Can you find the missing lad and the treasure?

Question

_{This is an entry in the 27^th Fortnightly Topic Challenge.}

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$\mathtt{Once \ upon \ a \ time, \ there \ was \ a \ young \ sailor. \ This \ young \ sailor, \ however, \ was \ a \ pirate. \ The \ scourge \ of \ the \ seas.\\ \ You \ may \ have \ heard \ of \ him \ - \ the \ infamous \ Blackbeard!\\ \ With \ his \ band \ of \ cutthroat \ pirates, \ he \ stalked \ the \ seven \ seas, \ in \ his \ ship\ - \ The \ Queen \ Anne's \ Revenge!}$

$\mathtt{ Blackbeard \ terrorized \ the \ ocean, \ until \ the \ day \ that \ he \ vanished.\\ \ For \ centuries, \ nothing \ was \ known \ of \ what \ became \ of \ him \ - \ until \ yesterday.\\ \ Yesterday, \ we \ discovered \ a \ shipwreck.\\ \ Excitedly, \ our \ volunteers \ dug \ it \ up, \ until \ we \ found \ the \ name \ - \ The \ Queen \ Anne's \ Revenge. }$

$\mathtt { After \ a \ moment \ of \ stunned \ silence, \ everyone \ started \ talking \ madly.\\ \ In \ all \ of \ the \ confusion, \ nobody \ noticed \ when \ a \ young \ lad \ disappeared. }$

$\mathtt{ It \ was \ only \ when \ people \ started \ leaving \ that \ the \ lad's \ disappearance\\ was \ noticed.\\ \ Then \ everybody \ started \ scouring \ the \ beachside, \ but \ the \ search \ turned \ up \ empty.\\ \ The \ only \ thing \ that \ they \ found \ was \ this \ scrap \ of \ paper.\\ \ Perhaps \ you \ can \ find \ him? }$

$$\bbox[#f9f7db, 10px] { \mathcal{Ahoy! \ \color{#8a23a9}Maybe \ you \ think \ that \ yer \ goin' \ to \ find \ me \ treasure.\\ \ Well, \ you \ better \ think \ \color{#4e5d6b}t\color{#4e5d6b}wice.\\ \ In \ \color{#4e5d6b}order \ for \ you \ to \ find \ it, \ you've \ got \ to \ \color{#4e5d6b}go \ on \ a \ \color{#4e5d6b}quest.\\ \ So \ you've \ got \ \color{#4e5d6b}2 \ options: \ Sail \ the \ \color{#4e5d6b}7 \ seas, \ or \ give \ up.\\ \ Whaddya \ say? \ If \ ye \ insist \ in \ the \ t\color{#4e5d6b}reasure, \ carry \ on.\\ \ The \ first \ place \ where \ you'\color{#4e5d6b}ve \ got \ te \ go \ is \ hidden \ in \ this \ note, \ \color{#4e5d6b}along \ with \ a \ complimentary \ second.\\ \ Good \ luck... \ Or \ not.} } $$

$$ { \huge\mathbf {Instructions} } $$

$\mathbb{Each \ station \ should \ reveal \ a \ tinyurl \ to \ a \ Google \ Maps \ location.\\ \ You \ will \ use \ information \ from \ different \ stations \ all \ over \ -\\ \ there's \ no \ telling \ what \ might \ be \ useful.}$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 1} } $$

$$ { \mathsf{Your \ destination \ is \ hidden \ in \ the \ note.} } $$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 2} } $$

$$ { \mathsf{Your \ destination \ is \ hidden \ in \ the \ note.} } $$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 3} } $$

$$ { \mathsf {This \ is \ a \ crossword. \ The \ clues \ are \ below. \ To \ decipher \ them, \ use \ a \ Vigenere \ cipher \ with \ the \ key \ as \ your \ previous \ destination.\\ \ '////' \ indicates \ a \ blank \ space.} } $$

  ┏━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┓
  ┃ 1d ┃////┃ 2d ┃////┃ 1a ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫  
  ┃ 2a ┃ 3d ┃    ┃    ┃////┃////┃////┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃ 3a ┃    ┃    ┃////┃4d4a┃ 5d ┃////┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃    ┃////┃////┃ 5a ┃    ┃    ┃ 6d ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃    ┃////┃////┃////┃    ┃////┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃////┃ 6a ┃    ┃ 7d ┃////┃7a8d┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃ 8a ┃    ┃////┃ 9a ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┗━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┛

