*Track 9 (part three)
At least today’s absence of any new number sequences allowed Stuart to get straight to the heart of matters. The by now very similar clue structure suggested his main research questions were:
Who was the 17th king (of where)? And did ‘clowns around’ refer to some form of jester?
Who is JC (Jesus, Jarvis Cocker, Joe even?), and why were they ‘joking aside’? and,
Who was it that needed their drives fixing?
He suspected the first of these clues was likely to hold the key, but given that History, particularly kings and queens, was a blind spot he would need to hit Google hard. Allowing for his ‘home biased’ theory Stuart searched, “who was the 17th King of England?”, but the returns weren’t promising. The most popular response was Charles II, the Merry Monarch, but only because he had been King in the 17th Century. The principal issue seemed to be, unlike Presidents, that nobody could really agree who the first King of England had been, making subsequent numbering problematical.
There was an online theory that Egbert (827-839) had been the first King, “to establish a stable rule over Anglo-Saxon England.” If you took that as your starting point this made Harold Harefoot, or Harold I (1035-1040), the seventeenth in line. Stuart was initially encouraged by this, thinking he had been the King with an arrow in his eye, which might somehow be relevant, but it turned out that was Harold II. This first, less famous Harold was best known for sneaking onto the throne while his older brother Harthacanute (who should have got the job) was away fighting in Denmark.
Harold I might have thought he had got away with his usurping ways, by conveniently dying and getting himself buried in Westminster Abbey before his brother returned from overseas. But that reasoned without Harthacanute turning out to be ‘a right vindictive bastard’ who simply dug his brother’s body up, beheaded it, and ordered the parts to be thrown into the Thames!
This was all interesting stuff, but it had taken up half an hour of research, half of Anne’s mandated time, and got him nowhere. Sometimes though it was only when you started to think of something else, and Stuart’s mind had definitely turned to matters of self-preservation, that an answer snuck up on you out of the blue.
Drive could mean computer drive, he suddenly realised, and as all good corporate citizens know, when you’ve got a problem with your computer, “who’re you gonna call?” Not Ghostbusters, but the next best thing. The IT department!
This prompted a belated realisation that the 17th King wasn’t a monarch after all, rather Stephen King’s 17th novel which, as he had already guessed, before Google confirmed it, turned out to be ‘It’, a book that also featured Pennywise the clown.
Finally, surprisingly, his half joking supposition that JC might be the less than holy Jarvis Cocker also turned out to be correct (another musical clue?), with ‘Joking Aside’ being a track on Pulp’s debut album, a record that shared its title with the King book.
With fifteen minutes to spare, and one conflagration potentially avoided, Stuart was convinced IT must be the solution, albeit another partial one. If you put that together with yesterday’s NO this gave you NOIT or, more likely, given the clue’s reference to ‘in reverse’, it indicated TION formed the end of the overall ‘Challenge’ solution.
There were clearly hundreds of words ending TION though, giving Stuart no other option at this stage than to again enter IT into today’s ‘part solution’ box. After a quick check on the success counter, which confirmed his fellow ‘Challengers’ were all still aboard the same incomplete boat, he did exactly that.
As anticipated, Stuart received an immediate confirmation that his answer, although correct, would require him to check back in again at the same time tomorrow. All Stuart could now hope was that Anne, due back at the cottage in five minutes, would prove more forgiving than Harthacanute!
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Happily, for Stuart’s continued health, he subsequently managed to successfully solve both Thursday and Friday’s clues within the same negotiated, early morning window. Their holiday in Saltaire didn’t get, “fucked up,” (which he knew was what Anne had really meant).
Instead, post solutioning, they had been able to enjoy both a day trip by train to Leeds, and a long circular walk around Ilkley Moor, with a pub lunch built in. Everything, despite the continually overhanging ‘Challenge’ risk, worked out to Anne’s satisfaction (and Stuart’s relief) exactly as planned.
Thursday had brought:
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(To be concluded, at 10am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 28’ in the meantime? Still unlikely (without one more clue), but if you think you have got the answer (in full or in part), then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)