The first step in this puzzle is to find answers of the correct length to fit the clues. There are a few which have some ambiguity, but that can be resolved later. The correct answers are:
- WRY
- COG
- PROM
- TD
- SAGET
- POOL
- RNA
- HYPES
- ASP
- PEAL
- ACE
- CRICK
- LICE
- ATTA
- LENGTH
- GET
- COMPRESSION
- WE
- PLATE
- ROUGE
- COT
- TRI
- MOORE
- ETRE
- HEATS
The boxed letters from each word, read in order, spell out WORD TO REPLACE THESE LETTERS. The trick lies in finding a word to replace the boxed letter in each word to form a new word in each line. The solution, resulting in either a word or name for each line, is HEN. The full list of words is as follows:
- HENRY
- CHENG
- PHENOM
- THEN
- SAGEHEN
- PHENOL
- HENNA
- HYPHENS
- ASHEN
- PEAHEN
- HENCE
- HENRICK
- LICHEN
- ATHENA
- LENGTHEN
- GHENT
- COMPREHENSION
- WHEN
- PHENATE
- ROUGHEN
- COHEN
- HENRI
- MOORHEN
- ETHENE
- HEATHEN
A few of the words are more obscure than would normally be preferable, but since it is possible to get the ‘aha’ from only a few transformations, it works out fine.