_{(image version)}

$$ { \mathsf {Across} } $$

$\mathtt{ 1. \ Qdu \ evda\ dw \ gzxs \ lrsglg \ vx \ noc \ ssxl.\\ 2. \ S \ rocalgy \ qa \ lwe \ Uvvslm \ Rsht.\\ \ Knf \ qe \ unvt \ fzbe \ p \ smaltnkr \ vtctnjxno \ gzpt \ qa \ lwe \ xnki \ ywh \ edvmq \ ijikxdn.\\3. \ S \ Hhixwhpmnjtiia \ fd.\\ 4. \ Dtadr.\\ 5. \ Lwe \ lvkiavpw \ qebjwtn \ O \ nfs \ A. Lbmqlm \ gzt \ dqsxtrmaut \ bmgotev \ R scd N.\\ 6. \ Owab \ lgj \ gmg \ ac \ tpr \ kjn.\\7. \ Fdvi \ fudtqn.\\8. \ S \ siotacg \ qakirczwct, \ evlwocg \ wmcmrvxno \ rpeekgsiiwak, \ pnl \ n \ ugemcq \ aactz \ urwz \ s \ uab \ bds \ gcl.\\ 9. \ Owab \ lgj \ dw \ gg \ p \ pqnfd.}$

$$ { \mathsf {Down} } $$

$\mathtt{ 1. \ Lwe \ xymgat \ bx \ lhmew \ noc \ zsze \ ubftyubftyubfty.\\ 2. \ Dnivt \ ac \ tpr \ hpsb... \\3. \ Lwe \ lraiy \ eug \ haqyk \ pczbkh \ tpr \ kzy \ qa \ s \ qoig, \ ac \ tpr \ htrxrljat \ osittr \ svaqaki \ cpngh.\\4. \ Ytligacocf \ yaox. \ Bz, \ dh. \ Wu!\\5. \ Fdtwsx.\\6. \ Owab \ gzxs \ xhrolm \ vk \ cob.\\7. \ Kdmmgzxno \ gzpt \ qf \ fdt \ i \ cjdbtre \ dn \ buw \ lej.\\8. \ Fdt \ ichaikntae \ bb \ lwia \ cmoztr.}$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 4} } $$

$$ { \mathsf {This \ is \ a \ wordoku/sudoku. \ Once \ you \ have \ solved \ it, \ there \ is \ a \ link \ hidden.\\ (Dots \ are \ not \ part \ of \ it.)} } $$

  ┏━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┳━━━━┓
  ┃ j. ┃ 5  ┃ 8  ┃    ┃ u  ┃  . ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫  
  ┃ s  ┃ .  ┃    ┃    ┃ g  ┃ 1  ┃ 8  ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃ j  ┃ 5  ┃ s  ┃ p  ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃ 8  ┃    ┃ p  ┃    ┃ 5  ┃ u  ┃    ┃ 1  ┃ g  ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃    ┃ 1  ┃ u  ┃ p  ┃ s  ┃   .┃ 4  ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃    ┃ s  ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃ p  ┃ 8  ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃ 4  ┃    ┃    ┃ u  ┃    ┃ s. ┃    ┃ p  ┃ 8  ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃ p  ┃.   ┃ 1  ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃    ┃
  ┣━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━╋━━━━┫
  ┃.   ┃ 8  ┃ s  ┃    ┃ p  ┃ 4  ┃ j  ┃ 5  ┃    ┃
  ┗━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┻━━━━┛

_{(image version)}

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 5} } $$

steganography

$$ { \mathsf {Remember, \ numbers \ are \ not \ Vigenered.} } $$

$\tiny\tiny{story}$
$\mathtt{2-3-4\\ 1-5-3\\ 3-1-1\\ 7\\ 5-5-1\\ 6\\ 4-5-2}$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 6} } $$

$\mathsf{There \ are \ two \ kinds \ of \ dragons: \ Rationals \ and \ predators.\\ Gray \ rationals \ and \ red \ predators \ always \ tell \ the \ truth; \ red \ rationals \ and \ gray \ predators \ always \ lie.}$

