Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021/Opening Ceremony

Opening Ceremony
Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021
Round 1
Author(s)	Level 51
Links
Puzzle	Link
Solution	Link

Description

Opening Ceremony is the aptly-named first puzzle of Round 1 of the 2021 Silph Puzzle Hunt. Solvers are presented with a grid of letters with some squares blank, and beneath, a list of pairs of crossword-like clues. There is no flavor text, so the only other information the solver has to work with is the title.

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. This fact is meant to be found out naturally, through solving both clues in a row and placing them in the grid. Once this fact is known, it can help solve the remaining clues - if one clue in a pair is solved, the blank square the other travels through is now known, greatly reducing the possible words that could fit.

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 corresponding blank square in the puzzle, then reading top-to-bottom, left-to-right, spells the final answer.

Final Answer: Click to revealBEGINNING

Puzzle Elements

Clue Centric - The first step of this puzzle is to answer the clues presented below the grid. Some of them are unambiguous because of the given enumeration, such as Bridge in San Francisco (6 4), but others are more ambiguous and the solver is meant to use the grid as aid. If one of the clues in a pair is solved, it is known which blank square the other will go through, limiting the possible words.

Word Search - The second step of this puzzle uses the word search to clue the solver to a set of missing letters.

Word Play - The solver is tasked with realizing that the letters they get from each pair of clues is close to a word that is a synonym of Ceremony, and finding the letter to add to make it one.