Most of the guests gathered around the cryptic clues page - not Walter Sexton, who simply gave them a glance and returned to the Playfair Cipher with Kenichi. But certainly most:
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"Hey, hey, look!" said Batsheva. "That one has a 'spectre' hiding inside of it!"
"SPECTRE (is) / tough, ostracized, concealed (5)" :
GHOST (Spectre = concealed by touGH OSTracized)
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"RATS," said Nat, pointing to the fifth clue, grinning. He was getting the hang of this.
"Star running back / curses! (4)" :
RATS (STAR running back = curses!)
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"There's the anagram," said Alicia. "Dearth. Not bad."
"Lack (of) / scattered thread (6)" :
DEARTH (Lack = scattered THREAD)
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"Monster's an orc," said L. V. "See?"
"Monster concealed / flower (6)" :
ORCHID (ORC + HID = flower)
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"Oh! That one's a pun. Like a cannon shell or a seashell!" said Batsheva, pointing to the first clue:
"Cannon shot / marine armour (5)" :
SHELL (shell = shell)
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"I see. So we remove a 'boy...'" said Ocean.
""Paladin loses boy, / (bringing) grief (4)" :
PAIN (PALADIN - LAD)
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"And the opposite case is
adding a word, yes?" said Otto.
"Everyone surrounded by lousy / song (6)" :
BALLAD (ALL surrounded by BAD)
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Only two cryptic clues remained. Grumbling, Walter slouched over to take a look at them. With a moment's glance, he said, "First one isn't talking about the
name Mark. It's a different kind of mark. Second one's a proper name. Homophone and charades." Then he went back to the cipher.
Kenichi had tried a number of likely keys, and concluded that while the cipher was likely a Playfair, it was probably modified in some way. Maybe "turnabout is fairplay" was a clue to the alteration?
"We should guess good keys," he said. "Too short to crack by analysis. Have we seen any clues to a key?"
Whatever the word is, thought Walter,
it must be important. I don't think she'd have chosen an irrelevant one.
He tried to recall all of the clues they'd found.
(Hint: Whatever the key is, it can't be a clue that was found only in the maze of the Witch of Secrets. Now that you have mended the story, the humans of 2011 have no memory of that sequence.)
