National Spaghetti Day!
January 4th is National Spaghetti Day (for some reason), and on this puzzle-intensive blog, we’re naturally going to celebrate it with a game of Spaghetti.
I’m going to give you five words. These words are not — NOT — a puzzle. I chose them at random from a paperback dictionary. Your mission is to find the answer to this set of words, despite the fact that there is no answer and the entire exercise is ridiculous.
If you are a newcomer reading this, you might think this is impossible. How the heck do you solve a puzzle that isn’t really a puzzle? All I can say is, come back often, read the comments, and be amazed. Not every answer is going to make a lot of sense — but somebody is going to find an answer that will make you wonder if the words were really chosen at random in the first place. It happens every time.
Whether or not you submit an answer yourself, I invite you to Like your favorite comments to this thread. The submission with the most Likes will be the winner.
Here are your five words:
SWEEPSTAKES
JOBBER
NEUROTIC
INFANT
VASE
When crafting your answer, you have the option of adding a sixth word to this list–any word you like. Or you can stick with these five.
Good luck!
12 Replies to “National Spaghetti Day!”
Solvers immediately notice that the word NEUROTIC has the letters ERIC in order, which is an indication to look for a message having to do with our host.
The six words (including the hidden COIN) can be arranged in three pairs. Taking the last few letters of each word and inserting one more letter between them gives the following:
(infan)T + U + (sweepstak)ES –> TUES
(vas)E + R + (neurot)IC –> ERIC
(job)BER + L + (co)IN –> BERLIN
The added letters spell URL. So we’re looking for a URL that was posted on TUES by ERIC BERLIN.
Looking at Eric’s Facebook feed, the URL he posted on Tuesday was
https://www.amazon.com/Search-Puzzles-Weekend-Puzzlewright-Junior/dp/1454931655?fbclid=IwAR2_rL-GFRjQ34z5bHoqTBRppq11nWOfcM0Z5kqxArDRirfdhFNg6xj6Iv0
This clearly is the unlock mechanism for the next round of puzzles.
Four of these words can have a single letter replaced by C to make a meaningful word or phrase: (J -> C)OBBER, NE(U -> C)ROTIC, INFA(N -> C)T, (V -> C)ASE; the replaced letters spell out JUN V. Starting at June 5 on a calendar page and following the step-by-step instructions given by the remaining word (S[outh], W[est], E[ast], E[ast]; PS, TAKE S[outh]) we move to June 12, June 11, June 12, and then June 13, and finally take June 20. So the answer is SOLSTICE.
The last letters of these words are C-R-E-S-T. Rearrange them in that order and you will find a related word, W-A-V-E-S is connected boggle-style, the answer to this n(eur)autically themed puzzle.
First fill in the missing word SQUISH in the order the puzzles appear on the meta page, then note what happens if you divide each entry into 2 parts:
SW/EEPSTAKES
J/OBBER
NEUR/OTIC
SQU/ISH
INF/ANT
V/ASE
In order, the first parts can be shifted to the next answer (last answer loops to the first) to phonetically form new entries, all obliquely clued in the meta flavortext:
VEEPSTAKES
SWABBER
JOTIC (the Croatian handball player)
NOURISH
SQUINT
IN PHASE
The shift in the first word … VEE = V … suggests taking the fifth letters of the other new words. In order, this gives BCINA, or BC IN A = the comic strip B.C. in (cryptically) The First Of April. Looking back to the BC comic for April 1, 2018, we see a long series of silent panels, with HAPPY EASTER in the final panel, which is the answer to this Holiday-themed round.
It helps if we remember to post the shell that came with the meta: http://jmcteague.com/Sudoku1.PNG
At first glance, that doesn’t look like a sudoku. After all, there are 6 different givens! The first trick is that each of those letters shows up exactly once in the meta answers, and that instance shows up within the first five letters of the word:
S(W)EE(P)STAKES – W = 2, P = 5
(J)OBBER – J = 1
NE(U)ROTIC – U = 3
IN(F)ANT – F = 3
(V)ASE – V = 1
Use this substitution in the sudoku to get this: http://jmcteague.com/Sudoku2.PNG
Now, solve the sudoku. Given that it’s only a 5×5, it’s fairly straightforward. The solved sudoku is this: http://jmcteague.com/Sudoku3.PNG
Okay, but what do you do with it. We turned letters into numbers for the sudoku, it’s only right that we did it the other way around. Each of the thick-bordered sections has givens from only one of the words, so each of the colored sections maps to a word. You can also rearrange the words in color order:
INFANT – Red 4
SWEEPSTAKES – Orange 1
JOBBER – Yellow 4
NEUROTIC – Green 4
VASE – Blue 3
If you simply index, you get ASERS, which is obviousl garbage. But follow the flavor text (“And on the way back, they went a little farther…”) and take bigrams headed by those letters, and you get ANSWER ROSE.
Of course, that would be a Yellow 5, as that’s what the sudoku actually says and what reads a legit phrase.
First, notice that some words can be replaced to form rhyming pairs:
Sweepstakes–> LOTTERY
Jobber–>DABBLER
NEUROTIC
Infant–>BABBLER
Vase–>POTTERY.
The rhymes all differ by one letter, and the distance between those letters is exactly their distance in the original list. So fill in the alphabetical gaps:
LOTTERY
M
N
O
POTTERY
and
E
RELBBAD
C
RELBBAB
A (flipped horizontally because the alphabet sequence is backwards)
Finally, notice that these shapes dovetail nicely, with NEUROTIC fitting right in the center:
LOTTERYE
MRELBBAD
NEUROTIC
ORELBBAB
POTTERYA
The extraction is just reading the corners clockwise to get LEAP.
(The E, C, and A in the second diagram should be at the right edge of the shape–the comment took out my spaces)
No submissions from me, but I just love how Eric describes our, um, “neurotic” behavior as puzzle enthusiasts!
Somehow a word was missed; ordering these by their puzzle titles gives:
JOBBER
SWEEPSTAKES
NEUROTIC
INFANT
AUDITOR
VASE
Each of these words has a back portion that can end a word starting with E:
EBBER
EKES
EROTIC
ENFANT
EDITOR
EASE
Reading down the 4th column, you get the word ESTATE. From which you remove the initial E that you added to get the answer STATE. (It’s also thematic to remove this one because EBBER isn’t much of a word.)
The three blanks of length 8, 11, and 10 almost certainly correspond to the answers NEUROTIC, SWEEPSTAKES, and JUMPED BACK, but how do we pair them with the other three (JOBBER, INFANT, and VASE), and then how do we interpret “using the big guns on small targets”?
Well, it turns out three of the six answers repeat some letters, and each set of repeats can be found in one of the three other answers, giving the pairs SwEEpStakES/vaSE, joBBer/jumpedBack, iNfaNt/Neurotic. Putting the long answers in front in the given order, then striking any letters from them appearing in the corresponding short answer, gives this:
NEUROTIC/inFAnt -> FA
SWEEPSTAKES/Vase -> V
JUMPEDBACK/jObbeR ->OR
yielding the answer FAVOR.
It’s hard to get started on this puzzle until the sixth word OBELIZE is discovered. Then it’s obvious to order the words so that their final letters spell SECRET:
SWEEPSTAKES
VASE
NEUROTIC
JOBBER
OBELIZE
INFANT
Note that we have 42 total letters. Perhaps a clue to a well-known space-faring trilogy? The reference material suggests a factoring of “Six by Nine” of which we can complete the first seven rows:
SWEEPS
TAKESV
ASENEU
ROTICJ
OBBERO
BELIZE
INFANT
Reading down the left column reveals that we are actually looking at an entirely different space-faring trilogy and the second column further clarifies that we want episodes 4-6 not 1-3. The final clue phrase SECRET STAR OBI WAS O(ld) BEN unambiguously points to an answer of ALEC GUINNESS.