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Went through approximately six trillion words ending in "king" while trying to figure out this puzzle. Couldn't find one that would fit. Not willing to let the effort go to waste, here are 8 of them, presented by chess kings.

enter image description here

This time around, the clues are sometimes phonetic, sometimes literal, and there's even one direct hint. If a clue happens to fit more than one word, any one of them will do.

To reiterate, we are looking for 8 more or less random English words, each one ending in "king".

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    $\begingroup$ Just to confirm... That invisible one is intended, right? $\endgroup$
    – Lolgast
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 13:35
  • $\begingroup$ @Lolgast D4 is empty very much on purpose, yes. $\endgroup$
    – Bass
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 13:37
  • $\begingroup$ Thought as much. No clue what it is yet, but still. $\endgroup$
    – Lolgast
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 13:39
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    $\begingroup$ By "8 Kings Problem" I thought of the problem of placing 8 kings on the chess board so that none of them attack any other. Utterly trivial of course, although counting the number of solutions sounds nontrivial. $\endgroup$
    – John Coleman
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 16:08

3 Answers 3

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Respectively

c8: hiking ("high king")
f7: barking ("bar king")?
h6: liking ("lie king")
a5: banking ("ban king")
g3: winking ("win king")
e2: funking ("fun king")?, or seeking ("see king"; credit to Lawrence)
b1: thinking ("thin king")
outside: awaking ("away king")

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    $\begingroup$ Woops, guess I didn't look carefully enough when editing... the king on the a line is on the 5th row, and on h it's the 6th row. Also, based on the famous eight queen puzzle, the missing one should be on d4 $\endgroup$
    – Lolgast
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 14:39
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    $\begingroup$ I'd love to think that the invisible king is the troublemaking, because he's away, probably doing something nasty. But your solution is more fitting ;) $\endgroup$
    – Christoph
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 14:50
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    $\begingroup$ e2 - seeking (see king)? $\endgroup$
    – Lawrence
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 15:21
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    $\begingroup$ H6 could be "flunking" $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 16:02
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    $\begingroup$ d4 could also be lacking ("lack king"). $\endgroup$
    – user1502
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 9:43
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Other ideas:

c8: seeking (the king in column c)
f7: blacking (but really liked masking most...brilliant)
h6: taking (an extra one)
a5: aching (the king in column a)
g3: thanking (acceptance speech)
e2: spiking ("spy king")
b1: talking ("tall king")
d4: remarking (see comments...but "awaking" was brilliant)

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  • $\begingroup$ These are quite excellent! The other answer hit the ones I intended (except e2. which you got) so I can only offer the uppest of my upvotes. $\endgroup$
    – Bass
    Commented Dec 27, 2017 at 10:19
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Only four:

f7 is masking himself
h6 is mistaking 5 for 4 in the calculation
e2 is blocking sunlight from hurting his eyes
someone is striking a5 out

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