CISRA Puzzle Competition 2011 - Hints

4A. A Typical Puzzle

• Stupid hints, nowadays. They all follow the same structure – give a big hint about the obvious first step (e.g. "find five words") which you've already worked out anyway, and then urge you to read the puzzle more carefully, as if you haven't pored over it already (e.g. "consume all the instructions, but not necessarily in order").
• Wow, such a useful first hint. Not. Then you find the second hint tells you to start by finding a set of five words of the same length, as if that wasn't actually one of the instructions written right there in the puzzle itself. And then try to apply other instructions to those words, as if that would make any difference. Boring.
• Okay, by the third hint, you'll already know the stuff about all the words being three letters long, and their equivalent numbers having interesting properties. That you're after a boring old five letter answer, with one letter provided by each of the words. And the hint doesn't tell you about the only little bit that you're still stuck on.