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This Gridless Crossword is a taxing puzzle designed to test all of your deductive skills. Your ultimate goal is to discover the puzzle’s answerline which is a vertical word or phrase reading down through the answers. It reveals the puzzle’s neat but elusive theme. But be warned: your deductive skills will be greatly tested before the penny finally drops!
Deduction
1. A personal hygiene problem leads to a medical graduate failure of a spectacular kind. (4)
2. Establishes what a person does in an ironworks. (6)
3. Harry Potter’s is feeble against principal Dumbledore’s. (4)
4. Cut tinea short with a prong. (4)
5. Distribute evenly or rainy days become lacking in propriety. (5)
6. Build truck frame and another luxury vehicle. (5)
7. Seafood setting is squalid, drives nearly all out. (5)
8. Sounds like you are in one tangle of nerves. (5-)
9. Basil and pine-nuts and parmesan cheese and some grapes too. (5)
10. Act like a criminal — get a flashing light! (6)
11. Remove it from trivial competition. (5)
12. About face, head right, head north, reach country. (6)
13. Car gate barriers test dummy helmets. (5)
14. Bridgework makes tonsil very streaked with grey. (7)
15. Big __ in Little China, or The __ with Harry. (7)
16. Canines, woodsmen, and flying machines. (8)
17. Take possession of an acclaimed centre. (5)
18. The Scottish monster goes back in at compliance. (6)
19. It all started when the tailless Bengal got upset. (5)
Instead of keeping answers masked for a couple days, submitted comments will appear live immediately (no moderation). This way, the puzzle can be worked out in real-time.
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Well, here’s what I have so far:
1. ODOR
2. FORGES
3. WAND
4. TINE
5. INAPT (?)
6.
7. SQUID
8. NEURO
9. WHITE
10. STROBE
11. RIVAL
12.
13.
14. SILVERY
15. TROUBLE
16. CHOPPERS
17. CLAIM
18. ASSENT
19. BEGAN
Any or all could be right or wrong. I really enjoy these types of puzzles!
1. _
2. F O R G E S
3. W A N D
4. _
5. F L U S H
6. _
7. _
8. _
9. W H I T E
10. S T R O B E
11. _
12. _
13. _
14. _
15. T R O U B L E
16. C H O P P E R S
17. C L A I M
18. _
19. _
Got a few from Shawn above (Thanks), disagreed with some others. Spread out the letters to make it easier to see a word going down
5. RANDY. (oR rAiNy DaYs)
This isn’t really a crossword puzzle. (grumble)
I just eat some smarties, very nice…
Btw. chapeau, T and Shawn, you may fix it together and still there is missing 20. and 21… much less of 22…
Anyway, who counts the numbers anymore…
or Letters?
No Games, Just Sports…
Nike-way…
without any side-effects,
have a nice day…
Gray-T, your neo-existentialism never ceases to amaze.
I’m not seeing even a hint of a vertical phrase, which means that either the phrase is tilted and not truly vertical, or there are some serious problems with my answers.
Correction
10. BEACON (BE-A-CON)
12. FRANCE
1. BOMB
A Suggestion:
13. BELTS
Also, I have a feeling that the words are offset to make the center word and that 8 is a space. What I mean by offset:
T R O U B L E
C H O P P E R S
C L A I M
A S S E N T
For example… a word above could be ROLE. This way it’s more like a crossword… as the words aren’t all just listed in a line.
I’m also not picking up on any themes.
Err… ok, so putting in multiple spaces doesn’t work. Here is what I meant with the above:
____T (R) O U B L E
__C H (O) P P E R S
____C (L) A I M
_A S S (E) N T
I have a suggestion:
the
has a (5-) so I think it must go backwards
the 8 word i meant
suineg - I think the 5- means that the answer is a prefix, like neuro-
t - do you think there is a pattern to the spaces in front of each word that will make them line up properly?
6: BUICK
(as in the “frame” of BUIld truCK)
I’m not sure, I don’t think there’s a pattern… I think it will just be whatever you can get to make words that match the “theme”.
So far I agree with the following answers:
01. O D O R
02. F O R G E S
03. W A N D
04. T I N E
05. R A N D Y
06. B U I C K
07. S Q U I D
08. _
09. W H I T E
10. B E A C O N
11. R I V A L
12. F R A N C E
13. _
14. S I L V E R Y
15. T R O U B L E
16. C H O P P E R S
17. C L A I M
18. _
19. B E G A N
13) I put BELTS but it doesn’t fit the pattern of the rest of the answers. What could “Gate barriers” reffer to?
