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[badbarry]

Puzzle with silver prizes

[badbarry]

As I have had a few first attempts submitted I thought I would clarify a few things:

1. All the answers are 1 word. I will mark them correct if more than 1 word is used, but for the avoidance of doubt you only need 1 word for each.

2. Don't worry about spelling. Lots of classical people and places have various spellings so as long as I know who or what you mean you will get it right. You must have the right word though!

3. Some clues may appear to have more than 1 answer, but look carefully at all the words - they should allow you to distinguish between two or more possble options.

4. I will give some clues tomorrow, but don't bank on them. They won't be too obvious as I don't want everyone coming in on the same score or I'll have too much hat work to do. Currently 14 of them have been answered correctly, though the most 1 person has is 10.

5. As the blacks are also up for prizes (ratio of 2 blacks to 1 silver), there are currently more prizes than entrants, so if you submit an answer and have none correct, you'll still win a prize!

6. Much as I am sure you have the proper disinterest in what I get up to at the weekend, I am going to a wedding on Saturday so will be out of action from Sat am to sunday afternoon. Therefore, if you want me to have a look at early guesses then get something in by Friday night or I wont answer until sunday afternoon.

Thanks for your interest so far and good luck with the rest!

[walther]

While we wait for the answers to appear.....

I just wanted to say that was the most frustrating fun I've had in awhile. At least I can finally get some sleep. Reminded me a lot of #181, Soooo many possible choices and so few guesses to get the right ones. Congrats to anyone that managed to get all 17!

[Hunting4Treasure]

Ditto! My brain is so fried, I can't even think straight any more! LOL
I've learned a lot (some made me sad, other stuff made me shake my head)! And, even though I know some answers are wrong, it was still a great experience! Thanks a bunch, BadBarry, for the opportunity to win some great prizes! Good luck to all who sent in submissions... I can't wait to see all the answers!

[Arkai]

Great Puzzles

[Curlytek]

I doubt that anyone got the 17....certainly not by themselves...but great work if they did! I am pretty sure I got 11 right.....a few I looked at for two-three days without finding anything to really bite into. Should have googled the question set!!!

[fretty]

Yes, the puzzle was very hard because the answers were hard to come by, especially "Latin City". I didn't know what to put for that.

[sixsidedsquare]

Much enjoyable indeed, thanks for that badbarry
I love it how you send in a bunch of answers you're pretty confident in, and then get back that only a few of them are right. Much fun research was had and there's a few that I can't wait to see what the dang answer was.

[Kradlum]

A very enjoyable puzzle. Had me scratching my head for days. The thing I learnt most was that I didn't know as much as I thought I did to begin with.

I tried to enlist the help of people who I thought would know more than me. The discussion board where I normally hang out were not much use, but a few of the guys gave more avenues of exploration. A couple of my colleagues' spouses helped out, as they are teachers, but even the retired classics teacher only managed to correct one of my answers. I even got the woman sat next to me on the train on Friday evening to have a look at the puzzles. As she was reading "Learn Greek in 6 weeks" I hoped she might be able to help, but I think she confused matters by pointing out the words "ROMAN" and "ROMANTIC" among my anagram letters.

Since BadBarry hasn't given us his answers, I don't know if it's ok to give my answers and reasoning. I'll do it and spoilerise them, and anyone who wants to disect them or tell me where I went wrong I'll be quite happy to be put out of my misery!

[Arkai]

As I am eager to know the answers as well, I'll post mine here.
On my third try, I had about the same as Kradlum, but;

[Kradlum]

On my first try I had Geryon, as I felt he was "a composite beast" - 3 heads and bodies - and was killed by Hercules with an arrow poisoned with the Hydra's blood. But I couldn't fit the "wild and inhospitable" bit in until I discovered that Centaurs were "wild and inhospitable".

I had tried Augustus as my first attempt on 17 and decided it was wrong. 2nd attempt I tried Gloop, as I thought I had GERMANIC OCATAVIUS, and Augustus Gloop from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was all I could come up with.

[Lysithea]

I have to agree that this was very challenging.
I still like my solution for #3, even though I think it hindered me in trying to guess at #17.

[Curlytek]

Lysithea, I ended with Bias for #3 as well! Maybe we'll get some sympathy points for it (it's a pretty good answer, but Athena is clearly the right one).

[poozle]

I got SO angry with these because most of the times I tried googling things it cae up blank, with nothing at all relevent coming up, on question 2 I managed to google and get a family guy episode and loads of other random things. These questions REALLY frustrated me because no matter how many times I tried most of them i couldn't find an answer for, and I'm desparate for cards because I still need WAY too many blacks and silvers.

[mac_monkey]

Ooh the suspenders are suspense is killing me