Behind Great Walls

Question

_{This is part 10 of the puzzle series Around the World in Many Days. Each part is solvable on its own.}

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Deаr Puzzling,

This is a word search puzzle with a wildcard character. There are eight unique letters in the grid (A, B, E, F, I, L, S and T), and the question mark can stand for any letter except for those eight. Find the eight clued words in the first grid and write them into the second grid, keeping question marks as is.

The second grid forms a sudoku with an anti-king move rule. That is, fill the grid with the characters A, B, E, F, I, L, S, T and ? so that each row, column and 3×3 box contains each character exactly once. Two cells sharing an edge or a corner cannot contain the same character. Each dotted line contains the answer to the clue with the number marked, starting from the numbered cell onwards. (This means some words are spelt bottom-up in the grid.) The final answer is spelt out in a straight line; the placement of the words in the first grid points out which way to look.

Today I have explored the streets, markets and even rooftops of the walled old town of a major city. Can you guess where I am?

Love, Gladys.

Word search on Penpa+
Sudoku on Penpa+

1. Consumes (4)
2. Destiny (4)
3. Thing (4)
4. Rascal (4)
5. Produces foliage (5)
6. A prime number (4)
7. Stop (4)
8. Very tired (4)

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Gladys will return in Multidimensional Travel.

Answer 1

The answers to the clues are as follows:

1. Consumes (4) - EATS
2. Destiny (4) - FATE
3. Thing (4) - ITEM
4. Rascal (4) - BRAT
5. Produces foliage (5) - LEAFS
6. A prime number (4) - FIVE
7. Stop (4) - HALT
8. Very tired (4) - BEAT

Here they are in the grid:

We can see that the words make

an arrow, pointing up and to the right.

Adding the words into the sudoku gives this starting position:

The sudoku is pretty straightforward from there and gives this solution:

Using the clue given from the word search grid, we can see that Gladys has found herself in

Fes el Bali, in Fez, Morocco!