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SPEAKER 1: OK, and our
second puzzle of this year

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was called Problematic Conundrums.

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For this one we had about 1,000 correct
submissions and 500 good guesses,

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but not quite the correct answers.

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So let me again turn it
over to our friends at Meta

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to lead the walk through
for Problematic Conundrums.

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JAMES WU: Yep, so this is
Problematic Conundrums.

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This puzzle was written by me.

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And I hope you guys had fun with it.

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To start out, when you
first look at this puzzle,

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the first thing that
should jump out to you

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is a bunch of crossword clues with
fill in the blanks next to them.

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The blanks gave you
the length of the clue.

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And your goal here should be to solve
as many of these crossword clues

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as you can.

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We have a table here of
all of the answers to them.

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And you can see, like for each
one this part of the puzzle

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was written so that hopefully
you were able to find

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a good chunk of all of
these answers right away,

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just by thinking about what it could be.

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Some of the ones, for
example, a tribe called

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blank is something that
you could look up or know

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of in terms of a hip hop group.

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And as you solve a lot
of these answers, you

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might notice a pattern start to
emerge from the answers themselves.

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Specifically, if you were to
put a certain set of prefixes

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in front of these words, you
actually get new words out of them.

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Specifically here, if you
look, the puzzle's name

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is Problematic Conundrums.

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And that's a hint towards
the pro and con type of words

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that we're looking for.

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And the flavor text itself says
something about benefits and drawbacks,

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just like a list of pros and cons.

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And it turns out that if you take each
of the words from the first section,

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and you add pro or con in front
of them, you get new words.

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So, for example Bing, which was a
Google competitor, becomes probing.

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Claimed becomes proclaimed.

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Science becomes conscience, et cetera.

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And so you end up creating
this list of pros and cons

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on each side of your list.

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And you have one of
each for each category.

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Once you get this list, you
actually now have the opportunity

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to look at the second
part of this puzzle,

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where the second part
of the puzzle consists

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of much more cryptic
clues that are harder

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to solve from the crossword side.

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And it turns out the answers to each
of those consists of one of the pros

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and one of the cons.

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So as an example, a
misunderstanding while questioning

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is a probing confusion.

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A suggestion, Xbox?

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Could be considered a
proposition console.

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A partial change is a
prorated conversion.

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Artificial intelligence
was programmed conscience.

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Overpopulation perhaps, is
a procreation consequence.

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And declared victory is
a proclaimed conquest.

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So if you take each one of those,
the numbers next to those clues

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weren't, in fact, links, but, in
fact, indices into each of the words.

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You can end up with letters extracted
from each of the pros and cons.

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So like you take the
fourth letter of probing

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to get B, and the fifth letter
of confusion to get U, and so on.

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And after you do that, you end up
with two letters from each of these,

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and a total of 12 total letters,
which gives you the clue phrase,

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build or erect.

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And this is another
crossword clue that then

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solves for the final
answer, which is a con,

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it turns out, in construct,
which means to build or erect.

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So that was Problematic Conundrums.

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