Contingencies Online - September/October 2011

Cryptic Puzzle ToM ToC

THE 2011 CRYPTIC PUZZLES

Strange-looking Concoctions

WE’vE hAD A bREAK FoR A FEW ISSuES from any puzzles requiring spatial gymnastics. break’s over—
this one does. The completed puzzle is not a “strange-looking concoction,” just a large cube made up of 27
smaller cubes. These are numbered as shown. In solving, however, you might have to deconstruct each cube
into something like the strange-looking blue diagram below. I did.

When the puzzle is finished, the nine squares on each face of the large cube will spell a nine-letter word pertinent to our profession. These nine-letter words are ordered, i.e., left to right then top to bottom. For the front, back, right-hand side, and left-hand side faces, top and bottom are unambiguous. The top and bottom faces could have different orientations. I have chosen the top of the top face to be the side farther from the front face and the top of the bottom face to be the side closer to the front face. As a guide, I’ve listed the cubes that each nine-letter word uses in order.

The six letters on each of the small cubes can be anagrammed to form a six-letter word. These are clued below. The 162 (i.e., 6 × 27) letters on the small cubes can be broken down into the 54 that appear on the surface of the large cube and the 108 that are hidden. The hidden

solutions may be emailed to
thomas.toce@ey.com. in order
to make the solver list, your
solutions must by received by
sept. 30, 2011.

letters are really 54 pairs, because facing sides share a letter. Small Cube No. 14, for example, is in the center of the large cube and has no sides on the surface of the large cube. The six letters on Cube No. 14, therefore, can be gotten from the six surrounding cubes, without actually solving Clue No. 14.

(There probably is great fun to be had in asking what is the minimum number of clues that must be solved in order to be sure of all the letters. But that sounds more like one of Mark Danburg-Wyld’s puzzles.)

All 26 letters are used. That made construction much harder but seems only fair. (It also required the use of one unusual word, at Clue No. 5.)

There are two proper nouns, although one of them can also be a regular noun ( just not as clued). Another word is hyphenated. Everything else can be played in Scrabble, including the above-mentioned unusual word.