Cryptic: Machine in Motion

     Welcome all and thank you for joining me at this special meeting of “Machine in Motion. And utility. And fish”, where we talk about machines in motion, but mostly about utility and fish.

     As per the invitation, there will be a small test to prove your knowledge. The first part of the test consists of nine cryptic clues. Each clue gives one answer, thus, by the end of the first round, you will need to have nine distinct answers. The number in parentheses is the number of letters of the answer. Here are the cryptic clues:

     Before case or fight, when you fancy a quick nap (6)

     Some ham merge pounding nails (6)

     Upset hovels by looking for buried treasure (6)

     Observe in the past your practical companion (3)

     Scrambled poons has a million uses (5)

     Keep cool during primarily fierce autumn night (3)

     Faceless clamp for your darkest nights (4)

     Moor securely at the press of a button (6)

     Spout coop and never without a full supply of ink (8,3)

     In the meantime, I shall keep busy around the headquarters. I have to Cut the wood, Fix the light, Eat the soup, Write the letters, Fix the ventilation, Take a nap, Put together the furniture, Berth the ship and Dig for treasure. I hope to be done in time…But I digress!

     Next, using this image you have to reach the final solution. Please study this special alphabet and proceed to give me the final word. In fact, the final answer will be the location of our next meeting; you wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?

     Good luck and don’t read further if you don’t want to reveal the answer!

     Step One: Decipher

     Let us first decipher the nine cryptic clues. Clue zero is hidden in the Introduction. It is the name of this meeting, “Machine in motion. And utility. And fish”. This should allude to the famous group of machine fish in Neopia, the Utility fish. These are the fish which can also serve as tools for you to use around your Neohome. Therefore, all the answers will relate to the Utility fish group of items.

      “Before case or fight, when you fancy a quick nap (6)” looks for a word which can be used before the words “case or fight” to get another meaningful word, with a definition of “when you fancy a quick nap”. The answer for this is “Pillow”.

     “Some ham merge pounding nails (6)” uses the word “some” to indicate that in the next part of the sentence, the answer is already hidden in it. Indeed if we take “ham merge” and connect it, with the definition of pounding nails we get the answer “Hammer”.

     “Upset hovels by looking for buried treasure (6)” indicates with the word “upset” that an anagram follows, with the definition of “by looking for buried treasure”. If we rearrange the letters of “hovels” we get the answer “Shovel”.

     “Observe in the past your practical companion (3)” plays on words, using the word “past” on the verb “observe”. With a definition of “your practical companion”, a synonym of the word to “observe” is “see” and in the past tense leads to the answer “Saw”.

     “Scrambled poons has a million uses (5)” uses the word “scrambled” to show that an anagram follows, with the definition of “has a million uses”. Rearranging the letters of “poons” we get the answer “Spoon”.

     “Keep cool during primarily fierce autumn nights (3)” has a definition of “keep cool”. The pointer is “primarily” which signifies that you had to take the first letter of each word in the following phrase “fierce autumn nights”. This leads to the answer “Fan”.

     “Faceless clamp for your darkest nights (4)” has the pointer “faceless” to show that, from the next word “clamp” remove the first letter. With a definition of “for your darkest nights” the answer is “Lamp”.

     “Moor securely at the press of a button (6)” makes use of synonyms for the definition “at the press of a button”. “Moor securely" is a synonym for the answer “Anchor”.

     “Spout coop and never without a full supply of ink (8,3)” looks for two words with the definition “never without a full supply of ink”. Another case of synonyms. In the first instance we have “spout” and in the second instance we have “coop”. Logically finding a synonym for each word leads to the answer “Fountain pen”.

     Step Two: Order

     The second step is to correctly order these items, which might arguably be a lot easier compared to step one. Remember that, even though the cryptic clues didn’t directly give the word “fish” as a solution every time for each clue, the answers are all Utility fish. The order comes from the list of chores I was performing while you were solving this puzzle. Assigning one Utility fish per action leads to:

     Cut the wood - Sawfish

     Fix the light - Lampfish

     Eat the soup - Spoonfish

     Write the letters - Fountainpenfish

     Fix the ventilation - Fanfish

     Take a nap - Pillowfish

     Put together the furniture - Hammerfish

     Berth the ship - Anchorfish

     Dig for treasure - Shovelfish

     It is true that other Utility fish could perform the same action just as well, however from the list of nine fish derived from the cryptic clues, none overlap with each other.

     Step Three: Map

     The last part asks you to use the special alphabet in order to derive the next meeting location, thus reaching the final answer to the test. At first, the alphabet might look randomly coloured. However, upon closer inspection, you will notice that each letter is overlaid with the pattern found on the Utility fish.

     Matching each Utility fish with the letter that corresponds to its pattern we get the final answer which is LAMPWYCKS

     Thus concludes the test. Congratulations to those who passed and better luck next time to the rest of you, you may or may not get a call back. See you all next time in Moltara.

     Note: Thanks to kalnya for helping me playtest the puzzle. I would also love to hear from you if you solved part of or all of the puzzle. Any comments are appreciated