If you have been hunting for a long time, you're bound to notice that there are recurring tricks in the questions. The setters have the tendency to repeat some words as clues for specific answers. For example, the expression, "The French" has been used many, many times to point to the words "LE" or "LA"; "Love" to point to the digit "ZERO"; letters of the alphabet used to represent numbers in the form of the roman numerals.
The inclusion of the word "way" in the question very frequently refers to road signs, and it covers quite a wide range of possible words, such as ROAD (RD), JALAN (JLN), LORONG (LRG), PATH, LANE, AVENUE (AVE) etc. Yes, abbreviations are commonly included, and the setter owes no duty of informing the solver that abbreviations are involved in the riddle!
For example, the following is a question that I set some 16 years ago during my early days as the Clerk-of-Course (CoC):
Q) Follow this way to get the answer, 8 of which results in a gross outcome!
A) JLN LAPAN BELAS
Now let's anaylse the question. It says, follow this "WAY", meaning that whatever is the answer that we're looking for, it follows the word "WAY" on the signboard. In this case, "WAY" = "JLN" (abbreviation for JALAN). But now the solver has to solve "8 of which results in a gross outcome".
As you can see, 8 of LAPAN BELAS = 8 X 18 = 144; and 144 is equivalent to a GROSS. That is why the required answer is: JLN LAPAN BELAS.
In July last year, when I organized the KK Challenge 15, I set the following question:
Q) Seen at the end of 4 months, it's one way to get the answer
A) BERI LALUAN
The explanation is like this. Those 3 letters, "BER" are seen at the end of 4 months, i.e. SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER and DecemBER. Then what about that letter "i"? Well, it's ONE, as a roman numeral. And then we come to that word "WAY" again, and again it's referring to a road sign. In this case, that "WAY" is equated to the word "LALUAN" on the board.
Many of the hunters that have joined my previous hunts would know that I'm obsessed with psychology, and I have the tendency to experiment with hunters on account of psychology! Humans are after all quite similar with most other mammals - they are essentially creatures of habit. When they are used to seeing that word "WAY" in hunt questions as indicating road signs, they will program their minds to automatically narrow down their search to mainly road signs only.
I was wondering to myself, what if I can set a question with the involvement of the word "WAY", but not referring to a road sign? How difficult would it be to extract oneself from the notion of focusing on the road signs in the sector?
That was my thought process when I set this question:
Q33) The way to take a break?
The question itself isn't very sophisticated, and when I set it, I had intended it to be of par difficulty and perhaps solvable by even a new hunter. That is why I was surprised when only one team was able to solve it during the hunt! Another team got the answer, but they did not actually solve it.
REFLEXOLOGY AVEREST
As you can see, that word "WAY" in the question is still referring to the kind of way commonly used in cryptic questions, but here is it not referring to a road sign! In this case, "WAY" = "AVE" (abbreviation for AVENUE); and then the expression "TAKE A BREAK" is of course "REST". Joining the 2 components together by the charade operation would yield the word "AVEREST". As I said, not a very sophisticated riddle, but when the mind keeps trying to make the connection with road signs, it can be a challenging question anyway!
The use of the word "WAY" in this case is still the same as the many "ways" that have been used in past hunt questions, but it is a different way here because it does not refer to the road sign!
No comments:
Post a Comment