I Love Sundays 我爱星期天

Yes, I do love Sundays. Not because Sunday is a holy day; not because Sunday is a sleep-in day. But the main reason is that Sunday is the only day in the week where New Zealand Herard (the daily newspaper) provides two solid pages of puzzles. What is more? Sunday Herard (not the daily NZ Herard) is the only paper that provides answers to all the puzzles published on that same day. In other words, I do not have to wait a day before I can see where I have made errors in the solutions.

My main Sunday activity especially during these winter months, is to do all the puzzles found in this two pages. In the process, I am learning from the solutions to the various puzzles (1) the subtleties of the English Language; (2) increasing my English vocabulary; and, (3) improving my logical reasoning powers.

Let us now look at each of the puzzles of Sunday 18th July 2021 Herard and discuss some of the finer points of each puzzle.

Puzzle # 1: Lost in the Triangle

Read the notes at the side and then the bottom of the triangle. “Search the triangle to find a ten-letter word or phrase by moving from one chamble to another. You may only enter each of the chambers once and may only proceed through openings in the walls. The first letter can be in any of the ten chambers.”

I am sure we can all get the solution very easily here. We start from the bottom left hand corner and move up - I N V I then move down on step and done sideways. Lastly, move back up nd we can now find the solution - I N V I T A T I O N. Invitation.

Puzzle # 2: Build a Word from the alphabets in the five given blocks. The given alphabets are E L A G S. The instructions given are:

(a) A word must be at least three letters long. (b) Each letter in a word can only be used once. (c) Plurals are acceptable. (d) No word starting with a capital letter, like the name of a country, is allowed. (e) At least one word must use all the five letters given.

I can see one five-lettered word - GALES [gale is a word meaning a very strong wind].

From GALES, we can have ALE, ALES, GAL, GALS, LEA, LEAS, LAG, LAGS, SALE, SAG, SAGE, AGE, AGES, LEG, SEA, SEAL, LEG, and LEGS. Any more?

Puzzle # 3: Junior Crossword: Take a look at the clues provided and find suitable words that fit the clues. Place these words in either the rows or the columns under the appropriate numbers indicated from the clues given.

Looking at the clues for ‘ACROSS’ i.e. rows, I can find the following answers: (3) ‘Cricket bats are made of’ (WOOD);

(7) ‘Tidy’ is NEAT; (13) ‘Against the law’ is ILLEGAL;

(16) ‘Stuff for shining furniture and cars’ is POLISH;

(17) ‘Prison’ is JAIL;

(18) ‘An important test’ is EXAM; and (19) ‘Do again’ is REPEAT.

For the columns (i.e. Down), we have (1) ‘A grape plant’ is VINE;

(4) ‘Opposite of under’ is OVER;

(5) ‘A small hollow in the cheek or chin’ is DIMPLE;

(6) ‘Small type of motorbike’ is SCOOTER;

(9) ‘Of no use at all’ is USELESS;

(11) ‘Human’ is PEOPLE;

(12) ‘Grand house for a king’ is PALACE; and (15) ‘Not hilly’ is FLAT.

With the above words completed, there are only four words left. It is now easy to solve (2) down ‘Almost’ is NEARLY; (1) across ‘Disappear’ is VANISH; (10) across ‘A fruit tree flower’ is BLOSSOM; and (8) across ‘Shriek’ is SCREAM.

The complete solution of puzzle # 3 is shown here.

Puzzle # 4: Word Search: From the table of words below, find out where the twenty-one words as given below are hidden.

These words can be horizontally or vertically arranged or even arranged from backwards to front.

Also, these words can also be diagonally arranged and again can be from downwards up. The following are examples of some words found:

(1) Row 1: INNERMOST - straight from third letter across the row.

(2) Words like ICONIC, IMPURE, and IMPORTANT, are diagonally arranged from left to right, up to bottom, starting at row 1 column 1 for ICONIC; at row 3 column 2 for IMPURE; and at row 6 column 2 for IMPORTANT.

Puzzle # 5: Target Word: How many words of four or more letters can you make? There is at least one nine-letter word. Each letter may be used only once and all words must contain the centre letter. No words starting with a capital, no plurals ending in ‘s’ unless the word is also a verb.

Words that can be found as solutions here include: CAGE, AGREE, GRACE, GATE, GEAR, GREAT, RAGE, TARGET, TIGER, TRAGIC, EAGER, GAIT.

PUZZLE # 6: KAKURO: I am new to this puzzle but it does look interesting. There is a twelve rows by ten columns grid and we have to fill the blank cells of the grid with numbers 1 to 9. Like Sudoku, there should be no repeating numbers in any RUN LINE, which can be either horizontally or vertically placed. The LINES must be filled in with numbers which add up to the total in the shaded box at the top or at the beginning of each LINE.

