CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2013 - Solutions

3A. Good Directions

The clues in the table each refer to one of the eight cardinal and ordinal compass directions:

RIGHT HAND:

Lyrics from the song Into the WEST.
According to the novel (and musical) Wicked, this is the name of the Wicked Witch of the WEST.
The daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West was given the name NORTH WEST.
The wind of the SOUTH-WEST, according to the Winds of the Mediterranean.
Refers to the famous musical WEST Side Story.

LEFT HAND:

Refers to the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by NORTHWEST
Amongst the Guardians of the Directions, is associated with the SOUTH-EAST
Astronomical name of the constellation commonly referred to as the SOUTHern Cross
Mascot for the SOUTH Sydney Rugby League Football Club.
Scientific name for the EASTern grey kangaroo.

The column headers RIGHT HAND and LEFT HAND, plus the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal positions of each entry, refer to the flag semaphore encoding scheme. The seemingly reversed column titles (RIGHT HAND on the left, LEFT HAND on the right) is consistent with an observer viewing a person perform flag semaphore. Imagining the compass directions to be flag directions (from the observer's point of view), and looking up encoded letters for each row of the table, we obtain the following:

WEST + NORTHWEST sempahore O O

WEST + SOUTHEAST sempahore S S

NORTHWEST + SOUTH sempahore C C

SOUTHWEST + SOUTH sempahore A A

WEST + EAST sempahore R R

The flags spell the message OSCAR, which is the answer to the puzzle.

OSCAR is also the letter designation (O) for the red and yellow flag with which flag semaphore is performed. Finally, the puzzle title alludes to Oscar as an Academy Award, such as might be awarded for Best Director.