In the fifth round, they could have also had MURIATES. Muriate is an old word for chloride, and hence muriatic acid is hydrochloric acid. In addition, among the sevens was my personal _Countdown_ word DISRATE, which means to lower a sailor in rank. I've always been interested in everything nautical, and this word seems to come up even more than LEOTARD. To riff on the seventh round word, I don't have anything to beat VICEROYS, but it did spur a chain of association with a favorite bit of light reading. Guy Boothby, creator of Dr. Nikola, also created a rogue named Simon Carne whose adventures he recounted in the book of short stories, called _A Prince of Swindlers_ or, its alternate title, _The Viceroy's Protégé_ . If anyone is looking for a good read, I highly recommend it. You can find it online at Project Gutenberg. I'm a bit surprised nobody else has yet gotten what I thought was the intuitive solution for 278: 9 - 7 = 2 10 / 2 = 5 50 x 5 = 250 7 x 4 = 28 250 + 28 = 278 And 288 is a multiple of 9, so this solution was possible: 50 - 7 - 7 - 4 = 32 32 x 9 = 288 288 - 10 = 278 And the first step of the previous puzzle gave me the clue for this solution: 50 - 9 - 7 = 34 34 x 7 = 238 10 x 4 = 40 238 + 40 = 278 I also got the conundrum just a shade before the contestants. I immediately saw CAPACITY, but that didn't include the N, so I kept on puzzling over it and then got CAPTAINCY.
