KK Challenge 5—Able To Erase

Most of those who've been hunting in my KK Challenge series would know that I will always bring the teams to Lintas Square, an estate which is ideal for treasure hunting because of its quietness during the public holidays. Hunters will have plenty of room to park their cars, and hardly any noise from passing traffics.

However, it is also known that because of such favourable hunting conditions, I'm bound to conjure up some tough questions within this sector. Usually, there will be at least one very tough question. And KK Challenge 5 is no exception.

Q35) Let E follow to be able to erase.

(I'm using some colours for instructional purposes. Obviously, no colours were used in the actual clue on the day of the hunt).

A typical style which I have come to describe as the jigsaw puzzle format. One part of the riddle requires a certain operation comprising adding or deleting some letters to or from a given word to form another word(s); and that resulting word(s) shall then equate to the given definition in the remaining part of the clue.

First, the hunter has to understand the "instruction" of the jigsaw puzzle. In this particular case, the hunter is required to find the answer which is found on a signboard. Then the letters LETE are to follow that answer, i.e. to come after that answer, and then when taken together as a whole, should equate to ABLE TO ERASE. This can be shown in a simplified clue as follows:

[The required answer] + LETE = ABLE TO ERASE

At this point, perhaps the average hunter will be able to see that the required letters to be placed in front of LETE should be DE, so that when taken together, we can get DELETE, which means ERASE.

However, the master hunter will know that in this case DE fails for two reasons. Firstly, there's no signboard containing DE within that sector. Secondly, even if there's a DE in that sector, that still won't answer the question perfectly, because, strictly speaking, the word DELETE does not account for the word ABLE in the clue. In order to account for ABLE, we need the word CAN together with DE on the signboard, so that we will eventually get CAN DELETE, i.e. ABLE TO ERASE.

Well, unfortunately the hunter will not find CAN DE on any of the signboards within that sector. But there is a signboard bearing C & E ENTERPRISE, which fits the requirement since "&" is "AND". Hence C & E = CANDE.

Although the solution may appear very complicated, I'm convinced that it's within the capability of those strong hunters in the KK Challenge 5 to solve it. Unfortunately, most of them wasted too much time during the earlier part of the hunt and therefore did not have sufficient time to properly deal with this question. Consequently, no one solved this question in the end. Oh! what a waste!