Procol HarumBeyond
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In our previous example we showed, here, how one can work out the 'answer-value' from each clue: this page will take you one step farther or further.
First, a recap ...
1 R | Your clue refers to an early instrumental, played by Procol Harum in the winter of 2001 in a European capital city, the last three letters of whose name are also the first three letters of a Brooker/Fisher/Reid song on a Brooker solo album from 16 years before. |
repentwalpurgis
123456789012345
The 'question value' was 6, and the 'answer value' was the letter-pair, tw.
We also worked out two other examples ...
4 K | What is the name of the song Procol released in 2017 in which Gary Brooker sings the name a well-known English port that is also referred to in the title-track of the band's album released 44 years before? |
itoldonyou
1234567890
The 'question value' was 4, and 'answer value' was the letter-pair, ld.
And ...
7 C | Find a song by Matthew Fisher of which part of the title also features in the name of a play by RC Sherriff from 1928. |
journeysendpart1
1234567890123456
The 'question value' was 9, and 'answer value' was the letter-pair, en.
All good so far ... except that you can't get directly from these mere 'answer values' to the final puzzle answer.
There's just one more intermediate step, which we'll call the 'page-value'.
The 'page-value' will be just one letter-pair, chosen from nine
letter-pairs (yes, 9, as explained below) that you will find as follows.
It's straightforward!
On this example page (and on all the pages in the puzzle proper) there are three 'question values' and three song-titles.
To get to the next level, as it were, all you need to do is apply each 'question value' to each of the song titles.
On this page, the 'question-values' are 6, 4 and 9; and the song-titles (stripped of spaces and punctuation) are repentwalpurgis, itoldonyou, and journeysendpart1.
By first applying all of the page's three question-values to repentwalpurgis, we get letter pairs en, tw, lp
repentwalpurgis 123456789012345 repentwalpurgis repentwalpurgis
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By next applying all the page's three question-values (6, 4 and 9) to itoldonyou, we get letter-pairs ld, on, ou
itoldonyou 1234567890 itoldonyou itoldonyou
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And finally by applying the page's three question-values (6, 4 and 9) to journeysendpart1, we get letter pairs rn, ey, en
journeysendpart1 1234567890123456 journeysendpart1 journeysendpart1
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Looking at the nine letter-pairs we've just derived – en, tw, lp, ld, on, ou, rn, ey, en – we quickly spot that they are not all different!
The letter-pair that occurs twice ... in this case 'en' – is the page-value ... and when you have collected your twelve page-values, one from each page of the competition, you're just one easy step (OK, maybe 1½ easy steps) away from solving the entire Christmas Conundrum, sending off your answer to 'Beyond the Pale', and with any luck winning the prize of your dreams.
More tomorrow ...
How to play | The solution | Winners | First question
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