Can you figure out the number I am thinking of?
Some cryptic clues:
- Call it sin, and mess it up (9)
- Between θ and κ (4)
- Engage emotionally (5)
- Half a byte (6)
- Mottle (5)
- Never mix meds & gin (7)
- – (4)
If you have all the answers right, that’s only about 33% percent of the solution: you need to justify them too.
Some clues were left over, so here’s a second set:
- Sing about the matter (10)
- Frog’s pole (3)
- Heroin or slap (5)
- 0 or 1 (1,3)
- A toy asking a question on an online forum (4+2 = 6)
An ingenious and very difficult puzzle by Bass on Puzzling StackExchange (spoiler warning: contains the solution)
Solution
The number I was thinking of is 5. It’s a fun and very challenging process to get to this answer.
First Set of Clues
“Cryptic clues” mean the clues are in the style of cryptic crossword clues:
- Call it sin, and mess it up (9)
- SCINTILLA, because “mess it up” means to mess up the letters, and “scintilla” is an anagram of “call it sin”
- Between θ and κ (4)
- IOTA, because iota is the Greek letter after theta and before kappa
- Engage emotionally (5)
- TOUCH
- Half a byte (6)
- NIBBLE, because a nibble is an obscure unit equal to 4 bits (and a byte is 8 bits)
- Mottle (5)
- FLECK
- Never mix meds & gin (7)
- SMIDGEN, because “mix” means to mix the letters and “smidgen” is an anagram of “meds” and “gin”
- – (4)
- DASH
But what do you do with these answers? The key is in the sentence: “If you have all the answers right, that’s only about 33% percent of the solution: you need to justify them too.” Justify (line up) the words, and take the third letter from the right:
SCINTILLA IOTA TOUCH NIBBLE FLECK SMIDGEN DASH
This gives you “LOU BEGA”.
Second Set of Clues
If you don’t know the answer yet, keep going with the next set of clues:
- Sing about the matter (10)
- SMATTERING, because “sing” is spelled around “matter” in “s matter ing”
- Frog’s pole (3)
- TAD, because of tadpole
- Heroin or slap (5)
- SMACK, because smack is slang for heroin and is a synonym for slap
- 0 or 1 (1,3)
- A BIT, because 0 or 1 represents a binary digit or “bit”
- A toy asking a question on an online forum (4+2 = 6)
- DOLLOP, because a “doll” is a toy and “OP” refers to the “original poster” in a thread on an online forum
Following the same trick as the first set of clues: “Some clues were left over, so here’s a second set”. Take the second letter from the left this time, and you get “MAMBO”.
Put It All Together
Now this requires a bit of pop culture knowledge, but all the clues point towards one song: Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega.
As a bit of fun flair, the answer to every clue was a synonym for “a little bit”, which is a phrase repeated often in the lyrics of the song!
(The title “Tricky, Tricky” is the name of another song by Lou Bega.)