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Diabolically Arcane

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Conundrum Cluster

12 June, 2015

Rather than a Friday folly this week, here are five tough questions to wrestle. You may need to rely upon the wisdom of crowds, as none of these will yield their answers easily. So feel free to theorise, or offer inklings, as one person's input may lead to another's outcome.

Conundrum 1 (from the Salon): What brand-word began as a French portmanteau, and is know a common noun?

Conundrum 2: ABIDE (or ABODE) owns four letters in their corresponding slots in the alphabet. So what familiar 12-letter word can boast five?

Condundrum 3: What common 10-letter word opens with a consonant pair, followed by a vowel pair, then 2 consonants, 2 vowels and lastly 2 consonants?

Condundrum 4: What links mondegreen, fashionista, bodyline, factoid, flying saucer & metrosexual?

Condundrum 5: What seven-letter word can see its initial C relocate to the tail in order to create a loose definition of the original word?

PS: If you live in or near Melbourne, there are some excellent tickets for the Williamstown Lit Fest to be snaffled. All you need to do is solve a few simple DA puzzles here.

Happy brainstorming.

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Riddledom Rave

If you missed my riddle chat with Richard Fidler, then feel free to slurp the podcast at http://ab.co/1I9t1x5

Text-speak is creeping into Scrabble. Where do you sit?
OBVS I'm fine with it
Entrenched stuff - like LOL and OMG - but no more.
Words With Friends, maybe. Scrabble, no
Let the 'real' dictionaries decide first
Just the handy stuff, like FAQ and EUW
I mean, WTF?! No way
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