theSun Hunt 2008—With vs Without

IMAGINE that you are blind; and I'm describing a car to you:

The car without an engine.

You are unable to see the car, but do you think:

A) The car has an engine

B) The car has no engine

C) Could be both above

OK, now let me rephrase the description:

The car with an engine.

You are still blind, but which of the answers A, B or C is the most accurate?

Now imagine that you're in a treasure hunt; and I am asking you spot a signboard based on this criteria:

Signboard without the letter M

Would you scan the sector for a signboard:

D) Containing the letter M

E) No letter M found thereon

Getting confused already? OK, let me go a little bit further; what if I give you this instruction:

Search for a signboard containing ABC without the letter M

And within that sector, you see 2 signboards containing:

F) ABC

G) ABCM

Which of the 2 would you choose? Both F and G contain ABC on them, but F is without M. Would you say F answers the clue perfectly?

Now consider this question from yesterday's hunt:

Q30) Unacceptable service without a thousand at a district.

The first time I read this clue, I saw in my mind a signboard containing something which can fit the cryptic requirement of "Unacceptable service", and that something must be without the letter M (or K). Then that is followed by something which answers "at a district".

That then was the basic search criteria within that very long sector with so many signboards. But I thought it wasn't that bad, because all I had to do was to focus only on the signboards without the letter M (or K) on them. But as I was scanning through that sector, I saw:

ACME @ SOHO

That "@ SOHO" attracted my attention because I thought it could satisfy "at a district". But now we have a problem; ACME contains the M (thousand), whereas the clue clearly says "without a thousand".

Since I was running out of time, I texted this signboard to my team mate anyway on the strength of "@ SOHO". But I was almost certain this was the intended answer. I did not know that my team mate had by then submitted our answer sheet, which was a shame because this answer turned out to be the required one, even though it obviously did not answer the question!

Let us now find out what really happened here.

I have seen similar hunt questions in the past, where "without" actually meant "with"! The setter had intended to instruct the hunters to look for a board containing something that when the letter M is removed therefrom, we are left with something which agrees with "Unacceptable service". The problem is that the sentence does not actually say so!

I have discussed this problem in the past; a possible improvement is something like this:

Unacceptable service if without a thousand at a district.

Now there can be no mistaking the intention of the setter. Because we have all heard of the basic rule of cryptic clueing before:

You may not mean what you say; but you must say what you mean.

In this clue, the setter did not mean what he said. So I suppose he has satisfied the first part of the rule. But did he say what he mean? I did not think he did, so in my opinion he has failed to observe the second rule of cryptic clueing! And it's for this reason that I think the setter has failed in this particular case.

theSun Hunt 2008—Peril Of Singing Medicine Man

Those of you who're avid cryptic crosswords players would know the general structure of a cryptic clue.

In a typical cryptic clue, there is usually something that defines the answer. That something is usually located at either ends of the sentence. Then within the sentence itself, there is a keyword which will signal to the solver the kind of operation involved to derive the answer. That keyword is commonly known as the indicator. For example, when there is an anagram indicator, the solver will know that he has to rearrange the letters found in word (s) to form a new word (s), thus deriving the answer. The word (s) which is/are the target (s) of the indicator are commonly known as the fodder. Most of the time, the fodder is located adjacent to the indicator. However, sometimes, the fodder is located several words away from the indicator.

Consider this simple example:

Opening of emporium

That word "opening" is an initial indicator. The fodder in this case is the word "emporium" even though that word is separated from the indicator by the word "of". That "of" is there mainly for grammatical purposes only; it plays no part in arriving at the answer. Some setters may even go as far as:

Opening of the emporium

In both cases, we are concerned with the letter "e", which is the first letter of the word "emporium".

When the solver reads the above questions, he sees this in his mind:

Opening of the word "emporium"

Now let's have a look at this question which surfaced during theSun Hunt 2008:

Q6) A medicine man beginning to sing here.

Where should we start? Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I am concerned, I usually try to single out all the keywords first, i.e. those which are potential indicators. Then I'd try to identify the fodders. And finally, if there are definitions involved, I would look up possible synonyms in a thesaurus.

In this case, the word "beginning" stands out from the rest because it is a potential initial indicator. But then if it is indeed an initial indicator, then where is the fodder?

