CISRA Puzzle Competition 2012 - Solutions
3B. Take Sides
The first step in this puzzle is identifying all of the objects shown in the photos. They are all listed in alphabetical order, which may help to disambiguate some objects that have more than one possible name. In order, the objects are:
ant, apple, arm, ball, bill, board, boat, bob, box, butter, cake, candle, cat, chair, cheese, cloak, clock, cork, cup, fire, fish, flag, fly, foot, gum, head, hook, house, knife, light, lion, nut, paper, pen, pick, pine, red, room, rose, screw, shoe, soap, spoon, star, stone, tooth, tower, wall, water, wood
There are 50 short words, but 25 longer word spaces in the crossword grid. This suggests combining pairs of the short words into longer words. (Taking sides by putting one word on each side to make new words.)
There are several ambiguous possible combinations, for example: fish-hook, starfish, stonefish; or firefly, firewall, firewater, firewood. The trick is to use the less ambiguous combinations (e.g. pineapple), in concert with fitting words into the crossword grid, to narrow down the possibilities.
A good place to start is by noticing there is a six-letter word in the grid, which requires combining two three-letter words. There are three possibilities here: bobcat, gumnut, redgum. Gumnut would require the top intersecting word to have a U in the third letter, which cannot be the case given our list. Redgum requires the bottom intersecting word to start with M, which also cannot be. So the six-letter word is BOBCAT. Another starting point is to notice there are three ten-letter words in the grid, and nothing longer. This restricts the possibilities for long words quite dramatically.
Working around the grid and carefully eliminating possibilities, it is possible to complete the grid:
Now the coloured squares come into play. Reading left-to-right and top-to-bottom (so no anagramming is required) reveals the following words:
- Red: FACE
- Green: SHELF
- Blue: MARK
- Cyan: WEEK
- Magenta: POINT
- Yellow: GAME
The fact that these spell out words could also be used to back-solve some of the entries into the grid.
The theme of the puzzle suggests that we need to combine these six words somehow. But besides the possible game-point, there aren't any direct combinations. We have to make the slightly sideways logical leap that these words should be combined with other words that are not given. These words form compound words in sets of three with two new words:
- BOOKSHELF
- BOOKMARK
- WEEKEND
- ENDPOINT
- ENDGAME
This gives us BOOK and END. When you set up bookends, you take sides by putting one on each side of a group of books. "Bookend" is also used metaphorically in situations where things are placed on either side of something. The solution to the puzzle is BOOKEND.