Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.
The honeycomb below is a fancy form of wordsearch in which every cell is used, and words can curl and zigzag but never overlap. Each hive foxer has a theme (some past ones: owls, rugby, Egypt…). Identifying the theme is a vital part of the defoxing process. Today’s puzzle is composed of 17 answers.
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SOLUTIONS
Last week’s royal jigsaw foxer:
a1. Holy Crown of Hungary (Colonel_K)
a2. Queen of Katwe (Phlebas)
a3. The Royal Train Shed, Wolverton (Aergistal)
a4. Princess Leia (Phlebas)
a5. Carole King’s Tapestry (Phlebas)
a6. King of Lesotho (Viscount)
b1. William II (Colonel_K)
b2. The execution of Charles I (Electric Dragon)
b3. King Ottakar’s Sceptre (copperbottom)
b4. Prince Caspin (ylla)
b5. King’s Island theme park (Electric Dragon)
b6. Regal (copperbottom)
c1. King’s Bounty (copperbottom)
c2. Monarch Lucerne (Colonel_K)
c3. Royal Lytham & St.Annes Golf Cllub
c4. King Tiger
c5. Amalienborg Palace, Copenhagen (Colonel_K)
c6. The King’s Speech (Electric Dragon)
d1. Royal Spoonbill (ylla)
d2. Coronation Rock, Mars (copperbottom)
d3. King Dipendra of Nepal (Aergistal)
d4. Royal Sovereign Lighthouse (Aergistal)
d5. Royal Pleco (Aergistal)
d6. HMS Prince of Wales (Colonel_K, Zwack23)
e1. SR.N4 hovercraft ‘Princess Margaret'(Aergistal)
e2. Bessie ‘Queen Bess’ Coleman (Aergistal)
e3. The Musgrave Ritual (Colonel_K)
e4. Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco (Colonel_K)
e5. B-17: Queen of the Skies board game
e6. Kingdom of Portugal (Electric Dragon)
f1. King Abdullah II of Jordan (Colonel_K)
f2. Warhammer 40,000: Regicide (Colonel_K)
f3. Prince Valiant (copperbottom)
f4. Wars of Succession by AGEOD
f5. Kingpost (Colonel_K)
f6. Royal Oak sinking (Colonel_K)
G11. BOOZE
A6. THEATRE
C1. ARYAN(s)
Presumably the rest of you can see ‘Transit Van’ without thinking ‘Calum Dan’, and I don’t know whether to envy or pity you 😀
I4 or 5 – LATEX
B5 – also THEATRE, though this could only be the second part of a longer answer.
H5 SCOLD
K8 – BROOD
M5 – SLED
H6 – CORDON
F12 might be ZOMBIE if it’s not part of BOOZE.
That could have G11 BALLOON beside it.
R6 CONSTELLATION
H7. ORBIT could go with H6.Constellation and a Transit as celestial things.
But there’s also J9. MINION alongside Zombie
A5. EARLY BIRD (nickname for a 1965 comms satellite)
C1. ARYABHATA (India’s first satellite)
rules out Theatre
B5. TETHER
Zwack23’s F12. ZOMBIE – begins communicating again after an extended period of inactivity
alison’s G11. BALLOON – inflated with gas after achieving orbit
Phlebas’ H6. CONSTELLATION – group of artificial satellites working together as a system
E10. GRAVEYARD ORBIT
Possibly J6. ZENIT – pretty much everything in the USSR had a Zenit model, including spy satellites
Odd-looking collection of letters left, particularly the G at M4.
M7 ORION could also be a spy satellite.
M4 could be GSAT – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSAT
Then we could have L2 RXTE – https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/missions/rxte.html
M4 could just be GPS!
Fitting with K5 ASTERIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ast%C3%A9rix_(satellite)
K2. FOOTPRINT – ground area covered by a comms satellite
L1. PERIGREE [sic] – in Wikipedia it redirects to Apsis – the nearest and farthest extremes of an orbit
>> PERIGREE [sic]
Roman has been fired. Into geosynchronous orbit.
The THC ‘team’ is going to be extremely busy next week adding new entries to the Top 50 Combat Sims table and GMing Operation Oryx. If anyone fancies fashioning and submitting a foxer (solo or Friday) you’d be doing us a big favour!
If it’s not too late to submit, Tim, I’d be happy to take up some of the slack. Should have a solo Foxer ready and in your inbox in about 20 minutes.
I’ve posted the state-of-play as I see it in the Discord
https://discord.com/channels/962994399783051324/963313395350798377
I’ve left out Aryabhata as I couldn’t make anything from the remaining letters (it might be Colonel K-bait or start elsewhere).
K8. BOLD ORION was the first anti-satellite weapon.
I9. OMID – Iran’s first domestically-made satellite
Aryabhata and Transit are legit.
I think the last two might be:
E1 BLITS – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLITS
E6 OF LOVE – as in, the Lou Reed song