Blast from the past
This blog started way back in June 2006 during the last World Cup season. You can still view the old blog here, just ignore the thousands of spam comments. In fact it was because of these spams that I move to the current platform in early 2008 to have better control of the problem.
Sometime in November that same year, I ran a question setting contest. Contestants stand to win a RM150 The Ship cash voucher. All they need to do was to set a cryptic treasure hunt question based on the answer: Back Entrance as seen this The Ship signboard.
The board has since been removed and replaced with a big sturdy one.
These are the 2 shortlisted entries:
Footballer can enter perhaps? - by Lim Soo Kian
Rear opening and a captivating bum perhaps? - by Margaret Sha
And the winning entry was crafted by VK Chong.
An admission to illegitimately gaining access
I’ll run a similar contest soon, so watch out for it. Meanwhile, maybe some of you would like to try your hands at setting the question for this “Back Entrance” signboard.
ckoh said:
Hmmm… you have a tough beast here, Mike. But let me try:
Senator Obama without a first Republican to cast a spell on?
ckoh said:
To the friends who’ve asked me (privately) for the explanation of my above clue, I’m glad to say that Mike has kindly given the green light to publish it here.
Although the clue consists of ONE sentence, it is actually a merger of TWO sentences; because there are TWO words in the intended answer, i.e. BACK ENTRANCE. The sentence can be broken up into TWO portions like this:
(i) Senator Obama without a first Republican;
(ii) to cast a spell on
Each portion is intended to cover one word of the intended answer.
(i) Senator Obama without a first Republican
Senator Obama = BARACK
without = deletion indicator
first = initial indicator; A first Republican = AR
Therefore, BARACK without AR = BACK
(ii) to cast a spell on
This second part is much simpler—it’s is direct definition. But the solver must realise that I’m adopting the verb form of ENTRANCE. ENTRANCE, as a noun, means doorway and the likes.
ENTRANCE, as a verb, means inter alia to charm, to mesmerize, to put someone into a trance, to cast spell on.