IF "beginning" is meant for "medicine man", then it means we're looking for "mm" (the first letters of "medicine man"). Or perhaps it's meant only for the word "man" which is adjacent to "beginning". On the other hand, it is also possible that we're looking for the first letters of "to" or even "to sing". These are the possibilities which we can work on before even reaching the question sector. It is always a good idea to have at least a rough idea what we're looking for before reaching the sector.

OK, fine. So now we are in the question sector; and after combing it, we find 2 appealing signboards. I saw AMOS; and Ek Leong saw AVALALA. And believe it or not, we debated quite a bit about these 2 possible answers. In the end, we ended up with a 50-50 vote—Ek Leong and Kok Cheeng were for AVALALA; and I was lucky to have won the support of Kah Sing for AMOS.

Now let's reason it out and I'll leave it to you to decide which is better.

First, let me explain my AMOS. I like this answer because AMO agrees with "A Medical Officer", which in turn agrees with "A medicine man". Of course "medicine man" need not necessarily refer to MO only. It might be Dr or Doc (abbreviations for doctor). Or the scope might be wider to cover pharmacist etc. But because there's an AMOS in this sector, I zoomed in to AMO.

But how should I connect to the remaining "S"? Here, it becomes a little tricky. The question we must ask ourselves here is whether "beginning" can be an initial indicator; the answer is most definitely, YES. And whether "sing" can be the fodder? My answer for this last question is NO.

I know I said earlier that there are exceptions to the general rules. But we have a different situation in this case. In the first example above, I said:

Opening of emporium

In this case, we can import (in our minds) the implied "the word", i.e.

Opening of the word emporium

But now what we have is different:

beginning to sing

If we were to import "the word" here, what would we get?

beginning to the word sing

Do you see it now? It does not fit!

We say beginning OF the word; not beginning TO the word. TO is more commonly used in cryptic clues to mean that we want to join the words together, although it is not always used for this purpose. For example:

Go to north east = GONE (joining GO to NE)

For the above reason, the two team mates in the front seats did not like my AMOS. And I was prepared to listen to their justification for AVALALA:

Through their hardwork, they found that LALA = SING. Don't ask me, I honestly don't know where they got that. But well, keeping an open mind, I was willing to listen on. The "A" at the beginning of AVALALA agrees with the "A" at the biginning of the clue. OK, I can accept that. But now they came to a stumbling block—they couldn't explain how to equate VA = medicine man.

Furthermore, if indeed the intention of the CoC lies in the direction of AVALALA, I fail to see the purpose of "beginning" in the question. If "VA" could be equated to "medicine man" somehow, then he could do without the word "beginning". He could have joined AVA and LALA by means of the charade operation without the need for "beginning"!

We kept this particular question under KIV for a good hour or so, and still no justification for VA. So Kah Sing and I were able to force the other 2 to concede to AMOS.

Later that evening, it was revealed that the correct answer was indeed AMOS, but I wasn't really happy about it.

I don't like "to" in the question. And I don't think it was entirely necessary for the setter to risk that kind of inaccuracy. If I were the setter, I would have made it simpler like this:

A medicine man starts singing here

The clue is much simpler and straight to the point. More importantly, it does not give rise to a possible objection to the word "to".

theSun Motor Hunt 2008

Oh What a hunt—a wonderful 5.5 hours of challenge in the Master Category. 35 route questions, 4 treasure questions and 5 Road Safety questions spread within a total distance of about 62 km. I thought the clues were well-crafted—a couple of debatable issues in some clues; and Treasure 4 which was of course not meant to be solvable, but otherwise the hunt has lived up to its expectation.

As usual, I shall discuss—as opposed to kutuk—some questions in separate threads later. But for now let me give an overview of the entire hunt.

About 2 weeks ago, shortly after I was promoted to the Master status, I had decided not to hunt in theSun this year. That was a tough decision I had to make so as to be fair to my other friends who wanted to try winning the Open Category. They quickly found a replacement for me. I was still feeling sorry for myself when I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call from Dominic of Time Out Solutions, the Clerk-of-Clourse (CoC) for theSun Motor Hunt. He introduced me to a master team which was lacking of a hunter. I was doubtful at first, for I did not think that I had it in me to contribute much to the team.

