4

The puzzle is broken into four parts, and each part yields a single letter. Put them all together, and it'll spell out the thing that gets me up in the morning :-)

PART 1

1) One who may think about gallantry! (6) (Solved: indubitablee)

2) Vader, for instance, holds murderous forger (5) -(Solved: Silenus)

3) It's poisonous, so mother gets a medical book first (5) - (Solved: Silenus)

4) Draw on alien food store (6) - (Solved: Silenus)

5) The panel broke up right wing design (8) - (Solved: M Oehm)

6) Broken laces wrapped round thumb for defensive move (6) - (Solved M Oehm)

PART 2

((CEMNOPS + DEITTU) / ACINRSST) / DEEEPZ - DDEIKNR = ?

PART 3 - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil & M Oehm)

General knowledge:

1) "The lady ____ protest too much". (4) - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil)

2) The venom of a puffer fish (12) - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil)

3) A film by Spike Lee. (2, 3, 5, 5) - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil)

4) One who sells needles and thread (in Britain) and men's clothes (in America). (11) - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil)

5) The movie 'Cabaret' was adapted from the novel 'Berlin Tales' by which British author? (11, 9) - (Solved: Beastly Gerbil)

PART 4

This sequence is missing its first item. What is it?

? cvcv cvccv cvccv vccvcvc cvcv vcv

Hint for part 2:

The words are partial anagrams. Each word is missing...something, and the 'somethings' are all very similar in one important respect. I admit, I may have made this bit too difficult. It's my first puzzle. If this hint isn't enough, I'll post another one tomorrow.

Hint for part 4:

The c and v stand for two common words. If you know these, you should be able to deduce the sequence.

Nellington
  • 855
  • 6
  • 13

2 Answers2

5

The final answer is

JAVA

Although Part 2 remains unsolved.

Part 1 (thanks to Silenus and MOehm for helping here):

1) One who may think about gallantry! (6)

KNIGHT - KNI(G)HT

2) Vader, for instance, holds murderous forger (5)

SMITH - S(M)ITH

3) It's poisonous, so mother gets a medical book first (5)

MAMBA - MA(MB)+A

4) Draw on alien food store (6)

MARKET - MARK+ET

5) The panel broke up right wing design (8)

ELEPHANT - The Panel *

6) Broken laces wrapped round thumb for defensive move (6)

CASTLE - LAC(T)ES*

Next

These answers can be added to WHITE or BLACK

which gives

WB
BB
WW

(I think)

Giving the braille letter

J

Part 2:

A1Z26 gives the sum:

((351314151619 + 459202021) / 1391418191920) / 45551626 - 4459111418

The first four sets of numbers gives a number incredibly small, something around

$5.55^-9$ = $0.00000000555$

So the answer is basically

-4459111418

So not sure if this is right, or what we are looking for here

Part 3:

1) "The lady ____ protest too much". (4)

Hamlet quote: "The lady doth protest too much methinks"

2) The venom of a puffer fish (12)

Tetrodotoxin

3) A film by Spike Lee. (2, 3, 5, 5)

Do the right thing

4) One who sells needles and thread (in Britain) and men's clothes (in America). (11)

Haberdasher (https://english.stackexchange.com/a/69016/166903)

5) The movie 'Cabaret' was adapted from the novel 'Berlin Tales' by which British author? (11, 9)

Christopher Isherwood

@MOehm spotted that these answers contain the words 'dot', 'dash' and 'stop' indicating Morse Code. This gives the sequence

..-. stop

Which is Morse code for

V

Part 4:

@Talal_Sharaa had the idea that 'c' could stand for consonant, and 'v' could stand for vowel.

This means that we are looking for one consonant or one vowel to replace a single ?. This can only be a vowel - A or I, and A fits the answer. I don't know what the sequence is though

See ffao's answer for the sequence

The answer is

'Alpha'

giving

A

Beastly Gerbil
  • 58,036
  • 8
  • 166
  • 314
  • part 1.1, knight? – indubitablee Jun 05 '17 at 19:26
  • @indubitablee that answer had crossed my mind, but thats not really a cryptic clue. I'll ask the OP whether these supposed cryptics are actually cryptics – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 19:28
  • Beastly Gerbil:

    !** For part 2, the answer is a whole number, and you don't have to use cryptography. You've got all the general knowledge questions correct. There's a link between the answers.

