Here we go again.. an Enigmarch Week 3 round-up! Or at least, most of week 3 - it seemed to make more sense to write this on a Sunday, rather than wait for the whole week to be over.
As with previous weeks, this post will inevitably contain spoilers for the puzzles mentioned; if you want to try solving them first, they can all be found here, but this week I've also linked to each puzzle separately (something I really should have thought of weeks ago!) in its header.
I keep a list of ideas for puzzle themes and mechanics in the front of my notebook, which is where this one came from. Very handy, as it turns out, because I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to come up with something otherwise!
I'm not sure if there's an official name for this particular puzzle format, where matching pairs are joined with straight lines that cross a specific letter, but it's one I've used before; it's also something I considered using for the 'dots' theme on account of the circles, but I'm now rather relieved that I didn't given how useful it was here! I've realised why that was - unlike other extraction methods, such as indexing, the final answer doesn't need to rely on their being specific letters in the clue words. And that was exactly the problem I had with this puzzle - the very limited choice of clue words. Although there are plenty of words which contain the right letter strings - RAT, FLEA, ANT etc - not many of them leave recognisable words or abbreviations once those strings are removed. I was never going to find one which included an X, for example, and yet I knew the word I wanted to use as a solution contained one. Matching-pairs-joined-with-straight-lines-that-cross-a-specific letter to the rescue! (There really should be a better name for that format...)
I do like the look and concept of hex grids in puzzles, but I'm not a great fan of solving them - mainly because I tend to do most of my solving on screen, and they are hard to replicate in Excel in order to be able to do that - I usually end up copying them into something else and using paint tools, which is fiddly, or begrudgingly print them out and solve the old fashioned way. (I hasten to add, there were several hex grids I saw in other people's Enigmarch contributions today which I did thoroughly enjoy solving, mostly because they were small and simple enough to be able to manage easily on screen, without needing to mark the grids in any way.)
So I was even less of a fan of the idea of creating one (have I mentioned my non-existent design skills?) and although I did do a quick search online for tools which might help - because I assume those must exist? - I soon abandoned plans and went with something else instead. Turning the colour names into hex codes will, I imagine, be fairly obvious to anyone who already knows what today's theme is, but one thing I've been conscious of throughout this challenge is wanting the puzzles to be accessible and solvable for people who don't have any idea of the theme. Which is why the colour samples are hexagons, and also why I included cyan among the colours - hoping it might help people to make the connection. 'In the end' is a gentle hint to guide people towards the last characters of the hex codes, which I thought would be a little less obvious than using the first one.
This isn't the first time I've created the perfect puzzle for a theme, just a day early! As I've mentioned before, I'm trying not to repeat any ideas or formats through the challenge, so hex codes were out of contention for this one, but colour names were fair game. I was actually a little worried this might be too difficult, so was quite relieved when I heard from the first person who told me they'd solved it. The format (partial anagrams, with the start and end letter being one of a selection) was largely driven by the rainbow graphic I happened to find, with a cloud at each end, but I quite like it as a variation on a straightforward set of anagrams.
This was another one of those puzzles, a bit like the dominoes for 'spot' which felt a bit 'meh' - there's nothing wrong with it, particularly, but nothing felt particularly exciting about it, either. I toyed with the idea of magic spells for a while, and also thought about scores on a spelling test (maybe bringing back Miss Wilson and her class) before settling on a fairly simple idea.
Hidden answers are one of my favourite formats of cryptic crossword clues, so this was an easy decision to make. I did actually think about making a crossword, but I'm not sure how exciting it would have been to solve, once the penny had dropped that the clues were all using the same format! So I went for this instead. Animals seemed like things which might hide, and a zoo felt like a good place for them to be hiding.
I had to make a small adjustment to this puzzle after I published it, as it contained a rouge bee (where's Bob and his pest control service when you need him?!) The original text said 'phantom animals have not BEEn seen in any locations' but was easy enough to fix - thanks to Jake who noticed this.
Speaking of Bob, he does seem to have become a bit of a reoccurring character throughout these puzzles. Which I hadn't intended, but do quite like.
Well, this is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous things I've ever done.
(I know I gave a spoiler warning at the top, but it's probably worth another mention here, because this puzzle, while it may look large and complicated at first glance, is actually pretty simple - in that there is only one thing you need to work out in order to get to the solution. And I will definitely need to give away that One Thing to be able to talk about it.)
I said a while ago I wanted to try and use more outside resources in puzzles, and I've had vague thoughts for a long time about making a puzzle themed around the events in this particular song. And so, well... here we are. I wasn't sure when I started if it would even be possible to find a song for every single event or person name-checked by Billy Joel, but I figured it was worth a try. And for the most part it was fairly easy to find something - either a direct reference in the title or the artist's name, or a slightly more obscure reference in terms of lyrics or subject matter. So a couple of verses in I realised it was probably do-able, if a little time-consuming, and strapped in for the ride.
Somewhere around the half way mark, I hit a bit of a stumbling block with Syngman Rhee who, strangely enough, no-one seems to have written a song about. Realising I still had a LONG way to go, I did nearly throw in the towel at that point, convinced that there were more than enough references by that point for people to be able to work out what was going on, and thinking I could change the flavour text to reflect the fact that this was the start of a playlist, not the whole thing. But it seemed a shame in the end not to keep going, so I threw in the same 'South Korea' song I'd used before, and kept plodding on.
And he turned out to be the only real stumbling block, in the end - some of the connections are more obscure than others, but I promise they are all there. A few of the more obscure ones were out of desperation (hypodermic needles being washed up on a beach could be described as "Flotsam and Jetsam", technically, but I'm aware that a Disney song about animated moray eels doesn't quite capture the seriousness of that particular event...). Others were more of a choice and are really just there for my own enjoyment (I'm not expecting anyone who isn't me to remember that Movin' Right Along from the Muppet Movie features a Studebaker, for instance), but that's the joy of a puzzle like this - there was enough room to slip a few of those ones in, without affecting the ability to solve it.
A few disclaimers. Many of the songs I know, but some I didn't, and I haven't listened all the way through to them. I avoided anything marked as having explicit lyrics, and I don't think anything slipped through, but can't be 100% sure. A lot of the references in the song are to political events, and so songs which name check those, or some of the people involved in them, tend to have a political bent as well; again, I haven't listened carefully to absolutely all of them, so while I don't think there's anything in there which is particularly problematic, I should make it clear that they were chosen simply because there was some sort of link between the title, lyrics or artist and the Billy Joel lyric, and aren't necessarily a reflection of my own views. (And also, of course....Spotify. Yes, I know. I've been looking for an alternative streaming service for a while now, and especially one which will let you share playlists like this, but haven't managed to find one I'm happy with yet.)
All in all, I like this puzzle and am glad I saw it through to the end, even though the ratio of 'time spent making it' to 'actual puzzle solving required' is completely out of whack. I'm conscious that, as I mentioned in the spoiler warning at the start, from a solver's point of view it's really just about identifying the gimmick; hopefully for most people that will take long enough for the experience to still feel satisfying, and maybe (also hopefully) there's also some enjoyment to be gained from working out some of those slightly more obscure references, for those who feel inclined. Apologies in advance for 'hottest tracks', which will, of course, make perfect sense once you've seen the connection (and so I couldn't resist!), but I'm sure will have been no help at all, in terms of getting there.
And there's (most of) week three! It has been nice to hear people say they like reading these; it's the kind of thing I always really enjoy hearing about, but when I first decided to start writing them I had no idea if that would be the case for anyone else. I'll write one more after next week, and then come back for a final wrap-up and to pick up on the last few puzzles.
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