Common Thread
Scott Purdy
Each column of this grid is a separate category of items, with like letters connected by arrows in consecutive entries. However, although the arrows leave each entry from the connecting letters, they point to that letter’s position or positions in an alphabetized list of the following entry’s letters. So, the G in GIVEN points to the third position in STAGE, corresponding to the third letter of AEGST. The columns are:
Types of Names
STAGE
GIVEN
MAIDEN
DOMAIN
MIDDLE
BRAND
PEN
PROPER
PLACE
Heroes Characters
PETER
MATT
NATHAN
ANDO
MOHINDER
HIRO
CLAIRE
ISAAC
JESSICA
Best Picture Oscar Winners
ROCKY
CRASH
CHICAGO
TITANIC
GLADIATOR
THE STING
GANDHI
UNFORGIVEN
FORREST GUMP
Clues for the final column referred back to the final word of each column, where, for example, A40540 gives C?EC? from the 4th and 5th letters of PLACE. Working the same way as before, the final column, then, is:
Fabric Patterns (hinted in the title, Common Thread, and
by the reference to “suit” in the flavortext)
CHECK
CALICO
POLKA DOT
HOUNDSTOOTH
GINGHAM
ARGYLE
PAISLEY
PINSTRIPE
PLAID
The shaded boxes give the final answer, PLAID.
Unfortunately, edits made during testsolving resulted in the first column reverting to an earlier version that ended with MAIDEN. Despite this breaking the cluing for the first entry in the final column, many teams solved the puzzle without noticing, and the problem was not discovered until after the Hunt.