    indubitablee: Knight is correct for part 1

     – Nellington Jun 05 '17 at 19:28
  • The answers to part 3 contain dot, dot, dot, dash, stop, so it's perhaps a V? – M Oehm Jun 05 '17 at 19:28
  • @MOehm oooh clever. Good spot – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 19:30
  • 1.2 S(M)ITH; [def] forger; 1.3 MAM(B)A; [def] It's poisonous – DyingIsFun Jun 05 '17 at 19:32
  • @Silenus aah so these are cryptics. I haven't looked at them yet because I thought them invalid. Proved me wrong there then, thanks for the help! :) – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 19:32
  • 1.4 MARK+ET; [def] food store – DyingIsFun Jun 05 '17 at 19:34
  • ELEPHANT (the panel)* and CASTLE? – M Oehm Jun 05 '17 at 19:36
  • @Silenus pretty sure 1.3 is MA(MB)+A because medical book first = MB – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 19:36
  • 1
    Anyway, all the answers can be combined with either WHITE or BLACK and should yield a Braille letter, possibly a P? – M Oehm Jun 05 '17 at 19:36
  • M Oehm - So very, very close! Not a P, though.

    Silenus: You're absolutely right. I should have put firsts.

     – Nellington Jun 05 '17 at 19:41
  • 3
    white, black, black, black, white, white might clue the braille letter J, suggesting JAVA as final answer with a pun on stimulating in the title. – DyingIsFun Jun 05 '17 at 19:42
  • @Silenus yeah had that but internet just blanked out :/ wouldn't get the pun, don't code but thanks for telling me – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 19:43
  • I have no solution for part 2, but the words have the letters in alphabetical order. There are anagrams of DUETTI, SANSCRIT [sic] andv KINDRED, but that doesn't get us very far, does it? – M Oehm Jun 05 '17 at 20:06
  • @MOehm good spot. I still have no idea on how we are supposed to get a sum and the letter A but... – Beastly Gerbil Jun 05 '17 at 20:09
  • Hint for part 2 (rot-13'd to prevent spoilerage):

    Gurfr ner cnegvny nantenzf. V zhfg pbasrff, guvf orvat zl svefg chmmyr V znl unir zvfwhqtrq gur qvssvphygl yriry bs gurfr :-(

    Hint for part 4:

    Jung zvtug p naq i fgnaq sbe?

     – Nellington Jun 06 '17 at 05:38
  • @Nellington: It is notoriously hard to judge the difficulty of puzzles. Even experienced posters get this wrong sometimes. I thought the difficulty for the two solved parts was just right. Your hints are buried in a long series of comments and are hard to find. It might be a good idea to edit the hints into the question. (You can use the spoiler markup with >! instead of rot13.) This will also bump the question to the top of the front page, so that your puzzle might get more attention. – M Oehm Jun 07 '17 at 06:09
  • Thanks for the advice, and I'm glad you liked parts 2 and 4. – Nellington Jun 07 '17 at 12:06
  • 1
    can't the cv means: consent-vowel? then the first element of the sequence will be V because there are only few words that consist of only one letter and they are A, I sometimes O All are vowels. And we need the letter A to fit the Word JAVA – Talal_Sharaa Jun 08 '17 at 16:08
  • @Talal_Sharaa oooh that's really promising! (I assume you meant consonant vowel) I'll have a look at that – Beastly Gerbil Jun 08 '17 at 16:15
  • @Nellington for part 4 I believe we figured out what they stand for, no idea on the pattern though! There really should be some sort of indication on the pattern really – Beastly Gerbil Jun 08 '17 at 19:57
  • The same goes for part 2, which I think is too broad even with the hint. I think that the missing things indicate numbers somehow. But DEITTU, for example, plus TWO gives OUTWITTED. Plus AT (Shift + 2) it gives ATTITUDE and plus AL (atomic number 13) it gives ALTITUDE. – M Oehm Jun 08 '17 at 20:03
  • @MOehm I'm wondering maybe if we add different numbers? But yeah I agree its too broad. Too many possibilities – Beastly Gerbil Jun 08 '17 at 20:05
  • ACINRSST can be changed to narcissist if we add "is" and anagram the word, maybe all the produced words should relate to personality or behavior, but not sure, as we have many options.. – Talal_Sharaa Jun 08 '17 at 21:10
5

Possible answer for part 4:

If "c" means consonant and "v" means vowel, then the sequence could potentially be:

????? cvcv cvccv cvccv vccvcvc cvcv vcv ...
alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta ...

Making the missing element of the sequence vcccv.
ffao
  • 21,733
  • 4
  • 68
  • 109