1Malaysia Hunt—Constructive Taglines

A common theme of hunt Qs which is no longer popular these days is that of spotting taglines on signboards. They emerge from time to time, but when they do, there will be very few of them.

Ordinarily, tagline Qs are very simple and straightforward. Let me give an example. Suppose there is a signboard containing the words "Air Asia" on it. And below those words is the tagline "Now everyone can fly". Now imagine that the CoC decides to set a question, of which he intends the "Air Asia" to be the required answer. How does he set the Q?

Q) Now everyone can fly.

As you can see, there is nothing in the clue that tells the hunter it is a tagline. It is all up to the hunter to reach the hunt sector and put two and two together. But when he finally realises that the Q is a tagline, how does he answer it? Well, he should simply write down what that tagline is referring to; in this case, it is referring to "Air Asia". So writing down "Air Asia" is quite good enough as the answer. There is no need to write down the entire tagline "Now everyone can fly", because that tagline is supposed to be the question, not the answer—hunters are supposed to write down the answer, not the question!

In the 1Malaysia Hunt, the CoC decided to throw in a "tagline" Q. But he did it differently from the normal way. Instead of quoting the tagline in verbatim as seen on the board, he put it like this:

Q29) Their tagline should be a constructive theme for us to emulate.

As I said, tagline Qs are not generally meant to be tough to answer. But in this case, it can become a bit complicated. Within that sector, there was a signboard containing "4Life", which is the business name, and then followed by the tagline "Together Building People".

Once again, we come to the same question—how should we write the answer?

Before we debate on how we should write the answer, we should first determine what the answer is.

Many of the hunters I have spoken to about this Q opined that the clue is asking for the name of the business, i.e. the "owner" of the tagline. In fact, similar as in the case of "Air Asia" above. I think that was the result of mechanical thinking. The mind has a sub-conscious tendency to follow the norm. So because it is the norm that a "tagline" Q requires the name of the business, the mind automatically assumes that that is always the case.

But what we have here is not the usual tagline Q. It is no more and no less a standard cryptic-style Q. For the benefit of the new hunters, the common format of a cryptic clue is like this:

[DEFINITION] + [CRYPTIC (or riddle) WORDPLAY]

Sometimes, it is also possible that the "definition" part of the clue is at the end of the sentence. The idea is that the "cryptic wordplay" part of the clue is supposed to produce the meaning of the "definition" part, and vice versa.

For example,

Being overweight, some of these bounce back (5)

In the above clue, "Being overweight" is the definition part of the clue; and "some of these bounce back" is the cryptic wordplay part. The word "some" is a hidden word indicator. It tells the solver that some of the letters found in "these bounce" will make the answer. Then the last word, "back", tells the solver to reverse those letters. And so, we will get obese, which agrees with "Being overweight".

Looking back at Q29, we are now able to see clearer based on the cryptic format:

[Their tagline] + [should be a constructive theme for us to emulate]

"Their tagline" is the definition part of the clue; and "should be a constructive theme for us to emulate" is the riddle part. From that riddle part, we need to find something that agrees with "Their tagline".

You will quickly notice that whether it's "His tagline" or "Her tagline" or "Their tagline", the thing we are looking for is the "tagline". Therefore the tagline is the answer we are looking for! It means that one way or another, the tagline must be written in the answer box.

But if there are many taglines found within that sector, which one should we pick? Well, from the "riddle" part of the clue, there is a mention of "constructive" (building) and "us", meaning people together. And so, we zoom in to "Together Building People", because those 3 words make a tagline; and a tagline is what's required.

But beyond that lies a deeper riddle. Should we, or shouldn't we, include the name of the business in the answer? If the clue had begun with "This tagline...", then I think the name of the business is not even important in this case. It is merely required as a "supporting evidence" that the hunter had actually spotted the required tagline. So in such a case, "Together Building People @ 4Life" is the way to go.

But what we have in Q29 is different—it begins with "Their tagline..."—so we ask ourselves why—"Their"? Could it be that the CoC had wanted the name of the business too as a significant part of the answer, and not merely as a "supporting evidence"?

This was the position I arrived at during the hunt. But I quickly decided that the CoC wanted the business name to be a significant part of the answer too. So, to be on the safer side, I instructed Vivian to write "4Life, Together Building People". These are 2 separate entities, of course, but I thought both are required as the answer for Q29.

I think it's also possible to write the answer as "Together Building People @ 4Life" anyway, in which case the fact that the tagline is found on the 4Life signboard might be interpreted as "belonging to 4Life". Just that I thought this approach may be a bit risky. In hindsight, I'm convinced that the CoC would have accepted both versions anyway!

So you see, such a simple Q can become quite complicated. The thought process can be quite daunting. But let me just say that if all these small effort can eventually translate into RM2,000, then it is well worth it!