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Went through approximately six trillion words ending in "king" while trying to figure out this puzzle. Couldn't find one that would fit. Not willing to let the effort go to waste, here are 8 of them, presented by chess kings.

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This time around, the clues are sometimes phonetic, sometimes literal, and there's even one direct hint. If a clue happens to fit more than one word, any one of them will do.

To reiterate, we are looking for 8 more or less random English words, each one ending in "king".

Bass
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3 Answers3

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Respectively

c8: hiking ("high king")
f7: barking ("bar king")?
h6: liking ("lie king")
a5: banking ("ban king")
g3: winking ("win king")
e2: funking ("fun king")?, or seeking ("see king"; credit to Lawrence)
b1: thinking ("thin king")
outside: awaking ("away king")

J. Siebeneichler
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    Woops, guess I didn't look carefully enough when editing... the king on the a line is on the 5th row, and on h it's the 6th row. Also, based on the famous eight queen puzzle, the missing one should be on d4 – Lolgast Dec 22 '17 at 14:39
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    I'd love to think that the invisible king is the troublemaking, because he's away, probably doing something nasty. But your solution is more fitting ;) – Christoph Dec 22 '17 at 14:50
  • Maybe e2 is cooking (cool king)? – Dr. Roggia Dec 22 '17 at 15:00
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    e2 - seeking (see king)? – Lawrence Dec 22 '17 at 15:21
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    H6 could be "flunking" – Kevin Dec 22 '17 at 16:02
  • Awaking inside! – m4n0 Dec 22 '17 at 17:47
  • I wonder if it might be good to have one with a donkey (while making inquiries), and one cavorting with loose queens (while underwater)? Perhaps add one with a talkative donkey (while slowing down)? – supercat Dec 22 '17 at 21:09
  • ...or possibly knocking (no king) – Ben Barden Dec 22 '17 at 22:21
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    d4 could also be lacking ("lack king"). –  Dec 23 '17 at 09:43
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    I had another idea for e2, but yeah, those would work too. The rest are exactly what I planned, so have a tick! – Bass Dec 27 '17 at 09:56
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    @supercat, all of those got rejected on the account of being approx 7 orders of magnitude over the complexity level I can draw in Gimp. Other rejects include a custard tart, half a bottle of vodka surprisingly from an UK company, and not from Highgarden) and a movie. – Bass Dec 27 '17 at 10:06
  • @Bass: I don't get any of yours. In my additional "suggestions", the parenthetical phrase applies to the word formed by combining the former part with "king"; did you figure those out? – supercat Dec 27 '17 at 15:18
  • @supercat, those would have been ”flan”, ”smir”(noff) and the rather less clever ”flick”. No, I didn’t really figure yours out, since I had gone through similar thought processes twice already, and ended up with the same exact clues for them :-) – Bass Dec 27 '17 at 15:30
  • @Bass: Well in case anyone else was wondering, mine were as-, sin-, and bra-. – supercat Dec 27 '17 at 19:15
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Other ideas:

c8: seeking (the king in column c)
f7: blacking (but really liked masking most...brilliant)
h6: taking (an extra one)
a5: aching (the king in column a)
g3: thanking (acceptance speech)
e2: spiking ("spy king")
b1: talking ("tall king")
d4: remarking (see comments...but "awaking" was brilliant)

zimpsonr
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  • These are quite excellent! The other answer hit the ones I intended (except e2. which you got) so I can only offer the uppest of my upvotes. – Bass Dec 27 '17 at 10:19
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Only four:

f7 is masking himself
h6 is mistaking 5 for 4 in the calculation
e2 is blocking sunlight from hurting his eyes
someone is striking a5 out

ilkkachu
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