Stonehenge Puzzle #3

[Gary Teter]

This is the place to discuss Titanic Games' solstice puzzle. No spoilers, please!

EDIT: In the interest of clarity, by "no spoilers", I mean, don't post the final answer. I don't think this puzzle will ever be solved unless many like minds work together on it, so the intermediate steps are totally OK to post.

[Joshua J. Frost]

Gary Teter wrote:

This is the place to discuss Titanic Games' solstice puzzle. No spoilers, please!

I'd like to encourage everyone to work together on this one. This puzzle is bloody hard! Turns out, when you tell Mike to design the hardest Stonehenge-themed puzzle he can, he turns in one malicious little gem.

Enjoy!

[Joshua J. Frost]

One additional note: Your reward for solving this puzzle will be a sneak peak at the Stonehenge board. No one outside our office has seen the final board--you'll be the first!

[The Jade]

In the name of 'working together' I posted half the answers to part one of the puzzle, filling in the blanks, but I'm not sure if that was going too far so I struck the post.

[The Jade]

Shouldn't question 9 be 'singing style of #26' and not #27 as listed?

edit: as I reread, mebbe not after all. :\

[LurkerBeneath]

I note that the arabic numerals to the right of each clue are listed in ascending order. I infer that we have to rearrange the letters of each clue answer to get them to match up with the arabic and roman numerals. Am I correct in thinking that each stone corresponds to a single letter?
-LB

[LurkerBeneath]

OK, my new hypothesis is that the arabic-numeral stones correspond to a single letter, but the roman-numeral stones do not. We have to figure out which letter each arabic-numeral stone represents, then combine the leftover letters from each clue corresponding to a given roman-numeral stone to form a word. Conceivably the roman-numeral letters might be in order already, but perhaps that would be too easy.
-LB

[LurkerBeneath]

It seems to me that an important piece of information is missing from this puzzle. I wouldn't have known what sort of final answer I was looking for if I hadn't guessed that it might be related to one of the other puzzles. I had to look up several of the clue answers using Google™; that's not a complaint, just a confession of my own ignorance.
-LB

[Gary Teter]

I edited my first post in this thread to clarify what's OK to post and what's not. Intermediate steps == invaluable help, please post. Final answer == please don't (at least not yet!).

[LurkerBeneath]

To illustrate the general idea, the answer to clue #1 is "pagan". Stones 10, 12, 17, and 21 have the letters G, N, A, and P respectively, so the word "pagan" contributes its remaining letter (A) to the intermediate answer at stone II.

The way to figure out the letters on the (arabic) numbered stones (e.g. 10, 12, 17, 21) is to compare the four clue answers corresponding to a given stone (e.g. stone 10 appears in clues 1, 18, 22, and 26) and see what letters they all have in common.

That works in reverse too. Since I've told you that stone 10 is G, you now know that G appears somewhere in each of the clue answers 1, 18, 22, and 26. The placement of the G does not correspond to the placement of the 10. For example, 10 is the first number listed for clue #1, but G is not the first letter of clue answer #1 (which I've already told you is "pagan").

You can exclude letters that you've already assigned to one of the stones. For example, if you knew that stone 10 was G and you were trying to figure out 12, you could rule out G as a possibility for stone 12 in clue #1, so 12 would have to be P, A, or N. Then you would look at clues 7, 14, and 20 to try to rule out two of the three remaining letters.

However, if you knew that stone 17 was A, you couldn't use that to rule out A for stone 12 in clue #1 because "pagan" has two A's, and stone 17 only rules out one of them.

Once you have all the letters for a roman numeral stone answer, you'll have to rearrange them to get that answer. III was the answer that I got first. It's almost enough to solve the puzzle by itself, but the other intermediate answers help you confirm or refute your interpretation of III.

Good night and good luck,
-LB

[Hagen]

Figured I'd post the few answers I do know:

1) PAGAN
2) STONE
3) ARAWN
5) CELTS
8) DEATH
11) UNION
15) POUND
24) KNIFE
27) DRUID
29) CLOCK

[The Jade]

I haven't had a chance to really get to this but here's the answers I thought might be correct upon first glance last week.

1. pagan
2. stone
4 plain?
5 celts (though Stonehenge came first by a thousand years)
6 woman?
8 death?
10 dwarf
11 union
12 david
14 solar or lunar?
15 pound
17 demon?
18 giant
20 lines
22 magic
23 ogham?
25 lucky?
26 nigel
27 druid
28 flame?
29 clock
30 arena?

[Hagen]

#7) GHOST
#9) CHANT

Howabout ALIEN for #17 and THROW for #19?

[Hagen]

Having never been to Britain, I'm hoping someone from the area can help with numbers 13, 16, & 21.

[LurkerBeneath]

Mike Selinker is a crossword puzzle constructor among his many talents. There's an unwritten rule in crosswords that the answer to a clue doesn't appear in the clue. So clue answer #2 can't be "stone".

Similarly, the clue and answer have to be the same part of speech. So clue answer #7 has to be an adjective (it's "Like a spirit", not valley-girl-speak "Like, a spirit").

The references to Stonehenge in clues 13 and 16 are misdirection. A map should help you solve #21.

Clues like #14 and #17 with more than one possible answer require that you figure out the letters for some of the arabic-numbered stones in order to determine which answer is correct.

[Mike Selinker]

LurkerBeneath wrote:

There's an unwritten rule in crosswords that the answer to a clue doesn't appear in the clue.

That rule is written. It's called "The error that cannot be named."

Mike

[Cintra Bristol]

Okay, ummm...

I've completed the first part, I've got all the words filled in.

I've done the second part, figuring out the words for I - V.

And I haven't got the faintest idea how to get from that to a 9-character "solution" to the puzzle. I tried a bunch of 9-letter words that are "related" to I-V, but no luck so far. And it seems very strange to me that after a series of logical steps to this point, I'm reduced to random guessing. But I don't see anything that would imply a more methodical approach.

Someone commented that they used something from a previous puzzle to help them know what to do next? I never solved puzzle #2 - is there any way I can get a hint here without it ruining things for anyone else?

Or failing that, are you folks going to start providing the solutions at some point?

[Vic Wertz]

Cintra Bristol wrote:

...are you folks going to start providing the solutions at some point?

Thanks for the reminder. We just posted the solution for puzzle 2 in the puzzle 2 discussion thread.

[Mike Selinker]

Cintra Bristol wrote:

I'm reduced to random guessing.

Don't guess. Once you know everything you need to know about I-V, think about what would go exactly where you're trying to put it. Think especially about the PLACE you're trying to put it.

Mike

[Cintra Bristol]

Okay, that did it. Thanks!

(Can't believe I didn't think of that as one of my random nine-letter words anyway...)

[Vic Wertz]

Hopefully everybody's getting through puzzle #3, because puzzle #4 is coming soon. It's.... well, we're not sure how difficult it is, but how you go about solving it sure isn't immediately obvious.

-Vic.
.

[Vic Wertz]

We've just put up the hint for Puzzle #3 (and a new PDF incorprating the hint).

The hint is almost a puzzle itself.

-Vic.
.

[surfinmuse]

Are there going to be published solutions for puzzles #3 and #4 now that #5 is released or....?

Thanks! :)