CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2009 - Solutions

This is the archive of the 2009 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.

B.1 Snip

You should snip the beginnings and endings of the horseshoe shape and join them up to form words. For example, snip "partic" from the beginning and "ipate" from the end to form the word "participate". Doing so all the way to the middle gives you:

partic-ipate
wor-ds
back-wards
eig-ht
ne-ves
si-x
fi-ve
do-or
yo-ur
a-t
knoc-king
se-mit
ha-rd
fo-ur
ee-rht
t-wo
one

You could also potentially start in the middle, snip out the word "one", push the two sides in to close the gap, then remove "two", and so on.

The word "backwards" gives you the clue that some of the words are backwards. The words form a poem:

one two eerht four
hard semit knocking at your door
five six neves eight
backwards words participate

The backwards words are:

three times seven

Three times seven is TWENTYONE, which is the answer.