You are seeking the route to the lost city of El Dorado. You have assembled several historical accounts from explorers who claim to have reached it. Unfortunately, the accounts are incomplete, fragmented, or evasive. None provide all the milestones necessary to chart the route to El Dorado. Your only certainty is that the milestones which were reported are correct and in the proper order. Can you reconstruct a complete route from the fragmented accounts?
We're going to do something similar, but through a word puzzle.
RETAIN, HERO, STATION, CHEST, and ORCA are all examples of "fragments" taken from the source word ORCHESTRATION. Notice that letter ordering in the source word is preserved in the fragments.
I'm going to give you a set of "fragments" and we'll see if you can reconstruct the source word. I have designed it so that the given words are sufficient to determine the source word, but not easily.
For example:
Given words:
CRAM
CUTLET
TIN
-----------------------
Solution:
CURTAILMENT
If you're having difficulty seeing it, here is a graphical demonstration:
C R A M
C U T L E T
T I N
---------------------
C U R T A I L M E N T
It sort of looks like word Tetris!
As always, I construct my puzzles in such a way that they can be solved using only well-known words, so if you find yourself conjuring up increasingly obscure words, you may be overthinking it.
See if you can figure out the source word for each of these eight sets of "fragments" below:
1. AUTO
STRAIN
2. CAKE
FIERCER
FREAK
3. COURT
MINUTES
RUINS
4. COLAS
SCOTCHES
SHOOTERS
5. SEND
SPROUT
SUCCOR
6. CANTON
CONTAIN
OCEAN
7. LEGIT
PORES
TRESS
8. PRUDE
SEANCE
URBANE
(okay, maybe the source word for this one is just a little bit... professorial)