$\mathtt{Dragon \ A:Stg4ud2 \ \\ Dragon \ B: \ Sw5yz6g\\ Dragon \ C: \ Lrhyf4w }$

$\tiny{The \ following \ puzzle \ was \ taken \ from \ a \ book \ entitled \ Classic \ Logic \ Puzzles, \ by \ J. \ J. \ Mendora \ Fernandez, \ George \ J. \ Summers, \ and \ Norman \ D. \ Willis.}$

$\mathtt{A.\\ \ 1. \ Ask \ B \ what \ my \ type \ is; \ he \ will \ give \ you \ a \ truthful \ answer.\\2. \ C \ is \ red.\\B.\\1. \ A \ and \ I \ are \ both \ rationals.\\2. \ C \ is \ a \ predator.\\C.\\1. \ A \ and \ B are \ both \ predators.\\2. \ B \ is \ gray.}$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 7} } $$

$\mathsf{Sheet \ music. \ The \ chords \ are \ Vigenered. \ How \ could \ this \ reveal \ a \ tinyurl? \ You'll \ see...}$

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$$ { \huge\mathbf {Station \ 8} } $$

$\mathsf{This \ may \ look \ like \ weird. \ That's \ because \ it's \ your \ treasure! \ To \ fully \ win \ your \ treasure, \ you \ must \ solve \ this \ unaided. \ Standard \ Vigenere.}$

$\mathtt{Jabberwok, \ thy \ time \ hath \ come! \ Come, \ valiantly \ face \ thy \ destiny!\\ \ But \ as \ thou \ art \ cowardly, \ thou \ cannot.\\ Let \ us \ then \ never \ see \ thy \ horrid \ scaly \ face \ for \ evermore! \ Under \ sea, \ on \ Earth, \ in \ the \ sky \ above! \ Go \ forth, \ vile \ creature!}$

$\mathtt{Drearily, \ walk \ home \ disgraced. \ The \ Jabberwok \ hath \ returned, \ O \ people!\ Returned \ to \ its \ midnight \ hauntings, \ to \ terrorize \ the \ villages!\ 6 \ weeks, \ and \ it \ will \ be \ upon \ us! \ Flee! \ Warriors, \ to \ arms! \ TO \ ARMS!}$$

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Here is the Vigenere thing I used.

Answer 1

The instructions tell us that each station should produce a tinyurl that leads to a Google Maps link. These URLs have codes that are made up of case-insenitive letters and digits. (I first thought that these codes were always seven characters long, but that's not true. Tinyurl even allows you to have custom codes.)

The results are the names of places – countries, states, cities or islands. They are used as Vigenère key in order to reveal the puzzles in some stations. It is not clear where they should be used. Here's a brief sketch of the input and output so far:

Station 1: note → HAWAII
Station 2: note → SPAIN
Station 3: SPAIN → crossword → CHINA
Station 4: wordoku → FRANCE
Station 5: FRANCE → numbers → MAINE
Station 6: MAINE → dragons → (KOREA), (ROCHESTER), EASTER ISLAND
Station 7: EASTER ISLAND → music → ALASKA
Station 8: ? → final → ?

Still unused keys: HAWAII, CHINA, (KOREA), (ROCHESTER), ALASKA

At the moment, the treasure hunters are trying to solve Station 8, where the treasure is buried!

Station 1

The key should be hidden in the note.

The note has several letters highlighted in another colour:

  Ahoy! Maybe you think that yer goin' to find me treasure.
  Well, you better think twice.
  In order for you to find it, you've got to go on a quest.
  So you've got 2 options: Sail the 7 seas, or give up.
  Whaddya say? If ye insist in the treasure, carry on.
  The first place where you've got te go is hidden in this note,
      along with a complimentary second.
  Good luck... Or not.

Most of the special letters are highlighted in a dull slate grey, which is hard to make out. The capital M, however, is rendered in purple. The hex code of the colour's RGB values can be seen in edit mode; it's 8a23a9 and it leads to HAWAII.

Station 2

This key was found by Techidiot:

The highlighted letters are M two gq27rva. The M has been used in Station 1 and the two serves only to mark the next letters as belonging to Station 2, as the OP has said in a comment.

