44
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I got an email from one of my friends in Brazil today morning:


"Free tickets to the Rio Olympics if you can solve all these! Good luck!!"

Clues:

  1. $\longleftarrow 8\;\bar{\uparrow} $

  2. $10 n=$

  3. $\text{log}_{\boxed{b}}a+\bigg\{x\in V\bigg| \;||x||<r^2\bigg\}$

  4. Darts, fencing, baseball, and skeet-shooting without golf, skateboarding and table tennis

  5. I, on a strange game

  6. Foul herb; no return

  7. Proportion led by acid dissociation constant

  8. Each stilt is broken

  9. $\begin{cases}y=x^{20x},\\ y=x^{16},\\ xy^2+x^2-2x=0, \\ x^2+y^2=1.\end{cases}$

  10. When you line up and quarrel continuously

  11. Hello, your majesty!

  12. $f(\infty)^t+\bigg\{x\in V\bigg| \;||x||<r^2\bigg\}$

Grid:

enter image description here


I really have no idea what this is all about, except that I have a feeling these are all sports related. Can you help me out by solving these for me?


Note:

  1. The clues above are not necessarily standard cryptic-clues. For example, almost none of them includes definitions.
  2. Exactly half of them are related to non-Rio sports.
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2
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ Got my mind blown by 4! $\endgroup$
    – Christoph
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 7:07
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ one of the best puzzle .. $\endgroup$
    – Amruth A
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 10:04

2 Answers 2

22
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1

Weightlifting - arrow pointing West + eight + a symbol for lifting

2

Tennis - ten + n + is

3

Baseball - b is the base of the logarithm + the equation for a ball

4

Chess - remove the letters of golf, skateboarding and tabletennis from the letters of darts, fencing, baseball and skeetshooting. The remaining letters can be rearranged to form the word chess.

5

Oina - anagram of "I, on a", and surely in a way strange, as I've never heared about it

6

Badminton - bad mint + 'no' reversed

7

Karate - Ka is the acid dissociation constant + rate

8

Athletics - the clue is an anagram (Credit goes to @RosieF)

9

Judo - plot the equations to get the shapes of the letters

10

Rowing (Credit goes to @RosieF)

11

Hiking - Hi, king!

12

Football - f + $\infty$ + t + the equation for a ball

The phrase is

Welcome to Rio

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5
  • $\begingroup$ I can see the phrase already from these letters. rot13(jrypbzrgbevb) $\endgroup$
    – f''
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 6:51
  • $\begingroup$ I'd have never come up with 5 without guessing the phrase and searching for sports starting with this letter... ;) $\endgroup$
    – Christoph
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 6:55
  • $\begingroup$ Common Chris waiting for final answer.. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 7:21
  • $\begingroup$ There you go! Credit for 8 and 10 goes to @RosieF! $\endgroup$
    – Christoph
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 7:24
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @Christoph. What? you've never heard of Oina? Tsk Tsk... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oin%C4%83. Just for the record....I'm from Romania :D $\endgroup$
    – Marius
    Commented Aug 16, 2016 at 13:46
7
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8.

Athletics (the clue is an anagram)

10.

Rowing

4.

Chess (remove the letters in the latter list from the letters in the former list)

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