Well, after some exchanges of emails, text messages and phone calls, I decided to “go break a leg”…

About 2 years ago, The Jackals happened to be in KK one weekend when we had our Kiwanis Hunt. They took the opportunity to join the hunt and then went on to win it, beating our local champion, Main Tembak, by a margin of just 1 point. The Jackals also won the Open Category of theSun Hunt that year. However, 2 of their team mates have since retired from hunting. The remaining 2 original team members took on 2 new hunters in last year’s theSun Hunt and ended up last in the Master Category. Up to 2 weeks ago, they were still looking for another hunter. I was lucky to get the help of Dominic. Anyway, I finally met Kok Cheeng and Kah Sing for the first time at around 9pm on the eve of theSun Hunt 2008.

On the morning of the hunt, Kok Cheeng brought us for breakfast—Bah Kut Teh in State, PJ. I think that was the first time ever that I had Bah Kut Teh for breakfast. We arrived at the start control when the final briefing was about to start. It was a mass flag off.

We immediately stumbled upon a dead end on the very first question. The question was relatively easy and straightforward, yet it’s strange that none of us saw the answer. Things like that can happen sometimes; the kind of things that should never ever happen to a master team, yet they still happen mysteriously, you see. Actually, I don’t know which is worse—not getting the answer at all, or getting the answer and then wrongly copy it onto the answer sheet. Apparently some grandmaster teams suffered the misfortune of wrong spelling! Like I said, it happens.

I was happy to see a marked improvement in the quality of the clues when compared to those of the recent LexisNexis. I was told that the clues were slightly easier this year, but I thought the level of difficulty was just ideal considering that the top teams scored just slightly over 100 points against the full score of 130 points. A fair number of teams also got the time penalty and paid heavily for it.

I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to blend in easily with The Jackals. They were such friendly people who I don't mind to hunt with again in the future. There was not an instance when I felt like an outsider, which was a good thing. But if I had to do the whole thing again, the only thing I’d like to be different is to have a bit of control on how we manage our time. Kok Cheeng is not one who’s readily willing to drop a question, and in my opinion, that is not exactly a good thing. The net result was that we practically had to abandon the last third of the questions because we had no time to attempt them. I’m sure the CoC must have been surprised to see lots of blanks or obviously tembak on the last pages of our answer sheets.

As for the treasures, well, what can I say—we found ourselves having to choose between several items for each of the clues:

“So which is it, is it the Cocktail Nuts or Ayam Brand Tuna? Nah… both are very, very weak, but let’s go with the Tuna.”

“And what’s the story with this treasure which is ‘Turn it to shine a treasure…?’ There’s this yogurt with the word ‘Shine’ on the bottle. Or should it be the Twister?”

And so, to make the long story short, we got 2 treasures correct. But one was a fluke shot!

Because of time shortage, Kok Cheeng dropped us at the last sector of the hunt while he rushed to the finish control. We were therefore able to make full use of those few minutes to work on the remaining questions. The plan was to supply the answers, if any, through text messages to Kok Cheeng who would have by then been waiting at the finish control.

All 3 of us were given a sector each. It was at the eleventh hour when I saw a very appealing answer to one of the questions within my sector. I couldn’t really explain it, but I was 90% sure that was indeed the answer. So I quickly sent a text message to Kok Cheeng for that precious 3 points. Little did I know that Kok Cheeng somehow thought the hunting time was up to 2:00 pm. Actually, the full time ended at 2:05 pm. I sent my answer to him with some minutes to spare, but Kok Cheeng had by then submitted our answers and treasures. That’s why it was so painful when it was later revealed that the answer I sent him was indeed the correct one!

Well, a satisfying but humbling hunt; my very first theSun Hunt. That night after all the answers were revealed, we counted and found that we only had 81 points. I was fairly certain that we would get last. That would have been an unpleasant debut in theSun Hunt for me. So just imagine my surprise when it was announced that there was another master team which got only 46 points! Another at 57 points! And a few more teams. In the end we got 15th. Obviously nothing to shout about but I am nonetheless happy with the result.

I enjoyed the hunt and wish to congratulate the CoC for a job well done. But of course that is not to say I don’t have any comments on the questions. I would disappoint all my fans if I give no comments at all on the questions!

