Yeah, it sounded like you were about to burn out on my puzzle, so I thought I’d toss you some small hints (though, as always, rather cryptically; I could give bigger, more cut-and-dry hints, but I prefer to keep slowly dripping out small ones for however long it takes).
I can’t quite crack your puzzle yet, despite your hints. You can’t crack mine either, it seems. We seem to have made our puzzles too esoteric. This is unfortunate.
That having been said, I’m still hopeful I’ll figure yours out!
(Who knows? What might happen is that mine gets solved first. Not that that would be a bad thing.)
All I know is this:
Many of the words in my original list belong there. One doesn’t.
Two more clues, since I’m feeling generous:
[ul]
[li]Big phrases start with smaller units. (Long words can also be shortened, which is important as well, but perhaps you should ignore that for now.)[/li]
[li]Small units can be strung into big phrases [/li][/ul]
Fish for more hints, if you like, but that should be plenty (and you can quote me on that!).
For example, the smaller unit at the start of this sentence is Big.
There’s no way you’ll ever solve my puzzle without Google. But if you Google the right terms, you will indeed pull up information on the word list all this fuss has been about. I promise you that.
There are various ways you can do this now.
One way is by going back to the beginning. Nothing in the original post was said simply, unfortunately. But it could have been! In a simpler form, all of it can be found verbatim in one place (except, of course, for the one word that doesn’t belong).
That was clearly too tricky to expect anyone to stumble upon, though. No worry; there are other ways to get information on this list of words.
For example, I started noting some good search terms in posts 302 and 303. Consider just beginning there. Those posts correspond to the answer key much more straightforwardly than the original one.
Biotop, in your puzzle does the order of the words you listed have anything to do with the answer?
No. I put the words randomly.
One of the few remaining words I have not given is : SOLITUDE.
The word REDDISH is here because the word RED is on the master list.
The word DRIED is here because the word DRY is on the master list.
The word MOUNTAINOUS is here because the word MOUNTAIN is on the master list.
Every word here should be some simpler word. Then you can go search for them verbatim on the master list. (Except, of course, for the word that doesn’t belong)
Here’s a couple of my favorites. Possibly/probably well known.
- It is topping to kiss a monkey.
- HIJKLMNO
Just to make them proper clues:
- It is topping to kiss a monkey (4)
- HIJKLMNO (5)
1.) Apex.
I’ve heard 2 before so I’ll leave it for someone else.
Here are some of my all-time favourites from various newspapers over the years:
- Church outing, in a sense. (15)
- Marine distributes cocaine. (7)
- Creature to remain in group. (5-6)
- Flexible musicians? (7-4)
- Spider can be found in a dictionary. (7)
Cryptic 2
Water
Tired riddle: Words ending in “–gry” (6)
#2
oceanic
webster (in that a spider spins webs, and Webster’s is a dictionary)
elastic band (pun)
I may have solved Indistinguishable’s riddle. I give my solution a 52.3% chance, since otherwise it seem quite a coincidence.
[SPOILER]
TORN, which is a form of “tear.”
When the words in Indistinguishable’s list are replaced with their base forms, all except TORN/TEAR appear on the Swadesh List of 100 words. This is a list used in linguistics; it is intended to represent basic vocabulary items present in almost every language, mostly words unlikely to be borrowed from another language.
(Another such list of 100 is Leipzig–Jakarta list - Wikipedia . That list omits not only tear but also dry, mountain and sleep.)
I may be the pot calling the kettle black, as some of my puzzles are hard, but due to my ignorances I had almost zero chance on some of these word list puzzles. I got this one (assuming my solution is correct), by replacing each word with a root form, per the hint, and noticing that all were “basic vocabulary” – I was already familiar with Swadesh’s List.[/SPOILER]
At last, septimus has the correct solution. Hooray!
In a forum like this, with yourself, Biotop and other expert solvers, a perfect puzzle is one which only one or two people solve. I am proud to finally get one; my joy would be diminished if it were easier.
… Of course some of these puzzles may be too sadistic for the original OP request; he wanted puzzles for a family get-together.
You were also the only one to crack my tile-coloring puzzle. You’re doing quite well!