Our local newspaper has a contest where you can win money if you correctly fill out the puzzle.

competition/contests/prizeweek.puzzlers New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

Our local newspaper has a contest where you can win money if you
correctly fill out the puzzle.  The puzzle is from the company "United
Feature Syndicate".  When I check their site, it calls the puzzle
"Prizeweek Puzzlers".  How can I solve these puzzles?

They provide you with the a sentence clue with one word missing.  Then
they give you a choice of two possible answers with only one being
right.  For an example, the clue is "After enduring recent failures in
business, the __________ of such men might be in turmoil" and the give
you the clues "__ ives" which could either be "wives" or "lives".

-- "Redwood" <redwood@sympatico.ca>, August 1996

Show solution

These puzzles look similar to ones that ran a couple of decades ago in
Britain.  As you noted, in the example you gave, there are at least two
seemingly correct answers to many of the clues.  As far as I know, even
an expert puzzler could not get all of them right...and that's the
whole idea!  So in solving these puzzles you might as well just toss a
coin.  If they're anything like the "Little Foolers" that ran in the
UK, the so-called judges had convoluted lines of reasoning as to why
one answer was better than the other.  Some of these were scams,
probably because both sets of answers were "correct" (in other words,
they had written defenses for both possible answers, but they'd publish
the answer LEAST picked), and by having several such double-answers in
a puzzle, they were able to eliminate most, if not all, of the
entrants.  If this contest is free, have fun.  But if they want money,
I'd advise you to steer clear!

-- Martin Ashwood-Smith <mjas@uvic.ca>