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CISRA Puzzle Competition 2012 - Solutions

2D. Danger Looms

The clues look like cryptic crossword clues, and the provided graphics look like portions of crossword grids that have somehow been scrambled and cut up. There are several different things to do, and these steps can be done in parallel, and may inform one another:

Part A. Solve the cryptic clues. These are as follows:

ACROSS

1. Team court game not using ball made of wicker. (6) BASKET
1. Agar fed not one file consolidation. (6) DEFRAG
1. Burning down a man from Gor's big city. (5) ARSON
1. Ale men risk damage to tooth surface. (6) ENAMEL
5. The French lose the end of a leg. (2) LE
5. Anger over last part of a blaze. (3) IRE
6. Quidditch player takes a licking. (6) BEATER
6. Switch and explore a Windows UI. (4) AERO
6. 70s rock without our glamour. (4) GLAM
6. Dog talk found in two of the best. (4) WOOF
7. Confused Shakespearean king not a fake. (4) REAL
7. It will include serge, denim, gabardine. (5) TWILL
7. Hair extension set few back, in part. (4) WEFT
8. Emergency room hesitation. (2) ER
8. A short sword handle to the rear. (3) AFT
9. Silk fabric for reformed saint. (5) SATIN
9. Wise bird hits a new low. (3) OWL
9. 50 cents to the leader of the European Union. (2) EU
9. Lexical analyser shoves backside in public relations. (6) PARSER
10. Chaotic evil psionic monster super user. (2) SU
10. Cloth maker fits top of wig to headless aquatic rodent. (6) WEAVER
11. Plus a confused father. (3) ADD
12. Fiddler lives in one room. (4) NERO
12. He replaced top of violin with a warp shifter. (6) HEDDLE
13. A named reveller of Dionysus. (6) MAENAD
14. Strong light permutes the reals. (5) LASER

DOWN

1. Meat - mmm! (3) EAT
1. Spanish donkey west of a rabbit hole. (6) BURROW
1. A hit to destroy self-confidence. (5) ABASH
1. Vacuum flask takes a penny to remove distortion. (6) DEWARP
2. Fill up on one-on-one referee combat, lost in the middle. (6) REFUEL
2. Murder in task ill advised. (4) KILL
2. Compass points make current events. (4) NEWS
2. A river, or a rose? (6) FLOWER
3. Referee ums and ahs, sends decision to video replay. (6) REFERS
3. The Mesozoic and Paleozoic are back in time. (3) ERA
3. French rocket indeterminate in area. (6) ARIANE
3. Placed bottom before sun. (3) SAT
4. A hot head to strengthen steel. (6) TEMPER
4. Starts with Genesis, ends with Lot. (2) OT
4. Not "no-melt". (6) MOLTEN
4. Cheese shredder says it's child friendly. (6) GRATER
5. Pine leaf used for knitting. (6) NEEDLE
5. A note in the city of angels. (2) LA
6. Pink parrot loses tail at a party. (4) GALA
7. More obnoxious ship steerer loses five hundred. (5) RUDER
8. Old Italian price for returned pomegranate kernel. (4) LIRA
8. Little mixed up female sheep. (3) EWE
10. The Don gives affirmative signal. (3) NOD
11. Last bits of hula hoops and yo-yos seen on TV. (3) ADS
11. Emily names a measure of character. (2) EM
13. District attorney visits Russia? Yes! (2) DA

Many of the answer words are related to the art of weaving:
BASKET - a woven product
BEATER, NEEDLE, HEDDLE - parts of a loom
WOOF, WEFT - synonyms for the thread drawn horizontally through the warp thread during weaving
WEAVER - one who weaves
TWILL, SATIN - woven fabrics

These may provide a hint for...

Part B. Create the crossword grids.

The intuitive leap here is that the grids have been supplied as two-sided strips, 6 squares long and 1 square wide. You need to cut out the rectangles and fold along the dotted lines to form the two-sided strips. Then you need to weave the 12 strips together in the standard alternating fashion to form a double-sided 6×6 crossword grid.

When you do this, half of the squares will be on the inside, facing other squares on the crossing strips of paper. The whole thing can be pulled apart and rewoven with the unused squares now facing out and the previously used squares now facing in, to produce two new crossword grids, making a total of four possible grids.

Each grid follows the standard rules for numbering of the squares to indicate where the clued words fit, and the usual rule that the grid is 180° rotationally symmetric (ignoring the extra white arrows and numbers for now). These restrictions help in assembling the right strips in the right places.

Part C. Place the words into the crossword grids.

The clues are numbered and fit into the resulting crossword grids as indicated, but there is no indication of which grid any given clue fits into. Using the restrictions of word length and interlocking letters, it is possible to fit them into the correct grids. If some of the cryptic clues have not yet been solved, this step provides a chance to backsolve any missing entries.

The completed grids looks like this:

The placement of the individual strips in the weaving is indicated by the blue and red notations. The strips can be woven to form the grids marked A and B in blue. Undoing all of the weaving and using the previously hidden squares on each strip, the strips can be woven to form grids marked C and D in red. The notations on the squares indicate:

  • First letter: the completed grid formed.
  • Number: the number of the strip in the woven grid, counting 1 to 6 either top to bottom, or left to right.
  • Second letter (h or v): whether the strip runs horizontally or vertically in the given grid.

These notations match to the original pieces given on the three pages of the puzzle as follows:

Part D. Now the numbered white arrows come in. They point to certain letters in the grid, which are shown shaded above. These letters, arranged in numerical sequence as indicated by the white numbers, spell out the message: WHO IS PETER PARKER

Peter Parker is the secret identity of that web-weaving superhero, and this puzzle's solution: SPIDER-MAN.

Puzzle design notes:

Unfortunately due to an error, the third crossword piece on the middle page of pieces had a mistake in it which lasted almost throughout the entire competition. The two black squares marked A3v and C2h were incorrectly printed one square to the left on the page. This makes the grids impossible to solve. We didn't notice this during the competition because so many teams managed to get the right answer without reporting the error, and the few teams who did report a possible error were contradictory in their descriptions. We detected no errors in two independent test solves of the puzzle (we're still not sure how we managed to do this), so were (wrongly) confident there was no error. Sorry to any teams who were mystified by this.