperation he had even considered calling Charlie, to consult his oracle concert list, to see if there were venues Stuart had forgotten about in Paddington, Highgate, and Chiswick. Sense prevailed though, the lack of an obvious Kentish Town (for the Forum) surely enough to confirm such a hypothesis was a hyperbolic non-starter!
Readily open to distraction, Stuart heard Anne take a call and realised this must be from Joe given her opening line, “what’re you doing up this early?”
A sound observation. It was only just gone 8am in Ohio, on a Saturday morning. Joe never saw 8am. More likely, Stuart thought, he’s only just got back in from a Friday night out. While he could only hear one side of the conversation the purpose of the call quickly became clear. Joe had remembered today was a ‘Challenge’ day (which Stuart had to admit was impressive) and had called to find out how it was going. The snatches he picked up from Anne’s update did nothing to improve his mood:
“Still stuck I’m afraid.” (That was an understatement.)
“Five hundred through so far, nearly half.” (Thought she had said that was unimportant.)
“No, I wouldn’t talk to Dad, he’s in a foul mood.” (Understandable surely.)
Stuart chose to zone out the rest of the call, having heard Anne start to move on to an explanation of how the latest ‘Challenge’ was structured. He knew what the problem was, the problem was he didn’t know how to solve it. He redoubled his efforts by staring ever more intently at the same screen he had been examining for four hours. Having more than used up his required 90% quota of perspiration, he now desperately needed to find that elusive 10% of inspiration.
“Joe’s asking if you’ve tried postcodes, they worked a couple of months ago?” Anne interrupted him, holding the phone against her shoulder.
“Bloody hell, postcodes. How could I have missed that? Shit.” Stuart replied.
Anne took this illiterate outpouring as a cue to resume her chat with Joe, “Dad’s gonna try that, I’m leaving him to it.”
Within a couple of minutes Stuart had a full list of postcodes written out, he had lived in London long enough to know most without needing to look them up:
Brixton = SW2 or SW9
Paddington = W2
Hackney = E8
Highgate = N6
Whitehall = SW1
Chiswick = W4
Camden Town = NW1
By the time he reached Camden Town, in a stenographic rather than literal sense, Stuart suspected he may have located that missing key. “Sober or not Joe, you’re a legend,” he exclaimed, to nobody but himself.
All London postal districts start with points on the compass, he reasoned, so by starting in the centre, with D, and then travelling in the direction given, by the number of moves suggested by each location’s postcode digit, hopefully all would be revealed. This theory even solved the potential problem of Brixton’s duplicated postcodes, there wasn’t enough room on the grid to move nine places:
Two places Southwest from D was Y,
Two places West from Y was S,
Eight places East from S was L (he could see where this was going but ploughed on),
Six places North from L was E,
One place Southwest from E was X (the confusion was abating),
Four places West from X was I, and finally,
One place Northwest from I was (thankfully) A.
DYSLEXIA, that had to be the solution.
“Think we’re sorted, say thanks to Joe,” he shouted to Anne, while simultaneously entering this as their solution, noting it had taken almost four and a half hours, their longest stint so far.
Unless there had been a sudden spurt of correct entries in the last half an hour however this should be good enough. The immediate response confirmed it was. A final check on the success counter confirmed they had got through in around 640th place. Bottom half maybe but no matter, they would live to fight another month.
Still reflecting on the outcome, a couple of hours later, while watching Jeff Stelling and his sidekicks absurdly turning vidiprinter football scores into entertainment, Stuart decided this solution had put him back astride another of his ‘Challenge’ hobby horses.
Not the musical theme, that had seemed redundant this time, rather the one he now termed, “out of its time.” In today’s climate of heightened political correctness, Stuart thought, nobody, not even Trump, would seriously consider using confusion as an acceptable synonym for dyslexia!
###
(‘Track 9’ will follow on 27th 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 8’.)