Let me post this, and then we can go into the question analysis in a new thread, hmmm?

The Power Of Love

Our maid, Fin, went back to her hometown in Indonesia for a holiday in July. She said she would return to Sabah to continue working for us after about 2 months. But as expected, she hasn’t returned up to now. So we haven’t had a maid since July.

It’s a bit tough for us to cope without a maid because both Mia and I are working during the weekdays; and the weekends are the only days we can take a break. We have therefore been looking for a maid, but haven’t been successful so far.

After several months without a maid, we were very happy when someone told us that there’s an Indonesian woman looking for a job as a maid. That was last Monday. I quickly called her up and made the arrangement to fetch her the next day.

Came Tuesday, during the lunch break, I sneaked out of the office to fetch Jovita from City Mall. Mia, too, drove all the way home from Alam Mesra to meet Jovita. We spent about an hour giving Jovita her scope of responsibilities. Then we had to go back to work again. Before that we told Jovita not to do any cooking and use any of the electrical appliances until we return in the evening. She had just arrived from her village about 2 weeks before that and was not very familiar with electrical appliances, you see.

Well, anyway, we went back to work. Several hours later, when I reached home from the office in the evening, Jovita was in her room. I called out to her several times, but she refused to answer. I raised my voice a little louder, thinking that she didn’t hear me somehow. When she emerged from her room, she was crying uncontrollably. I was surprised to find her in that condition. I asked her what has happened, but she refused to tell me what’s wrong.

Shortly after that, Mia arrived home from her office. In the bedroom, I told Mia about Jovita. Later that night Mia took her time to talk to Jovita. In the end, she was able to solve the mystery.

Apparently, Jovita had a boyfriend back home; and that boyfriend did not allow Jovita to come to Sabah. But Jovita had no choice because her parents needed her help to feed her other 4 siblings. She went to a loan shark to borrow 2 million Rupiah (the last time I checked, about RM800) and made up her mind to come to Sabah anyway. If she is able to find a job and repay the loan within 6 months, then the amount due would be 3 million Rupiah. But if she takes a year to repay the loan, it would cost her 4 million Rupiah. You know how it is with loan sharks.

However, that’s not the end of the story; Jovita’s boyfriend was adamant not to let her go. He warned her that if she left him, that would be the end of their relationship. But of course this joker has no means to support Jovita. In the end, Jovita made the brave decision to come to Sabah anyway.

That fateful afternoon, while alone in my house, her mind started to wander. Inevitably, she ended up thinking about her boyfriend. And she started to cry. And then she cried some more. And then she cried much, much more—until I arrived home from work that evening.

We asked her if she really wanted to work—she didn’t seem like she’s gonna last 6 months, let alone 1 year. She said she’s sure that she wanted to work. Otherwise there’s just no way she could pay her debt. One way or another, she must earn some money before going home to Indonesia.

Well, OK, I guess that’s sensible enough. After all the trouble of coming all the way to Sabah, why would she go home empty-handed, right?

The next day, I was driving at around 2 pm when I received a call from Jovita. She was crying uncontrollably again. I waited a few seconds for her to calm down. In between her sobs, I could hear her say, “ndak bisa; ndak bisa” (cannot, cannot). At that point, I knew what was happening—I had expected it anyway.

When I arrived home that evening, Jovita was already calm. In fact, she was humming a tune to herself. I waited for Mia to come home from work and then both of us sent Jovita back to her cousin where she will probably stay for a few more days before going back to her village to be reunited with her man.

She will have a lot to explain to her parents. Then she has to reckon with the loan shark; and probably will be indebted for the rest of her life. Hopefully the loan shark will not be too harsh on her family. A mountain of problems waiting for her at home. But in spite of all those, at least she will have her man. Sure, they will be poor—dirt poor—but, y’know, we’ve all heard it all before, the power of love is hard to explain. I just hope for her sake that the man is really worth it.

Buy & Fly

Most of us Malaysians are familiar with the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT), Kuala Lumpur. I myself have been travelling through this terminal many more times than the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) terminal.