18) Why assent? That clue I just don’t get at all….
So far the only pattern I’m picking is
“ORDER IS” as in order is important (order of letters perhaps?)
01. _____ _ (O) D O R
02. ____F O (R) G E S
03. __W A N (D)
04. ___T I N (E)
05. ____ __ (R) A N D Y
06. ____B U (I) C K
07. _______(S) Q U I D
But that’s a fairly random way to distribute the letters. I think the start of the puzzle might give a clue as to how to move the letters around:
But be warned: your deductive skills will be greatly tested before the penny finally drops!
Penny finally drops is a pretty odd phrase to use (just like the phrasing for pretty much all the questions is odd), so I think it might be relevant.
T, I disagree. I think that BOMB is a much better answer for number 1. Makes a lot more sense.
Also, for 18, ASSENT = NESS (loch ness monster) back in AT…
order is playing a role?
Why Bomb? (Body Odour (BO), Batchelor of Medicine (MB))? Makes more sense than Odor. I just wasn’t sure if maybe the American spelling didn’t use a “u”.
Ah, Assent makes more sense now, I would never have thought of that…
Well yeah order is important. Particularly - the order of the words is weird. But more importantly, the letter order. In Assent, NESS is backwards, the A is at the front adn the T at the end (rather than next to each other).
So the puzzle seems to be about finding this order from dissorder (with a few exceptions… FORGES, WAND, TROUBLE and CHOPPERS).
“ORDER IS” was just a suggestion - problem with it is that the spacing of the words becomes random… maybe there’s more to it? Again “Before the penny drops” could be a clue
assent in that fashion is a standard cryptic crossword clue - I thought the whole thing was based on a gridless cryptic?
NEURO
“Sounds like you are” = u r
“in one tangle” = “one” re-arranged
“of nerves” is the definition of neuro-
Not sure how this will look on the post. I capitalized all the letters that I think are in the phrase “ORDER ISN’T EVERYTHING” (thanks to T).
Still need a word with an “R” for #13.
________b_O_m_b
_______f_o_R_g_e_s
____w_a_n_D
_____t_i_n_E
__________R_a_n_d_y
______b_u_I_c_k
__________S_q_u_i_d
__________N_e_u_r_o
____w_h_i_T_e
________b_E_a_c_o_n
_______r_i_V_a_l
_f_r_a_n_c_E
__________R
s_i_l_v_e_r_Y
__________T_r_o_u_b_l_e
________c_H_o_p_p_e_r_s
_____c_l_a_I_m
__a_s_s_e_N_t
______b_e_G_a_n
13. “car gate barriers test” could be CRASH
but then what does “dummy helmets” mean?
As in “crash test dummy” (why would a crash test dummy where a helmet anyway?)
Makes sense… and leaves us with “Order isn’t everything”…
very close!
just added the title to the puzzle…
Could #9 be pesTo?
From the clue ’some graPES TOo’
This would still result in the required T.
Basil, Parmesan, and Pine Nuts are ingredients for pesto.
Yes, LaDana- Clue 9 is ‘Pesto’
Clue 2: ‘Founds’
All others are as Shawn lists above
So, with #9 being pesto and #2 being founds.. How about the following solution?
______b_o_M_b
_________f_O_u_n_d_s
______w_a_N_d
_____t_i_n_E
__r_a_n_d_Y
______b_u_I_c_k
__________S_q_u_i_d
__________N_e_u_r_o
____p_e_s_T_o
________b_E_a_c_o_n
_______r_i_V_a_l
_f_r_a_n_c_E
________c_R_a_s_h
s_i_l_v_e_r_Y
__________T_r_o_u_b_l_e
________c_H_o_p_p_e_r_s
_____c_l_a_I_m
__a_s_s_e_N_t
______b_e_G_a_n
For a solution text of ‘Money isn’t everything.’
Now that final line of the description makes sense…
That is the solution.
Notice the words remaining if you Deduct the answerline letter…
Nice one!
That was a tough one. Very clever.
Very nice!!
Oh man that is fricken cool as
just wana answer