With the last seven, gq27rva, as tinyurl code we get a link to SPAIN.

Station 3

The Vigenère key for the crossword clues ...

... is SPAIN from Station 2.

The decoded crossword clues are:

Across

1. You will do this dearly if you fail. (3)
2. A country in the Middle East. Can be made from a sentence declaring that in the past you moved quickly. (4)
3. A Shakespeareian no. (3)
4. Leave. (2)
5. The distance between G and A. Double the difference between E and F. (4)
6. What you get in the sun. (3)
7. Nova scotia. (2)
8. A digging instrument, without exceeding expectations, and a creepy laugh from a fat old guy. (2)
9. What you do to a piano.

Down

1. The plural of where you make moneymoneymoney. (5)
2. Lying in the past... (3)
3. The deity who sails across the sky in a boat, in the perpetual battle against chaos. (2)
4. Gelatinous glop. Oh, oh. Oh! (3)
5. Not off. (2)
6. What this puzzle is not. (4)
7. Something that is not a problem on the web. (2)
8. Not applicable to this puzzle. (2)

The solutions to the clues are:

Across

1. PAY (found by Rubio)
2. IRAN – I ran
3. NAY
4. GO
5. TONE (from note G and A is one tone and from E to F is a half-tone.)
6. TAN
7. NS (abbr)
8. HO (sHOvel? Ho, ho, ho!)
9. PLAY

Down

1. MINTS
2. LAY (past tense of to lie)
3. RA
4. GOO
5. ON
6. EASY
7. NP (abbr)
8. NA (abbr)

The solved crossword is:

      ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐
      │ M │ ■ │ L │ ■ │ P │ A │ Y │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ I │ R │ A │ N │ ■ │ ■ │ ■ │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ N │ A │ Y │ ■ │ G │ O │ ■ │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ T │ ■ │ ■ │ T │ O │ N │ E │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ S │ ■ │ ■ │ ■ │ O │ ■ │ A │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ ■ │ T │ A │ N │ ■ │ N │ S │
      ├───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┼───┤
      │ H │ O │ ■ │ P │ L │ A │ Y │
      └───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

The URL for the next station is ...

... found in the diagonal: mrytony. It leads us CHINA.

A note on the Vigenère key: I had guessed the key before Techidiot has posted his answer. This was possibe, because the plain text is English. I think that working backwards may also be applicable to other stations.

Station 4

This station does not require a key and Techidiot has already solved the wordoku:

      ┌───┬───┬───╥───┬───┬───╥───┬───┬───┐
      │ j.│ 5 │ 8 ║ s │ u │ p.║ 1 │ g │ 4 │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ s │ p.│ 4 ║ 5 │ g │ 1 ║ 8 │ u │ j │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ 1 │ u │ g ║ 4 │ 8 │ j ║ 5 │ s │ p │
      ╞═══╪═══╪═══╬═══╪═══╪═══╬═══╪═══╪═══╡
      │ 8 │ 4 │ p ║ j │ 5 │ u ║ s │ 1 │ g │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ g │ 1 │ u ║ p │ s │ 8.║ 4 │ j │ 5 │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ 5 │ s │ j ║ 1 │ 4 │ g ║ p │ 8 │ u │
      ╞═══╪═══╪═══╬═══╪═══╪═══╬═══╪═══╪═══╡
      │ 4 │ j │ 5 ║ u │ 1 │ s.║ g │ p │ 8 │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ p │ g.│ 1 ║ 8 │ j │ 5 ║ u │ 4 │ s │
      ├───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───╫───┼───┼───┤
      │ u.│ 8 │ s ║ g │ p │ 4 ║ j │ 5 │ 1 │
      └───┴───┴───╨───┴───┴───╨───┴───┴───┘

Taking the characters from the dotted cells, we get jpp8sgu, which leads us to FRANCE.

Station 5

This puzzle consists of numbers only, so Vigenère can't be applied here directly.

The puzzle has a steganography tag and the small note "story". Treat the three-number combos as sentence – word – letter references. Single numbers are just that: digits. The "story" hint tells us not to use the yellow note, but the story itself, which begins with "Oce upon a time", as source.

The result is let7c6f, to which we must apply the Vigenère key FRANCE from the previous station to get gnt7p6d, which leads to MAINE.

