Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021/Opening Ceremony

Description

Solvers are presented with a grid of letters with some letters omitted, and a list of pairs of crossword clues beneath. As it turns out, this is a word search, with the word list given by the clues beneath the puzzle.

Solve Path

After filling out answers for the crossword clues and searching for those answers in the grid, solvers may see that most of a word is present, but some letters seem to be missing. A potential break-in is solving the clue Bridge in San Francisco (6 4) to GOLDEN GATE, and seeing the letters GOLD*TE in the grid, where * is a blank square.

As it turns out, every pair of clues cross the same blank square. In the example above, GOLD*TE goes diagonally up left through a blank square, and the paired clue, Souvenirs (9) clues the word MEMENTOES, which goes horizontally right through the same blank square as M*OES, missing the letters EMENT.

Concatenating the missing letters from the clues, in order of clue phrase, comes close to spelling a word. Specifically, a ceremonial word. The previous example omits the letters ENGA and EMENT, which is one letter off the word ENGAGEMENT.

The additional letter is the needed piece of information from each clue pair. Filling in each missing letter into the blank squares in the puzzle, and reading top-to-bottom, left-to-right, spells the final answer.