Before starting to solve this puzzle, it is useful to learn some number combinations. For instance, a clue of 16 over two cells can only be numbers 9 and 7 and a clue of 7 over three cells can only be 1 + 2 + 4.

Row 2, columns 2, 3; x + y = 17. The numbers have to be 9 and 8. Column 2, rows 2, 3, 4 add up to 19 so the numbers have to be 9, 3, 7. The solution of the entire grid can be seen in the photograph above.

Puzzle # 7: Blackout: In the grid, the blackened cells have been replaced by letters. The task here is to discover where these cells are and black these out again.

The way I proceed with this task is to look at the grid row by row. Row #1: No word found.

Row # 2: There are two words here (1) CLAIMS; and (2) ENVELOPE. So we can black out the word X.

Row # 4: The words found are: (3) STARRED; and (4) LOGICAL.

Row # 6: The words are: (5) PARALLEL; and (6) TOPIC.

Row # 8: (7) CERTAIN; and (8) DRESSES.

Row # 10: (9) ADMIT; and (10) COURTYARD.

Row # 12: (11) GENERAL; and (12) TONIGHT.

Row # 14: (13) NUISANCE; and (14) HEAVEN.

Now we look vertically at each Column, we find:

Column A: The words here are (15) ACTS; and (16) CHANGING. Column B: (17) TRACE. Column C: (18) GALA; (19) ROMANTIC.

Column E: (20) UMBRELLA; and (21) THREAD.

Column G: (21) EDGE; and (22) NECKLACE.

Column I: (23) ENCLOSED; and (24) UNTO.

Column K: (25) HEIGHT; and (26) EXTENDED.

Column M: (27) CONCEPT; and (28) GIVE.

Column O: (29) REPLACES; and (30) TUNE. The entire solution can be viewed here.

Puzzles # 8, 9, 10: Sudoku (Easy); (Medium); and (Hard): We shall not go into the detailed logical search of solutions here. Suffice it to say that this website has heaps of examples on how Sudoku can logically be solved.

The three solutions to the Soduku Puzzles.

Puzzle # 11: Simon Shuker’s Code-Cracker. Each number in the Code-Cracker represents a different letter of the English alphabet. There is a clue supplied here and for today the clue is number 20 representing ” K “. The first word to find is a word with the codes: 20; 8; 8; 14; 8; 15; and 6 - a seven-lettered word. With 20 representing K, and three number 8’s in the letter, 8 has to be a vowel - one of A, E, I, O, U. This first word is either KEENEST or KEEPERS.

If we use KEENEST as the first word, then number 2 = E, number 14 = N, number 15 = S and number 6 = T. We shall go through the grid to replace all such number codes with the correct alphabets.

The next word that can be solved is the word with only one letter to solve and this is K; E; N; N; E; 11. It is obvious that the letter for 11 is ‘ L ‘ for Kennel. Following this another eight-lettered word reads: E; N; L; 16; S; T; E; 13. There are one possible answer here ENLISTED.

Another seven-lettered word to find next is 3; E; L; E; 12; 5; N; T. The only word fitting in here is ELEGANT - refined and tasteful in appearance. So, 12 = G and 5 = A.

The only word to have a possible answer to: D; 2; 3; N; S; I; 17; E is DOWNSIZED where 2 = O; 3 = W; and 17 = Z. Two bonus words arising from this is the word WOODWIND and NEWSREADER. 9 = R.

The next two words can now be fitted into the grid. These are BOW; and BEGIN where 1 = B. There is also the letter V in the word VERVE; V = 7. The word VENUE is also obvious to me. 18 = U. Then comes the word MUSEUM that I can easily find in the grid. 22 = M. The word MAD is a bonus in this round.

The next word to find has the following number codes: 4; 10; A; U; 24; 24; E; U; R; S. The only word that fits here is CHAUFFEURS where 4 = C; 10 = H; 24 = F. The bonus words uncovered now are: SHEAF; ELF; BUFF; THORAX; ABJECT; and SEQUENCE. The last two letters with codes 25 and 26 can easily be guessed.

Puzzle # 12: Giant Crossword. There are 83 words to be found here in this Giant Crossword. Words across include: (1) Separated (5 letters) = APART; (14) Crowd (5 letters) = HORDE; (15) Foyer (5 letters) = LOBBY; (16) Very slow progress (6, 4 letters) = SNAILS, PACE; (17) Punctuation mark (5 letters) = COMMA; (19) Female sheep (3 letters) = EWE.

The solution for this giant crossword is shown in the photography below:

Puzzle # 13: Cryptic Crossword: I have never like this Cryptic Crossword Puzzle mainly because I cannot understand the ‘cryptic clues’ given. Therefore I am looking forward for some guides from readers. For instance, in Across 1 “Let rich say how screamingly funny it is (10)” the clue can just be “screamingly funny” and the answer is just the same “hysterical”. I can go on and on reading this. Suffice it to say that I am no fan of Cryptic Crossword.

The answers to the clues are given below.