SOLVED - Test Puzzle 3 - Get Better At Solving Puzzles

[Suspence]

Hopefully this one will be a bit harder than the last two, providing more opportunity to get comments on the solving process. Again, no instructions or hints.

Nevus (9)
Color changing lizard (9)
Vanish (9)
Wrestler (8)
Hatch (8)
Place to borrow books (7)
Humorous poem (8)
Neither hot nor cold (8)
Crafty scheme (11)
Toothy Amazon fish (7)
Mario's occupation (7)
Replicates a battle (8)
Large horned mammals (12)
Most frightening (8)
Happiness at the misfortune of others (13)
Poison-tailed arachnid (8)
Prevarication (7)
_____

Reasonably priced (10)
Surprise attack (6)
Small tangerine (10)
Smash into (7)
Alphabetic index of words (11)
Extremely tiring (10)
Ladylike (8)
Aromatic (8)
Trustworthiness (7)
Famed Jewish city (9)
Bond's drink of choice (7)
System of connections (7)
Summer Games participant (8)
Polish music (5)
Middle Eastern headwear (6)
Triumphant (10)
How you feel in space (10)
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Zahariel]

It's been a while since I've had a hand in solving any puzzles, I'll give my first impressions on this one. These are all just off the top of my head, late at night.

Since we're supposed to be talking about our thought processes, the obvious thing here is, given a list of crossword-ish clues, assume they're crossword clues until proven otherwise. Numbers in parentheses at the end of crossword clues are traditionally word lengths; again, assume this until you have reason to believe otherwise. So far these assumptions seem to be working out pretty well.

Nevus (9)
CHAMELEON Color changing lizard (9)
DISAPPEAR Vanish (9)
Wrestler (8)
Hatch (8)
LIBRARY Place to borrow books (7)
LIMERICK Humorous poem (8)
LUKEWARM Neither hot nor cold (8)
Crafty scheme (11)
PIRANHA Toothy Amazon fish (7)
PLUMBER Mario's occupation (7)
REENACTS Replicates a battle (8)
RHINOCEROSES Large horned mammals (12) (note the plural!)
SCARIEST Most frightening (8)
SCHADENFREUDE Happiness at the misfortune of others (13)
SCORPION Poison-tailed arachnid (8)
Prevarication (7)
_____

AFFORDABLE Reasonably priced (10)
AMBUSH Surprise attack (6)
CLEMENTINE Small tangerine (10)
Smash into (7)
DICTIONARY Alphabetic index of words (11)
EXHAUSTING Extremely tiring (10)
Ladylike (8)
Aromatic (8)
HONESTY Trustworthiness (7)
JERUSALEM Famed Jewish city (9)
MARTINI Bond's drink of choice (7)
NETWORK System of connections (7)
OLYMPIAN Summer Games participant (8)
Polkish music (5)
Middle Eastern headwear (6)
Triumphant (10)
How you feel in space (10)

The next observation is that this seems to be two separate lists of 17 clues each, each in alphabetical order, which possibly gives hints to some more sub-answers (this is how I got LUKEWARM, REENACTS, HONESTY, and NETWORK). Then.... do something else?

[Oscar]

Having got a few more of the words:

BIRTHMARK Nevus (9)
CHAMELEON Color changing lizard (9)
DISAPPEAR Vanish (9)
GRAPPLER Wrestler (8)
INCUBATE Hatch (8)
LIBRARY Place to borrow books (7)
LIMERICK Humorous poem (8)
LUKEWARM Neither hot nor cold (8)
MACHINATION Crafty scheme (11)
PIRANHA Toothy Amazon fish (7)
PLUMBER Mario's occupation (7)
REENACTS Replicates a battle (8)
RHINOCEROSES Large horned mammals (12) (note the plural!)
SCARIEST Most frightening (8)
SCHADENFREUDE Happiness at the misfortune of others (13)
SCORPION Poison-tailed arachnid (8)
UNTRUTH? Prevarication (7)
_____

AFFORDABLE Reasonably priced (10)
AMBUSH Surprise attack (6)
CLEMENTINE Small tangerine (10)
COLLIDE? Smash into (7)
CONCORDANCE Alphabetic index of words (11)
EXHAUSTING Extremely tiring (10)
FEMININE Ladylike (8)
FRAGRANT Aromatic (8)
HONESTY Trustworthiness (7)
JERUSALEM Famed Jewish city (9)
MARTINI Bond's drink of choice (7)
NETWORK System of connections (7)
OLYMPIAN Summer Games participant (8)
POLKA Polkish music (5)
TURBAN Middle Eastern headwear (6)
VICTORIOUS Triumphant (10)
WEIGHTLESS How you feel in space (10)

