Ootnai's Gnilkraps Idea Mystery Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Inspired by doing a recent word puzzle cache that was a lot of fun, I constructed my own version of that puzzle which differs in that it's in reverse. The task is to start with a one-letter word (a, i, o) and progress by adding single letters until you have made a 9-letter word. No rearrangement of letter order is allowed between stages and, at each stage (2-letter, 3-letter etc), the result must be a legitimate English word, subject to the usual rules of word games (no proper nouns, no abbreviations etc).
Starting with I is fairly easy, and several solutions came to mind in a minute or two, e.g. i, in, pin, ping, aping, raping, rapping, trapping, strapping (an alternative 8 letter word can be used here 
).
Starting with A wasn't much more difficult: e.g., a, la, lea, lean, leans, cleans, cleanse, cleanser, cleansers.
O was a lot more tricky and after an hour or so I could come up with only one example (and it involved an obscure word):
o, on, one, once, ounce, rounce, trounce, trouncer, trouncers.
After a night's sleep I came up with a more pleasing solution, although it still has arguably 2 obscure words. Can you find this one? When you have done so, give values to the letters used as follows:
if the letter X is added to make the word 7 letters long then X would be 7. So in the trouncers example R would be both 6 and also 8.
Assume N 51 W 000. The location is given by
CONTRACT
NIGHTLY - FUNSHOW
bearing in mind that some padding must have been used.
Check your solutions here:
(visit link)
You can watch a nightly funshow from GZ!
Happy word play! Any other solutions from a, i or o are welcome in the logs (the o solutions, if there are any, should be given only if they aren't partial spoilers).
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
pnpur: onfr bs gerr haqre yrnirf.
chmmyr: uggc://qvpgvbanel.ersrerapr.pbz/oebjfr/abat