All the questions in the last few of my KK Challenge hunts were successfully answered. Even what seemed to be extremely tough questions were answered by at least one team. When I was setting the questions for the KK Challenge 15 last Sunday, I was also confident that all my questions would be answered as well. But alas, one question was unanswered, and it broke that streak of "all questions answered". That question is the subject matter of this post.
Q7) On the board, it's underneath! It's underneath!
A7) 11 @ AGENSI NOMBOR RAMALAN SPORTS TOTO
When the riddle is seen from the perspective of the reader with the benefit of seeing it together with the required answer, it may seem like an easy question. That's because one can work his way backwards, without the distractions of other signboards, from the answer to the question. The task is then just to discover the explanation for that answer. However, during the hunt, there is no such benefit. The required answer is out there with hundreds of other potential candidates, and it would be quite an uphill task to try to work one's way backwards on trial and error without at least something as a guide or starting point.
That word "board" in the question is a double-edged sword of sort. On the one hand, it can be of assistance in drawing the hunter's attention to focus only on "board". But on the other hand, it can also be a source of confusion that can mislead the hunter to search at the wrong place!
The "board" in this case is not referring to signboards in the sector; rather it is referring to other boards, such as chess board, dart board and many other games where "boards" are involved. So, that is still quite a wide range of possibilities to sift through!
After the hunt, a participant, having been given the answer, said that all the other questions in this hunt were "fair play" except this Q7 because of the seemingly very wide range of possibilities for "board". However, as the setter, I feel that I have been fair, because the hunter should read the question in its entirety, not just focus on that word "board". The biggest challenge is that the hunter, when reading this question, while taking note of that word "board", must also realize the significance of the exclamation marks "!" at the ends of those repeated sentences. If he knows that those "!" are important, he will then be able to combine the hints in "board" and those "!", and perhaps that can then be the launching pad in his journey in the direction of the required solution.
At this juncture, I am reminded of a question set by Master Alvin Wong, a team member of Main Tembak in his hunt many years ago, which absolutely beat all the masters in the field including me! I thought that was an exceptional question, but perhaps it was not intended to be solvable? It was like this:
Q) LESS THAN ABOVE, ANSWER BELOW
A) COMMA
As you can see, the idea behind this riddle is quite similar with mine above. But the major difference is that in Alvin's question, there was no mention of "board" at all. It would require quite a magnificent leap of imagination, perhaps almost divine in nature, to think of the computer keyboard specifically! But it is still an impressive question nonetheless. I kept that knowledge somewhere in my brain and waited patiently for so many years until I judged it time for revenge. Thus Q7 of the KK Challenge 15.
Apart from the above, another hunter suggested that I should have allowed a gap between "underneath" and the "!", and even throw in a comma (,) and fullstop (.) at the end to help the hunters realize the significance of those "!". I found this suggestion somewhat silly because the gist of the Q is the challenge of realizing the significance of those "!". If I had to point out the significance of those "!" to the hunters, then I might as well tell them the answer to the question!
The point is that in the cryptic world, the setter is allowed to use punctuations as his weapon to mislead the solvers. To take another example of Alvin's question from a past hunt (yes, I don't want to be accused of promoting only my own riddles all the time!), check out this question which illustrates the use of punctuations to mislead:
Q) E - NAME = NAM
A) 66
A very simple illustration of how punctuations could be employed in hunt questions. The only thing that I would do differently in the above example is I would perhaps add a "?" at the end of that question.
So, if the trend is to be repeated, perhaps Alvin will strike back with his revenge in another 14 years from now! I just hope that I'm still alive to join the hunt and have not gone senile!
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