I started to look for connections between the two lists, and nothing looked remotely obvious. I then started to look for connections within each list and my general observation was that the words were too disparate for letter by letter comparisons. On looking to break up these (usually lengthy) words however I began to detect internal words: 'apple' within 'grappler', 'pear' within 'disappear', 'cuba' within 'incubate', 'china' within 'machinations' etc.
Now I had several different genres to look for it became much easier and groups of 4x4's appeared - these are my best guesses so far:

Birthsigns
CHAMELEON Leo
SCARIEST Aries
SCORPION Scorpio
LIBRARY Libra

Fruit
DISAPPEAR Pear
GRAPPLER Apple
PLUMBER Plum
LIMERICK Lime

Countries
MACHINATION China
SCHADENFREUDE Aden
PIRANHA Iran
INCUBATE Cuba

Names
REENACTS Ena?
RHINOCEROSES Rose
UNTRUTH Ruth
BIRTHMARK Mark
LUKEWARM Luke
__

Presidents
AFFORDABLE Ford
AMBUSH Bush
POLKA Polk
FRAGRANT Grant

State capitals
CONCORDANCE Concord
EXHAUSTING Austin
OLYMPIAN Olympia
JERUSALEM Salem

Popes
TURBAN Urban
VICTORIOUS Victor
CLEMENTINE Clement
MARTINI Martin

Numbers
HONESTY One
WEIGHTLESS Eight
FEMININE Nine
NETWORK Two

COLLIDE? ?

Presumably we now need to merge the remaining words from the 2 lists - maybe these are REENACTS & COLLIDE?

[edit] Just realised that Ruth, Mark, Luke and 'ACTS' (Not 'Ena') could be books of the Bible, leaving the two words as
'Rhinoceroses collide' which makes kind of sense....
On the other hand trying to continue the pattern and taking internal words from both gives the somewhat different 'Rose Lid' which I suspect isn't the answer we're looking for...

[3iff]

Pre-puzzle, what Zahariel said...same thoughts for me too.

I was trying to link words on the two lists with zero success. 17 words in each list seemed strange (now I know why). I don't think I would have seen the words within words thing (although I've had a very distracting morning without sufficient time to devote to the puzzle).

[Scurra]

The collective noun for Rhino is a CRASH.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[3iff]

For "smash into", I had crashes, but collide sounds better.

I might have heard of crash/rhino but I wouldn't have thought of that link either.

[Oscar]

Yes, 'crash' must be the answer we're looking for. I hadn't come across this term for a group of rhinos before and, since they are generally solitary beasts, I suspect it's a usage that crops up more often in puzzles than in normal conversation!

[Suspence]

CRASH was indeed the intended answer. Nicely solved.

I think that the hard part for someone learning puzzles is figuring out how to go from two lists of 17 words each to anything else without any instructions.

I'd be interested to hear more from Zahariel on the process of going from the comparing the two lists, to comparing the individual lists, to finding the words within words.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Zahariel]

[3iff]

[Oscar]

Suspence asked me to expand on the decision process regarding looking for links between the two different word lists - (OK he asked Zahariel for some reason, but he's getting this anyway...)

Since the numbers matched (17 in each list) it made sense to first look for links between a member of one list with any one in the other.

The two types of link I was looking for were commonality of letters (e.g. did two words share most of their constituent letters with another word?) or some associative link (e.g. same genre or via some phrase or book or film title etc)

The common letters idea died almost instantly, and luckily I hadn't come across the collective noun for rhinos, otherwise I might have gone down a blind alley looking for others like it! After just a few minutes I decided to abandon cross-linking and to examine the first list consecutively just looking for ideas. The words seemed quite long and awkward on the whole and anybody who's studied cryptic crossword clues would have had a head start on spotting the connection - a common type of clue is to bury the answer within consecutive letters, often spanning several words within the clue. If you frequent the Cryptic Crossword thread in VSP (and you should!) then this sort of thing becomes almost second nature. It helped that 'grappler' and 'disappear' were consecutive words in the first list and the 'apple' part just leaped out at me and 'pear' followed at once.

After that I just went down to 'incubate' and saw 'Cuba' and the 'China' in 'machinations' was too big to miss. Then after spotting 'Scorpio' the 3 other star signs were also obvious and with 4 fruits and 4 countries the reason for lists of 17 were also pretty obvious. (I keep using terms like 'obvious' but I don't mean to denigrate the puzzle, far from it - it's a good feeling to suddenly start working through the links knowing you're on the right track.)
Apart from the final connection between the remaining words it almost solved itself from there.

So there you have it:
if you want to improve your word-puzzling skills start joining in with 'get a clue' in the Cryptic Crossword thread in this forum and also learn all weird animal group terms by heart...

Oh and thanks to Suspence for all these puzzles. Keep em coming!

[3iff]