1710 Meta

 

 

The answers from this round are:

Puzzle	Answer
1. Ad Infinitum	HALF-CENTURIES
2. Bulls and Cows	APHTHOUS FEVER
3. Cryptographic Clue Cleaving	SECTIONAL SOFA
4. Don't Let Me Down	HERNIATED DISC
5. Exotic Tactics	IRREVERENTIAL

As each puzzle is solved, bridge hands are revealed as below:

As hinted by the flavor text ("Bridge problems and acrostics"), the answers form an acrostic of HASHI, a commonly used short name for Hashiwokakero, a puzzle involving bridge-building whose name literally means "build bridges."

All the black cards of the card hands are in the range ace through 6, out of order, while the red cards are all face cards that appear in the same sequential order in each hand. The red cards can be ignored, while the black ones form a Hashi puzzle:

The solution to the Hashi puzzle is:

The 13-letter long answers can be be overlaid on the Hashi puzzle. Reading the letters on islands connected by double-bridges, in sequence, gives the solution phrase TECH SCHOOL DIVERTS RIVER.

Upon completing this meta, the following link to supplementary information is revealed on the index page: