Tag: Solution

In this puzzle, only some of the countries listed under each currency use that currency officially. These countries are highlighted below. To avoid confusion, no nations with similar-sounding currencies were included.

If the correct nations are taken as 1 and the incorrect nations are taken as 0, the table can be converted to binary, giving 00110, 00001, 01100, 10011, 00101, 00101, 00011, 01111, 01110, 01111, 01101, 11001. In decimal, that is 6, 1, 12, 19, 5, 5, 3, 15, 14, 15, 13, 25, which can be translated to the letters FALSE ECONOMY.

Astute solvers may have noticed that USD seems out of place, both in terms of name and alphabetically. This was a late change to replace the South African RAND, which is used in South Africa, as well as Eswatini, Lesotho, and Namibia, but those countries each have another national currency as well, which was causing confusion. Rather than rewrite the entire puzzle, I substituted the US dollar, which is the official currency in a surprising number of nations.

The words in the middle column are anagrams of the words in the left column with an extra letter added, and the words on the right are anagrams of the middle words with an extra letter added. Placing the added letters into the narrow columns gives the following:

The extra letters can be read left to right and top to bottom to spell out ANSWER IS TIME TRAVELER. The answer is TIME TRAVELER.

Each of the answers from the Beginnings column can be followed by an answer from the Endings column with a letter added between the two parts. The Endings clues are given in alphabetical order, which suggests that the clues should be solved in Beginnings order. The clues are intentionally quite restrictive, leading to single answers in most cases. The eleven full words are:

• IMP[L]ANTS
• HEX[A]GRAM
• ICE[B]ERG
• FLU[O]RIDE
• OUT[R]AGE

• CAP[T]IONS
• BAY[O]NET
• EVE[R]MORE
• COP[I]LOT
• CUT[E]NESS
• THEM[S]ELVES

The added letters spell out LABOR and TORIES. The empty line left between clues five and six suggests adding a new letter between the two words to form the answer. The only word which fits this pattern is the answer, LABORATORIES.

The similarity of the words used in this puzzle to the two main British political parties, the Labour Party, and the Conservative Party, a.k.a Tories, was accidental. It did occur to me near the end of puzzle construction, but given the difference in spelling, I did not feel it was an issue. Apologies if anybody got caught up in that coincidence.

This puzzle consists almost entirely of irrelevant material. The text references this, and the leftmost column of letters spells out THE WORDS ARE USELESS. This suggests that solvers must look elsewhere for their puzzle.

The trick is the dashed line directly under the header. It is Morse code reading

-- .. -.-. .-. --- .--. .-. .. -. - . -.. —  .. ... — - .... . — .- -. ... .-- . .-. 

Treating the long dashes as word breaks, this spells out MICROPRINTED IS THE ANSWER, so the answer is MICROPRINTED.

I would not claim that this is a good puzzle. However, I do think it is sometimes important for puzzles to break us out of our usual comfort zones and force our brains to look at things in new ways.

Each of these clues describes a character from a nursery rhyme, most commonly the title character. In order, the characters are:

• OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
• SIMPLE SIMON
• WEE WILLIE WINKIE
• MARY (Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary)
• LITTLE MISS MUFFET
• LITTLE BO-PEEP
• OLD KING COLE
• FRÈRE JACQUES
• KNAVE OF HEARTS
• LITTLE BOY BLUE
• MUFFIN MAN
• JACK SPRAT
• HUMPTY DUMPTY
• TOM (Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son)
• OLD MACDONALD
• DUKE OF YORK
• LITTLE JACK HORNER
• ITSY BITSY SPIDER (or INCY WINCY SPIDER)

The letters in the boxes spell out HE WAS BORN ON A MONDAY. This is a reference to SOLOMON GRUNDY. One version of the Solomon Grundy rhyme goes like this:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
This is the end
Of Solomon Grundy.

This crossword has the names of twenty-eight professions hidden within its grid, each with an extra letter added. To aid in identifying the words, the blanks below the grid fit the names of those occupations in alphabetical order. They are:

• ACCOUNTANT
• ACTOR
• ARCHITECT
• AUTHOR
• BAKER
• BARBER
• BOXER
• CARPENTER
• CASHIER
• CATERER
• COACH
• CODER
• DIRECTOR
• ECONOMIST
• ELECTRICIAN
• ENGINEER
• MECHANIC
• NURSE
• PHARMACIST
• PHOTOGRAPHER
• PILOT
• PROFESSOR
• PROGRAMMER
• SINGER
• SWIMMER
• TEACHER
• TRADER
• TRANSLATOR

The words are located in the grid like this:

From top to bottom, the extra letters in the answers spell out THEE ANXSWER ITS RERSCUE WORKEAR. Each of the words in this phrase have an additional letter which can be removed to give the phrase THE ANSWER IS RESCUE WORKER. If anybody got stuck trying to complete this step, the unused letters in the grid spell out READ EXTRAS THEN IGNORE EXTRA, instructing solvers to read the extra letters, then leave out EXTRA from the words. Whether solvers needed that extra hint or not, the answer is RESCUE WORKER.

The father in this puzzle gets one word (or number incorrect in every reply. The statements are corrected below:

Hey Dad, you’re smart. Can you answer a question?
Yes. You just asked me your question.
That doesn’t count! What’s the word for how many people live in a place?
They call that the population.
Well then, which city has the most people?
That would be Tokyo.
Didn’t they host the Olympics?
Yes, the Seoul Olympics were in 1988.
I love the Olympics! How many gold medals did Katie Ledecky win again?
She got 9 gold medals in swimming.
And how many gold gloves did Barry Bonds win?
Switching sports, huh? He won 8 gold gloves in the 1990s.
And what was James Bond’s code name?
It’s hard to keep up with these sometimes. They called him Agent 007.
Does Texas have a state flower?
Yes, the state flower of Texas is the bluebonnet.
And what color is between violet and blue on the rainbow?
You should know that one. It’s indigo.
What do you call those bugs that are red with black spots?
Those are called ladybird beetles.
Oh, the Beatles! What city did they come from?
The Beatles were founded in Liverpool, in England.
My favorite song is Eleanor Rigby. Which song was on the back of that one again?
It was Yellow Submarine.
Oh, yeah. Who’s the lead singer on Ticket to Ride?
That one is sung by John Lennon.
Speaking of stars, what’s that constellation with the three-star belt?
That’s called Orion.
And what does Aquila represent?
It’s the Latin for eagle.
What kind of dog was in that movie Marley & Me?
I didn’t know you remembered seeing that. Marley was a Labrador retriever.
Oh yeah, like that comic strip dog who likes to sit on his doghouse! What’s his name?
The comic strip is called Peanuts, and the dog is Snoopy.
What town does Wishbone come from?
Wishbone is set in Oakdale.
Denver? I’ve watched them play basketball. What’s their NBA team name again?
The NBA team in Denver is called the Nuggets.
That’s right! What is their main color?
The Celtics wear green.
How come the sky is blue?
All right, that’s enough questions. Time for bed!

The first letters of the correct words spell out APT 1980 BILLY JOEL SONG. The answer is DON’T ASK ME WHY. As always, the answer checker requires answers to be entered without punctuation.

*YOU MAY BE RIGHT might seem like a tempting 1980 song, but the father in the puzzle is never right.

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.

Each of these clues has had a transformation applied to each word. The same transformation must be applied to the answer:

• FIRST NAME OF A FAST FOOD CLOWN MASCOT (delete third letter) = RONALD (ROALD)
• AFRICAN NATION TO THE WEST OF SUDAN (reverse word; replace final letter with L) = CHAD (DAHL)
• IN GOOD BURGER HE ACTED AS ED (replace first letter with three-letter abbreviation for the month of the year in the same position as that letter – A=JAN, B=FEB, etc.) = KEL (NOVEL)
• LARGEST MEMBER OF THE BRASS FAMILY (insert O after second letter; reverse word) = TUBA (ABOUT)
• TYPE OF PLANE OR SCHOOL (insert AC in middle of word, keeping larger section in front if necessary) = CHARTER (CHARACTER)
• BLANK NOW BROWN COW (Last letter of word to front) = HOW (WHO)
• WITH ANYTHING A COLE PORTER MUSICAL (Add IV after first letter; delete second letter) = GOES (GIVES)
• SOAK OR MAKE SOPPING WET (Last two letters to beginning, followed by IL) = DRENCH (CHILDREN)
• DEITY SUCH AS THOR OR OSIRIS (Double vowels) = GOD (GOOD)
• SETS OF FIVE HUNDRED SHEETS OF PAPER (Add D to beginning of word) = REAMS (DREAMS)

The modified answers to the clues may be read as the phrase ROALD DAHL NOVEL ABOUT CHARACTER WHO GIVES CHILDREN GOOD DREAMS. The character who fits this description is THE BFG.