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Advisory Boards

by Dave Shukan


Identify the 12 photographs of boards from board games, which are in alphabetical order, as follows:

ANTIKE
AZTEC
DVONN
FOWL PLAY
HACIENDA
INGENIOUS
MEXICA
PUEBLO
QUORIDOR
TAJ MAHAL
WORD SEARCH
YSPAHAN

One of them is the board game Word Search, in which players slide pieces on a 10x10 grid to form words and then remove the used tiles. (Rules at http://www.boardgamegeek.com) The 12 board games are to be spelled, and removed, from the picture of the Word Search board as in a game of Word Search (any letters that are moved during a turn must be part of the word). All of the words are spelled horizontally forwards. The remaining letters can be slid into a single line in only one meaningful way, which spells out the solution: ARCADE GAME.

The order in which words are formed and removed from the Word Search board is:

PUEBLO
INGENIOUS
DVONN (using the D in the fifth row)
AZTEC
YSPAHAN
WORD SEARCH
FOWL PLAY
QUORIDOR
ANTIKE
TAJ MAHAL
HACIENDA
MEXICA

The final answer is ARCADE GAME.