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.

C.1 Derivation

The puzzle title, "Derivation", is one of the meanings of the word "of". In this puzzle, each word on the outer circle can be linked with a word in one of the inner circles by the word "of", to form a well-known phrase or title.

For example, three outer words link with "Nations":

• Wealth of Nations - The 1776 magnum opus of the economist Adam Smith
• Rise of Nations - The title of a popular 2003 real-time strategy computer game
• League of Nations - An inter-governmental organisation that was replaced by the United Nations

And so on.

These links can be arranged such that each inner circle word links with exactly three outer circle words (there are 30 words around the outer circle and 10 words in inner circles) as follows:

This results in lines crossing some of the individual letters in the small inner circles. The letters with no lines through them spell out a message when read from top to bottom: "COUNT LINES". This is a clue to the next step, which is to count the lines crossing each letter.

There are six letters with only one line crossing them, which spell out "BREATH" when read from top to bottom. Similarly, letters with two lines crossing them spell out "GAME", while letters with three lines crossing them spell out "PROOF".

The final step is to link these three words to a single word, using "of" as a connector as in the first step. One word in particular provides a strong match for each of "Breath", "Game", and "Proof":

• Breath of Life - A common phrase referring to artificial respiration (and also the title of several songs and films)
• Game of Life - Referring to the cellular automaton Conway's Game of Life (or the Milton Bradley game)
• Proof of Life - The title of a 2000 action/thriller film

The answer is LIFE.