Last Sunday, on my way home to KK, I was a little early when I entered the departure hall. It was around noon, so I thought it's a good idea to grab something to eat. In the departure hall, there is a cafe with a catchy name—Buy & Fly. Such an attractive name and makes a lot of sense too. It is simple and very easy to remember; and it rhymes.

There were many packed meals on sale; they range from cakes and buns, nasi lemak and mi goreng and of course some good old sandwiches. There're also a wide variety of canned drinks available. All of those were displayed on the shelves located by the walls. In front of the shop, there were small tables and chairs where people could sit while having their meals.

Buy & Fly also had an interesting rounded display area in the middle of the shop. In them were some drinks and some jellies contained in plastic cups as shown above. Buy & Fly also lived up to their name. Below is a blown up portion of the above picture. Let's see how sharp your eyes are; how many flies can you spot on the jelly cups?

Virtual Hunt

Some of you have been pestering me about the first anniversary virtual hunt in this blog. Since I have been repeating myself several times over emails, perhaps it's best that I make the announcement here. At the same time, the purpose of this post is also to whet your appetite!... HAHAHA!

I am more or less done with the questions for the virtual hunt. But I am looking for the best time to organize the competition. It is not something very grand—I'll probably throw in a RM100 prize money just as a sweetener. Besides, I have the impression that many of you are not focusing on the prize anyway.

Now is not a good time to do it. I need at least a week uninterrupted for the competition. During that one week window, I will be posting ONE question per day. This is something like the Volvo online hunt last year. The question will be posted at the same time each day—tentatively at 7:00 pm. Everyone will then have equal opportunity to submit his/her answer. But only ONE answer is allowed per customer. I am aware that some of you may have the foresight to register under different names at the beginning of the hunt, but I can't do much to control that.

I will also factor in time element into the competition. The first successful answer for each question will get the full score of 10 points; second, 8 points; third, 6 points; fourth, 4 points; fifth, 2 points; and 1 point each for all remaining correct submissions.

In terms of difficulty level, it won't be the super tough ones. In fact some are easy; some are moderate and only a few somewhat "tricky". The reason I'm doing it this way is so that the competition is achieveable by a wider audience. It would be quite a disaster if only one or two masters are able to solve some of those questions. So because more people can solve, it means that it's a matter of how fast you can solve those questions (and submit the respective answers). Trust me, folks, most of you would probably require a bit of time to solve some of them.

In my opinion, the time element will make the competition more exciting. Some of you freak hunters may be able to solve the questions at a glance. Some might take an hour or so; others might take longer.

But now the problem of when to do it. There is hardly any time between now and theSun Hunt. And then after theSun, I will probably be spending the next few days kutuk-ing (according to one of my readers) the questions and answers. Then soon after that, I will be flying off again to Penang for the 25K run. So it seems that we will have to wait till after Penang, i.e. second half of November. In other words, about a month from now! So be patient, folks, the hunt will certainly come. Give me a bit of time to save RM100 for the prize money... HAHAHA!

Brickfields

Those of you who haven't been to Brickfields are bound to notice 2 things about the neighbourhood.

Firstly, there's a high population of Indians there. It's almost like if you were to toss a stone in any direction randomly, you are bound to hit an Indian. You will see an Indian in every nook and corner of Brickfields.

Secondly, there are so many blind people in Brickfields. You can see them in the street almost around the clock. Many of these blind people are working in the massage centres located on the upper floors of shophouses. So you can imagine how many massage centres are found in Brickfields.

The streets themselves have an interesting character. At almost every junction and pedestrian crossing points, there is bound to be a signboard reminding the public of blind people crossing the roads.

The first time I was at Brickfields, I was puzzled by the long stretches of special tiles laid on the pavements. These tiles can be found on almost every pavement in the neighbourhood.

When it comes to a junction or crossing area, those tiles would come to a larger box where a different type of tiles are used.

Last Saturday afternoon, I actually spent some time trying to understand the purpose of those tiles on the pavements. I didn't take very long to figure out the answer. It became obvious soon enough when I saw blind people using those tiles as their guides to move around. Humans are such clever beings, huh?

Well, I was very pleased with myself for solving the mystery of those tiles on the pavements; until I came to this pole which was positioned exactly in the path of one stretch of tiles. Did I get it all wrong? Can anyone help me out here? Why is this pole located where it is?