CTI: Crime Team Investigation

[Ian Aloser]

Referring to letter two i am pretty sure that 6 across is

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Noobs

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I think 3 across was hidden in your last post

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Honor

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?
And for 9 across, could it be

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Ingenious

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?
Plus a suggestion for 1 down

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Napoli

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?

[heltenjon]

5 down:

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While Monstrous may be correct, we should also be aware that there is a Mount Ross in New York state, north of the city. Thus this one may be something personal for the killer.

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[CaptainD]

Maybe I'm thinking too literally but I thought 7 down would be:

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ineffective

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[mkennedy]

4 down

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Reaction

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?

[Stupot]

I am a loser. Aha yes. I was trying to find a word that fit the letters we already had for 9 across. And your suggestion is indeed...

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INGENIOUS

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.

Also I think you might be right about 3 across.

mkennedy - I also think you are right about 4 down.

CaptainD - I think there is a high chance 7 down ends with ED because it needs the E of 12 Across, and ED is a common way to form an adjective out of verbs.


If 1 Down is (as suggested by Lorenzo):

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TROFIE

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Then 2 Across could be:

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LIARS

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I had been working on the idea that the solution was a 12-letter word made up of all the numbered squares in the crossword. When I said in a previous post that I thought I had solved it, I was thinking Murray Hill. But I have since actually bothered to count the letters in that name and there are only ten, so I was wrong. But I still think that might be how we get to a solution

[Ian Aloser]

We are getting close , i guess.
The pasta leaves me clueless,
so do 7 down and 2 across
As far as I understand, there won‘t
be an update until the puzzle is solved
Note: For 12 across it could also be :
Bedbugs :-))
The solution might as well consist of
the letters found at the intersection
of rows and columns (10, if i counted correctly)

[Mandle]

As far as I understand, there won‘t be an update until the puzzle is solved

No, anyone can make an attempt at guessing the overall meaning of the puzzle before it is complete.

They will have to also provide their reasoning though and if it is reasonable enough (as in, not just a blind guess or close to one) the police chief will send out units to check it out.

[heltenjon]

8 across:

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Justice

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[Stupot]

8 across:

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Justice

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Yes. This has to be it. I was thinking more specific things like CASTRATE, but couldn’t quite get anything to fit.

As far as I’m concerned we only need 9 across 7 down . 11 down might be something different, but we’ll soon realise if it is.

Also, I said previously that ‘pasta’ was a unrelated to the case. But I know Mandle better than that. This is probably a clue. And serial killers often take a ‘trofie’ from their kills, albeit spelt differently.

[heltenjon]

And we still need 7 down. I would guess the killer finds the court system corrupted or unfair, so we need an eleven-letter-word for that, probably ending with ED, if not

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12 across is LAWYERS instead. But I think LEECHES is correct because of 11 down.

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[Mandle]

The police chief calls you all into his office and yells:

"YOU'VE ALL BEEN MEANDERING OVER THIS PUZZLE LIKE IT'S YOUR BREAKFAST COFFEE ENTERTAINMENT!!! I DON'T CARE IF YOU HAVEN'T SOLVED THE WHOLE CREEPY THING YET!!! ARE THERE ANY LEADS?! ANYTHING?! A LIFE IS AT STAKE HERE!!!"

[Ian Aloser]

Dear colleagues,

I have tampered with the crossword using MS-Paint and the
suggestions that look reasonable to us. Also, I have marked
the intersections of rows/columns in light blue.
Maybe one of you will find the missing 7 down and solve
this mystery. You find the file in the link below :

Good luck !

Iaal

[heltenjon]

Can we ask the local police at Mount Ross north of the city to do a sweep? It's the one keyword that stands out, as a fellow officer pointed out. At worst, we can cross it out as a dead end.

[Ian Aloser]

I am still a bit baffled about the meaning of Justice Killer's letter :

I will be sending you no more hints until I see my puzzle, fully solved, in the newspaper

Maybe the primary task is only to publish the solution of the crossword puzzle....
The numbered boxes contain too few vowels, whereas the light blue intersections contain too many
to make a meaningful sentence or location

[Stupot]

That’s assuming we have the right answers. I mean ‘hate’ was simply the first negative adjective ending in an E that came to my mind. If the real answer begins with a vowel we might have more to go on.  And again, there’s no guarantee that Leeches is correct, but it feels right.

As for 7 down. I can only think of one word that fits:

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CONSECRATED

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It doesn’t fit our current thinking that the Killer thinks the system is broken or corrupt. Perhaps, rather, he views the court as a holy, sacred institution.

Of course, we could be barking up the wrong tree that it ends in ED, so we should look at other ideas.

[Mandle]

Can we ask the local police at Mount Ross north of the city to do a sweep? It's the one keyword that stands out, as a fellow officer pointed out. At worst, we can cross it out as a dead end.

The police in the Mount Ross area did a sweep as requested but encountered nothing but a rather violent raccoon. The raccoon bit one officer who required a couple of weeks downtime to undergo treatment for potential rabies. During this time the officer did have the opportunity to engage in more marital sex than she would have usually had the chance to, and her and her husband, childless up until that time, achieved conception and that baby grew up to be a character in a future case hosted by me.

And now you know... The  rest ... errr ...  start of the story.

[Mandle]

I am still a bit baffled about the meaning of Justice Killer's letter :

I will be sending you no more hints until I see my puzzle, fully solved, in the newspaper

Maybe the primary task is only to publish the solution of the crossword puzzle....
The numbered boxes contain too few vowels, whereas the light blue intersections contain too many
to make a meaningful sentence or location

The stuff that Justice Killer writes in his letters are not game rules. It's just what he writes.

(Oh, and yes, Officer Heltenjon is cleared to provide another potential solution now that the Mount Ross sweep turned up nothing involving this case.)

[Laura Hunt]

7 down could also be:

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INCOMPETENT

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But that would mean that 9 and 12 would be wrong, and by extension, probably 11 too. Can anybody see any other words that would fit there? I've always sucked at Scrabble-type puzzles.

[Ian Aloser]

EDITED:
I think that Leeches and Hate make sense, but Hate could as well be Love,
for whatever reason only the killer knows
Stupot may be right :

It doesn’t fit our current thinking that the Killer thinks the system is broken or corrupt. Perhaps, rather, he views the court as a holy, sacred institution

The first victim was a criminal lawyer, not
a judge,who was accused by the court, so maybe the killer
is actually a judge.
Just a thought , so 7 down might rather be a
positive adjective......

POTENTIAL SOLUTION:
In my desperation, I have searched the map for locations with 12 letters.
Assuming that from what we have so far the words HONOR, ILL, LEECHES and LIARS are correct,
the only 12 letter location with HILL i found is :
RICHMOND HILL, which in turn means that a few other words
in our crossword solution are wrong :-((
BUT: The current score would be 9 letters of 12, so TROFIE und JUSTICE could be wrong
with 7 down still unknown
Instead of JUSTICE, DESTROY could be an alternative, but a kind of pasta with Y at the end ??
That would be TROPHY instead of TROFIE, but the T doesn't appear in Richmond Hill
However, with the D in DESTROY instead of JUSTICE we would have 10 hits out of 12,
if i counted correctly
So 1 and 7 should be O and C

[Ian Aloser]

POTENTIAL SOLUTION:
RICHMOND HILL
(see above post)