First, solve the clues. From looking at them, they're fairly clearly cryptic (if you've seen cryptic clues much before, at least):
| Clue | Answer | Definition | Wordplay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part of house hidden within lattice | ATTIC | Part of house | l[ATTIC]e |
| Sound when you flip a switch from "cold" and taste | CLICK | Sound when you flip a switch | C (cold abbreviation) + LICK (taste) ("from" is a connector) |
| Final issue in unusual bill for defamation | LIBEL | defamation | issuE in <BILL> ("for" is a connector) |
| Heckle furiously without leaving initial impudence | CHEEK | impudence | <HECKLE> - Leaving |
| Gamble heads of tropical aquarium fish | BETTA | fish | BET + Tropical Aquarium |
| Thing at bottom of ship is tail of black eel | KEEL | Thing at bottom of ship | blacK + EEL ("is" is a connector) |
| Beat confused second character | BETA | second character | <BEAT> |
| Stylish tailless baby bird | CHIC | Stylish | CHICk (baby bird) |
| Sleek, not small, vegetable | LEEK | vegetable | SLEEK - S (small abbreviation) |
| Get up with a key event at the start | WAKE | Get up | With A Key Event |
It also helps to notice the first set of five clues are five letters, while the second set are four letters.
The flavortext and title suggest the next step is considering everything as black or white. But how do we do this? We somehow need to notice (perhaps by looking at the answers) that all the letters in the answers are either in BLACK or WHITE (which have no common letters). Coloring answers appropriately (so, for example, in ATTIC, T and I in WHITE and A and C are in BLACK, so we get ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛):
| Clue | Answer | Coloring |
|---|---|---|
| Part of house hidden within lattice | ATTIC | ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ |
| Sound when you flip a switch from "cold" and taste | CLICK | ⬛⬛⬜⬛⬛ |
| Final issue in unusual bill for defamation | LIBEL | ⬛⬜⬛⬜⬛ |
| Heckle furiously without leaving initial impudence | CHEEK | ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ |
| Gamble heads of tropical aquarium fish | BETTA | ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ |
| Thing at bottom of ship is tail of black eel | KEEL | ⬛⬜⬜⬛ |
| Beat confused second character | BETA | ⬛⬜⬜⬛ |
| Stylish tailless baby bird | CHIC | ⬛⬜⬜⬛ |
| Sleek, not small, vegetable | LEEK | ⬛⬜⬜⬛ |
| Get up with a key event at the start | WAKE | ⬜⬛⬛⬜ |
Using these as rows of a grid, we get (separating the first five from the next five, as in the puzzle):
⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬛⬜⬛⬛ ⬛⬜⬛⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬛ ⬛⬜⬜⬛ ⬜⬛⬛⬜
On a white background, each section’s black cells look like one letter of the answer, which is MU.
Authors' Notes
This puzzle originally started as a paint-by-numbers-esque puzzle where you color certain spaces of a grid given by their coordinates, but it evolved into this simpler form (inspiration from the similar MITMH 2017 meta The Crafty Criminal). It's fortunate there was a short enough answer to do this with.
Originally, there was no flavor, and the title was "Black and White". Testsolving revealed that it should be nerfed a bit to highlight black/white further.
The clues are cryptic clues because:
- I didn't think we had enough cryptics in the hunt
- Cryptics are good to use when (as here) there isn't much confirmation on clue answers before the aha (when you get a non-cryptic clue answer, there are usually several other plausible answers, but with a cryptic clue answer it's usually the only one possible)
- It adds slightly more difficulty to this puzzle compared to non-cryptic clues