This puzzle is part of the Monthly Topic Challenge #8: Cellular Automata.
This themed cryptic puzzle is dedicated to a user (from another website) who proposed to make March 23rd as a special holiday for his group after seeing one of my other questions on Puzzling.
Unfortunately, he got bullied and hacked about two years ago and became much less active.
This puzzle also contains an encouraging message for him. If he succeeds in his work, then we can probably confirm the validity of the hidden word.
Best wishes to him, and our fellow puzzlers!
Solve the clues to find the 16 words/phrases.
The 16 words/phrases below may be separated into 4 groups.
Additionally, there is a six-letter word absent from the wall which, I hope, will be able to fit in all four of those groups in the future, and that is the hidden encouraging message.
- Football Player is Street Queen (7)
- Start - up, left, down, right - In Cored Cannon Pot (8)
- Glue rash in most of eye (5)
- Calculate 23 towards ∞ (6,5)
- Cunning of turned chromosomes (4)
- Author of The Necklace Young Man (3)
- Part in lethal fight (4)
- Detective from southern part of Stockholm encounters swimmer returning (6)
- Likely to spread infinity City Time notes (10)
- Upwards dark, not front or back (3)
- Dorothy messed about a Game Of Life book from church (9)
- 1103M below ordered veils in a bright color (6)
- Heartless spy going around a long distance XD (6)
- Semi-valued Kentucky car: That is one of Odin's 12 (8)
- The Sixth Formerly prohibited country's biological weapon (5)
- Pale hardware in Wyoming (4)
- - - And Farewell To Biological Weapons!
Task: Complete the connect wall and find the hidden word.
Optional task: Can you guess what his favorite song is? Please answer in comments. He asked me this question , which I couldn't answer.
Hint 1:
Three of the four categories are related to cellular automata.
Hint 2:
Hint 3:
The words "Bottle" and "Pyrotechnecium" belong to one of the categories.
Hint 4:
The words "Bell", "Grant" and "Summers" belong to one of the categories.