Station 6

This liar puzzle is in plain text.

Each dragon has a code, which we can decode with the Vigenère key MAINE to get:

Dragon A: Stg4ud2 → gty4hz2 → KOREA
Dragon B: Sw5yz6g → gw5qm6c → ROCHESTER
Dragon C: Lrhyf4w → zrzlb4k → EASTER ISLAND

This is a liar puzzle, a type of puzzle I'm not terribly fond of. If we assume that B lies, A's first staement means that A lies, too. Since all of A's and B's stalements are false, C must be a grey rational, who tells the truth. That means that both A and B are grey predators, who always lie. Other possibilities seem to lead to contradictions, but I haven't explored them all.

So A and B are lying grey predators and C is a truthful grey rational. If the task is to find a truthful dragon, the solution is C with the key EASTER ISLAND.

Station 7

We are told to decode the chords.

With the Vigenère key EASTER, the chords decode to:

  C G F C Dm F Am C G Am C Em F Dm C

(I don't know whether the other two results from the previous station are needed, but I had already found out that EASTER is the only reasonable key that decoded to valid chords.)

The chords are:

  Am: A, C, E   C: C, E, G   Dm: D, F, A   Em: E, G, B   F: F, A, C   G: G, B, D

I don't know how to read the notes. There is no clef and the fact that there aren't always the same number of notes between bars probably means that they just serve to create a kind of code in conjunction with the chords, but I don't see how.

I've tried to make Bacon codes (5-bit binary numbers) from the notes where notes that cross the stave or notes that under the assumption of a violin clef woul be part of the chord are either 0 or 1. I've also tried to turn the notes into Morde signals where up/down mean dot/dash (or vice versa) and two consecutive equal notes are ignored. That all lead to nothing.

The solution is much simpler: Concatenate all the chords of the bars that have five notes instead of four and get gcfamcdm. The link is to ALASKA

Station 8

So this is where the treasure is.

There's a text set in typewriter font. It has a lot of capital letters and also a suspicious digit at the beginning of a sentence. All capital letters and the digit read:

  JCBLUEG DTJOR6F WTOARMS

(The divisions are mine; the seven letter words would make good tinyurl keys.)

There are some uncertainties: There are several unused keys. I think that the excess keys from Station 6, the liar puzzle, can be discarded; they were probably only meant as wrong options. But even so, we haven't used HAWAII from Station1, CHINA from Station 3 and, of course, ALASKA, which we've just found in Station 7. Do we have to combine the keys? I would guess that the last key is the correct one, but that assumption has failed me several times during this treasure hunt, so I'm wary.

I'm not sure whether we are looking for a tinyurl link to a Google Maps page here or whether we get a tinyurl link at all. The introduction says "This is your treasure", so the solution might be a description of the treasure. The digit 6 supports the assumption that the result is a tinyurl, however. Or maybe an imgur link?

Taking only the capital letters plus digits, or the first letters in every sentence or all capital letters that are not the beginning of a sentence didn't get me anywhere.

Maybe I should try some more things, but frankly, I'm running a bit out of steam here.

Answer 2

Will start with a partial

M two gq27rva - > These are the colored characters in the note.
I haven't figured out the first part yet. But, taking the second part and using it as tinyurl gives
tinyurl.com/gq27rva takes us to SPAIN


Taking this as a key for the clues part we get -

ACROSS
1. You will do this dearly if you fail.
2. A country in the Middle East. Can be made from a sentence declaring that in the past you moved quickly.
3. A Shakespeareian no.
4. Leave.
5. The distance between G and A.Double the difference between EandF.
6. What you get in the sun.
7. Nova scotia.
8. A digging instrument, without exceeding expectations, and a creepy laugh from a fat old guy.
9. What you do to a piano.

DOWN

1. The plural of where you make moneymoneymoney.
2. Lying in the past...
3. The deity who sails across the sky in a boat, in the perpetual battle against chaos
4. Gelatinous glop. Oh, oh. Oh!
5. Notoff
6. What this puzzle is not.
7. Something that is not a problem on the web.
8. Not applicable to this puzzle


ATM, @M Oehm is done with solving the clues here

WORD SUDOKU SOLUTION