*Track 9 (conclusion)
Thursday had brought:
Which turned out to be AB:
His breakthrough, after about twenty minutes, came by converting qualified mariner into able seaman (more properly able-bodied seaman), which is then commonly abbreviated to AB,
Which indicated the river Dee in question wasn’t (as Stuart had wrongly assumed) the Chester version, rather the one in Aberdeen, a city with an AB postcode, and finally,
More perversely, and eating away most of his allowable hour, an online revelation that cruciferous vegetables included brussels sprouts, then led to a famous Music Hall in Brussels, called the Ancienne Belgique, commonly referred to as ‘the AB’.
Stuart had waited a few minutes this time, for Anne and Chris to return from their coffee and cake at Massarella’s (the café in Salt’s Mill), to invite their input on whether he had enough yet to sensibly consider a ‘full solution’ entry.
Only when his innocent question, “I need a word that ends in BATION?” had simply been met by sniggers though, did he realise, far too late, which word they had both brought to mind, and concluded he would be better off working this through on his own.
An internet enquiry confirmed there were fourteen possible word options that met this brief; disapprobation, conglobation, exacerbation, masturbation (the guilty party!), perturbation, approbation, conurbation, prelibation, reprobation, incubation, intubation, probation, libation, and finally, lobation.
This presented far too many variables for their three available (pre lock out) answers, and conscious as well that he didn’t even know what most of these words meant, Stuart had resignedly entered AB as another partial, if thankfully correct, solution, consigning himself to at least one more day of ‘Challenge’.
Later, intriguingly, after they had got back home from their evening meal, at the delightfully named ‘Don’t Tell Titus’, just around the corner from their cottage, Stuart established that fifty-seven brave souls had taken a chance (or, annoyingly, knew something more than he did) and, as a result, had now successfully passed the whole of ‘Challenge 28’. This was irritating, but hadn’t proven a ‘count’ high enough to overly worry him.
Finally, with Stuart really hoping that it would bring things to a conclusion (he really wanted to avoid needing to face into a further clue butting up against Saturday’s cottage check-out), Friday’s logon had delivered:
Being of a certain age (although Stuart guessed ‘old’ was another, less delicate, way to put it) it hadn’t taken him long to convert this to UC:
Any ‘Young Ones’ fan (worth their Salt!) could tell you that Scumbags College had, on the show, competed on University Challenge, which was otherwise known as UC, with ‘Bambi’ as their question master,
From which it had been just a short, logical jump to Uranium Carbide, chemical signal UC, being the nuclear fuel referenced, and,
For the obscure one (there always seemed to be an obscure one) he had eventually, but still comfortably within the hour, discovered that Westwood was the neighbourhood in Los Angeles where the renowned UCLA campus was sited.
Having added UC, in reverse, to his previous ‘partial solutions’, Stuart just required a word that ended in CUBATION. There was only one of those on his long list, INCUBATION, which therefore had to be the full solution required.
Also, he latterly realised, incubation could be said to be something that ‘might take some time’; meaning he had missed spotting yet another clue section with a double meaning, having wrongly assumed this reference was simply there to imply that the ‘Challenge’ could take days. This revelation at least explained away what the previous evening’s ‘57 varieties’ of smart-arse must have spotted, that Stuart had missed.
No harm done though, he had successfully submitted his full solution on Friday before the rest of his holiday party had returned, allowing him to greet them with a victorious, if poorly sung, rendition of ‘On Ilkley Moor Bar t'At’.
Considering the considerable worry and heartache that this ‘Challenge’ had brought, over such an extended period, it was reassuring to discover that they had still managed to qualify in a very creditable 180th position.
Maybe Anne’s imposition of deadlines, with the threat they had added, and the momentum this helped generate, had proven his secret weapon. Could such an approach, re-engineering ‘Challenge 69’s own concept of jeopardy and applying it in reverse, potentially provide them with an improved blueprint for working through future ‘qualifications’ as the tasks got ever harder?
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(‘Track 10’ will follow on 14th January at 10am (as ‘Challenge 69’ follows its New Year’s resolution to move to ‘weekend postings’). In the meantime, it’s always good to get reader feedback, so please add a comment below with any thoughts on ‘Track 9’.)