I've mentioned that whenever I set treasure hunt questions, I'd try to keep them short and precise. The words found in my questions are there for special purposes. Firstly, they are to give instructions, cryptically, to the solvers what to do with the letters or others words found in the sentences in order to derive the answers. Secondly, those same words are also used to deceive the solvers somehow. I hardly ever include words which are specifically for the purpose of deceiving the solvers only, but have no role in deriving the answers. They are of course exceptions to this general guide of mine.
Q12) This is not a financial institution but margin trading is available here.
A12) GARMIN
GARMIN is the result of the rearrangement of the letters found in MARGIN by means of the anagram indicator, TRADING. In other words, it is possible to find the answer by just "Margin trading is available here". However, in this particular case, I concur with the CoC—that there is an important purpose for "This is not a financial institution" because it blocks the possible literal meaning of the question, i.e. perhaps some solvers might give some banks found within that sector as the answers. Therefore, "This is not a financial institution" are necessary words in the question.
Q8) This Kepala Batas Member of Parliament may be sitting in the cabinet but isn't aligned to any political party.
A8) THE BOWL KOPITIAM
A 19-word clue—unusually long for a treasure hunt question, unless of course if you are Mr Baskaran. According to the CoC, the solution is like this:
KEPALA = Initial indicator;
Hence,
KAPALA BATAS = B
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT = OWL
Therefore, B + OWL = BOWL
However, there might have been a sign with, say, Pak Lah or AAB or Prime Minister etc within that sector. Therefore, he included "isn't aligned to any political party" in the clue. That would automatically exclude all the answers in the form of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and its possible synonyms, because of course the man is indeed aligned to a political party.
But the CoC also included "may be sitting in the cabinet". And immediately we ask ourselves why? This is an extract of how the CoC justifies himself in an email to me this afternoon (I'm posting it here with his permission):
"...the "may be sitting in the cabinet" was meant to mislead one to thinking of a cabinet member and/or tighten the fact that some bowls may sit in a kitchen cabinet."
I can accept the fact that these few words might have misled some people about cabinet in the political sense, although I doubt it very much. At least not with the kind of people hunting that day.
But as far as to "tighten the fact that some bowls may sit in a kitchen cabinet", I must beg to differ. "May be sitting in the cabinet" has no role to play in deriving the answer; those words are included solely for the purpose of deceiving the hunters. And I don't believe that they can help to "tighten" the answer as well. "May be" means maybe yes, or maybe not. Besides, there must be many other items that can be found in a kitchen cabinet anyway. I'd like to mention here that I don't keep my bowls (and certainly not my balls) in my kitchen cabinet—I keep them in an air-tight plastic container because I have a phobia with crawling insects going all over them!
The inclusion of "may be sitting in the cabinet" does not make the intended solution any less accurate; just that it's not something that I'd do in my own questions. It is an interesting way to cloud the minds of the solvers by throwing in lines upon lines of grandfather stories until a point where merely reading the entire sentence is a marathon in itself. I know of a Mr Baskaran who has a knack of doing such things, except that he does it to the extreme!
Q11) Vehicle journeys back not in kilometres but in miles.
A11) MIRACLES
VEHICLE = CAR
JOURNEYS BACK = reversal indicator
Therefore, we get RAC (reverse of CAR)
RAC in MILES = MIRACLES
And then there is no purpose for "not in kilometres" except to try to confuse the solvers. Of course it doesn't result in the answer being any less accurate. In fact, if he likes, the CoC can include "not in metres, and neither in feet nor yard too" in the question. And that still won't affect the accuracy of the intended solution.
In the end all I can say is that the solutions are accurate, but it's just not my style, that is all. I will try to deceive the solvers of course, but I will do so only by using the words required to derive the answer(s).
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