I’m generally slow with hints, but I’ll start adding some extra information already.
I tossed in REDDISH, DRIED, and MOUNTAINOUS specifically as references to previous puzzles in this thread, and you can assume all of those belong on my list.
I could’ve replaced REDDISH with GREENISH, though, and it would still have referenced my red->green->blue tile-coloring puzzle. Hell, I could’ve used YELLOWISH, replacing DRIED as reference to Chronos’s “dry, yellow, wooden, strange” puzzle.
But perhaps the cleverest move of all, still referencing biotop’s early classic, would’ve been to replace both MOUNTAINOUS and BURNT with MOUNT BLACKBURN (good name, that one; not many I see that good).
Ack, sorry, I should’ve capitalized Biotop. (That wasn’t one of my cryptic clues; just a typo)
I wish I’d spotted this thread earlier! I love puzzles. I’ve got loads to share. Here’s an easy one to start off:
ARGON, LOWER, ANGER, VERSION, OVER, ANGLE, AUNTS, BOUT, TRAIN, OBSERVE, ARROW, RAINED.
Which word is the odd one out and why?
As a hint:
Count how many words there are.
I’m also a fan of cryptic crosswords. Here’s a few clues of my own:
- Mafioso holding all the strings (4)
- Strange market sounds (7)
- Dry land (9)
- Rebel against Slavic tyrant. Heads will roll! (4)
- Deep breath makes lightbulb go on (11)
Cryptic #2:
Bizarre (means strange, but sounds like bazaar = market)
Cryptic #4:
Tsar (heads of “Rebel against Slavic tyrant”, backwards (I’m thinking “roll” indicates this?), spelling out a Slavic tyrant)
So far so good
I’m not sure about this one, but
Cryptic #1:
Vito? (as in Vito Corleone, the logo for The Godfather being presumably his hand holding strings)
Good guess, but not quite right. This one’s a double definition, and one of the definitions is slightly uncommon. I’ll give you a hint:
The second definition of this word is a musical term.
Oh, of course!
Cryptic #1:
Capo (Mafia captain and implement placed on guitar strings)
Well, how about observe? All the other words can become other words by adding an initial letter…jargon, strain, taunts, narrow, etc. but I think observe cannot be changed in that way.
But that doesn’t involve the number of words.
Yes it does!
The added initial letters correspond to months: J for January, F for February, M for March, etc., in order
Cryptic #5:
Inspiration (meaning both deep breath and a sudden flash of an idea, as illustrated in cartoons with a lightbulb)
Cryptic #3:
continent (double definition)
All correct. Well done! Let’s try something a little trickier.
Create a wordsearch grid containing the words: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, ELEVEN, and TWELVE. One catch, your grid has to be 6x6.
Hm, I didn’t know that cryptics were allowed to use double definitions. I thought that one of the two clues had to be some form of wordplay (anagrams, sound-alikes, etc.).
And the number word-search looks fun; I’ll have to try that. The key is obviously going to be starting with the ELEVEN and TWELVE.
Create …
E L E V E N
T W E L V E
F F I V E V
O Q G R N E
U W H X I S
R T T E N O
There’s tons of ways to create this word search grid, if words are allowed to move in any of the eight typical directions. For what it’s worth, though, there are no ways to do it if we force horizontal words to be read left-to-right and vertical words to be read top-to-bottom.
(An example of another solution:
T F O U R O
W N F X T W
E E I G H T
L S V N R E
V S E V E N
E L E V E N
)
Yes, if “tons” means “exactly 44” (or “exactly 352” when the eight members of each equivalence class are considered distinct). (I confess to writing a word-grid searcher from scratch in 20 minutes.)
Heh, I did the same thing.
It should be acknowledged that the solution septimus posted was clever enough to pack things so tightly as to even leave an unused spot on the grid!
Out of the 44 possible solutions (up to rotation and mirroring), there are 5 with an unused spot. However, there are none with two or more unused spots.
Those 5 solutions are as follows:
First, a pair of very similar solutions:
T S E V E N
W I ? N E T
E X I V R H
L N E U H G
V L O W T I
E F I V E E
T S E V E N
W I ? N E T
E X I V R H
L N E U H G
V L O W T I
E F F I V E
Then another pair of very similar solutions:
T W E L V E
H S ? T L E
G E E E E R
I V V N U H
E E I O W T
N N F S I X
T W E L V E
H S ? T L E
G E E E E R
I V V N U H
E E I O W T
N N F X I S
And, finally, the solution septimus posted:
E L E V E N
T W E L V E
F F I V E V
O ? G R N E
U W H X I S
R T T E N O