A factor that prevents or delays a patient's timely discharge
BARRIER
Cell newly released by bone marrow
NEOCYTE
Electives
INTENSIVES
Enzyme often confused with one produced by the kidneys
RENNIN
F, W, and Y are these types of amino acids
AROMATIC
Father of epidemiology
SNOW
HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor
STATIN
Relating to a seizure
ICTAL
Product clue
Product solution
A heterozygous individual that possesses a recessive gene mutation but does not express the associated trait or disease
CARRIER
Bitter substance in wine
TANNIN
Bright spots on magnetic resonance imaging
INTENSITIES
Common symptom of obstructive sleep apnoea
SNORE
Immature ovum
OOCYTE
Referring to the "roof" of the midbrain
TECTAL
Suffix often contrasted with -cidal in the context of antimicrobial mechanism of action
STATIC
This type of pain is typically sharp, localised, and well-defined
SOMATIC
Note that we can pair up the reactants and products where each pair differs by just one or two letters. These letters turn out to be chemical elements, and the change from reactant to product represents a nuclear decay reaction!
Reactant
Product
Decay reaction
Type of decay
AROMATIC
SOMATIC
Ar → S
Alpha
ICTAL
TECTAL
I → Te
Beta +
SNOW
SNORE
W → Re
Beta -
NEOCYTE
OOCYTE
Ne → O
Alpha
RENNIN
TANNIN
Re → Ta
Alpha
BARRIER
CARRIER
B → C
Beta -
INTENSIVES
INTENSITIES
V → Ti
Beta +
STATIN
STATIC
N → C
Beta +
They method for ordering these reactions is given by the flavour text. Now, we simply read the atomic symbols for the products, which spell STEREOTACTIC, a type of radiotherapy.
Author's notes
Author: Dan
This puzzle was a favourite of mine as it combined some medicine with some good old-fashioned chemistry/physics. I particularly enjoyed coming up with word pairings relevant to medicine — and there were a surprising number, actually! Word pairings that missed the cut include PENILE / SENILE, as well as a couple of more “medicine-core” bangers like BILIARY / CILIARY and OSTEOBLAST / OSTEOCLAST.
There were, however, a couple of sub-optimal components to this puzzle. I didn’t personally enjoy the pairing of NEOCYTE / OOCYTE — while neat, NEOCYTE isn’t really a word that is used too often in its context (we would typically say something like RETICULOCYTE instead), which could cause some degree of confusion.
In addition, I could not come up with a clean way to uniquely order the products — solvers still needed to use some trial and error to determine what the order of the final product elements would be. That being said, there were only a limited number of permutations, most of which would lead to nonsensical answers. Furthermore, by introducing this additional complication, this forced solvers to have to have a more complete set of reactant words and product words.
This puzzle was another instance where the legendary John Snow, father of epidemiology, would make an appearance.