CISRA Puzzle Competition 2008 - Solutions

This is the archive of the 2008 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.

A.2 Gridlook

The grid of letters contains some words and phrases, in the style of a word search puzzle.

Some of these phrases are reminiscent of movie titles, but each movie title is missing a number. The missing numbers form the sequence one to thirteen.

The missing numbers can be at the start, end, or middle of the movie titles. In each case, a letter appears in place of the missing number.

Ordering the incomplete movie titles by their missing number gives:

THOURPHOTO	One Hour Photo	T = 1
HTHOUSANDANDONE	Two Thousand And One	H = 2
EHUNDRED	Three Hundred	E = 3
NINETEENEIGHTYT	Nineteen Eighty-Four	T = 4
NINETOH	Nine to Five	H = 5
THEITHSENSE	The Sixth Sense	I = 6
RYEARSINTIBET	Seven Years In Tibet	R = 7
TLEGGEDFREAKS	Eight-Legged Freaks	T = 8
THEWHOLEYYARDS	The Whole Nine Yards	Y = 9
NCANOES	Ten Canoes	N = 10
OCEANSI	Ocean's Eleven	I = 11
NMONKEYS	Twelve Monkeys	N = 12
THEETHFLOOR	The Thirteenth Floor	E = 13

Reading the subsituted letters in order gives the phrase "the thirty nine". Using the same motif employed in the wordsearch, we need a movie that uses the number 39 in its title. A quick search on the Internet (or good movie knowledge) leads to the classic Alfred Hitchcock film The Thirty-Nine Steps. The answer is STEPS.