12 Years of Spaghetti!
Back in 2012, I made a joke on Facebook. I said that if I presented a bunch of words and claimed it was a puzzle, that my friends would be able to solve it even if the words had been chosen entirely at random. Someone responded, okay, let’s try it. Thus was the game of Spaghetti born.
My initial joke contained more truth than I knew. Every time I present some random words and say “Solve this,” we get a wide range of “solutions,” from the absurd to the remarkably, jaw-droppingly elegant. It is always a wonder to behold. Wanna see? Okay.
As per usual, I will give you five words, which I have chosen at random out of an abridged dictionary. Your job is to pretend these words are a puzzle, and present the solution to that puzzle. Obviously, you can’t just say “The answer is WHATEVER,” and leave it at that. You have to explain why the answer is WHATEVER.
To ease your way slightly, you have the option of adding a sixth word to the list — a word of your own choosing.
If all this sounds completely unhinged — well, yes, no argument from me. But don’t worry, you don’t need a solution of your own to participate in this. Just keep an eye on the comments to this post throughout the day. The winner of the game will be chosen by you! Click the thumbs-up button by any solution that impresses you. Whoever gets the most likes will be our winner.
Ready? Here are your five Spaghetti words. What’s the solution?
QUERULOUS
HEPTAGON
DEMONSTRABLE
MAST
GYMNASTIC
Good luck!
(One last note: I think I’ve changed the settings on my blog so that anybody can post a comment without my having to approve it. If you do get stuck in the moderation queue — sorry, I’ll get to it when I can, but I’m going to be elsewhere for much of the day.)
21 Replies to “12 Years of Spaghetti!”
These five words relate to the boroughs of New York City by having significant overlap in the letters, when taken in order:
QUErulouS = QUEenS
HEptagON = tHEbrONx
demonSTrAblE = STAtEnisland
MAsT = MAnhaTtan
gYmNastic = brooklYN
(Admittedly, Brooklyn is the weakest of these)
Take the first letter of each answer word that is NOT part of the overlap with the borough:
E: QUErulouS = QUEenS
T: HEptagON = tHEbrONx
T: demonSTrAblE = STAtEnisland
N: MAsT = MAnhaTtan
B: gYmNastic = brooklYN
Order these by population, from most to least populous: Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, to get:
B: gYmNastic = brooklYN
E: QUErulouS = QUEenS
N: MAsT = MAnhaTtan
T: HEptagON = tHEbrONx
T: demonSTrAblE = STAtEnisland
“Bent T” is the answer to this meta. Since the metapuzzles from the other rounds have also described the appearance of Greek letters, this gives us τ as another letter for the meta-meta. The other letters we have so far are α, ε, and μ. I wish we had an ordering mechanism for those….
Oops, I meant of course “Take the first letter of each borough’s name that is NOT part of the overlap with the answer word”
The break-in here is wondering why the word is GYMNASTIC instead of GYMNASTICS. It turns out that the meta answers are out of order. If you reorder them correctly:
GYMNASTIC
DEMONSTRABLE
HEPTAGON
MAST
QUERULOUS
The answer can clearly be read off the last letters of the answers: CENTS.
Makes cents to me
You may notice that some of these feeders feel somewhat similar, and that’s by design! You can actually find that they share 3 letter substrings, but with exactly 1 letter off.
HEPTA(GON)
DE(MO[N)ST]RABLE
(M[AS)T]
GYM(N[AS)T]IC
DEM(O[NS)T]RABLE
QUERUL(OUS)
Mapping these connections you get this graph:
H—D—Q
/ \
M—G
If you travel along it (specifically the path HDMGDQ), making sure to go through every connection, and noting which letter changes each time, you get the final phrase GN MAN.
it ate the spaces woops its supposed to look like this
H—D—Q
…../ \
..M—G
Who else would this puzzle be about than the person of the last year, Taylor Swift? Each of these words is a clue for a song from a different album. (Only using Taylor’s Versions, when applicable, of course.)
QUERULOUS — “Question…?” — Midnights
HEPTAGON — “seven” — folklore
DEMONSTRABLE — “I Can See You” — Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
MAST — “Stay Stay Stay” — Red (Taylor’s Version) [Stays are the cables that hold up a mast]
GYMNASTIC — “Jump Then Fall” — Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
Take the track number of each of those songs, and turn them into letters:
7: G
7: G
19: S
9: I
14: N
Rearrange according to the title of the puzzle, “Telling Angry, Brave, Nighttime Myths”, wherein each word clues one the five albums above. The letters now spell the answer: SING G.
(This ends up being an instruction to have your whole team hold a G note for several seconds, and record it on video. When you submit that video, you get the real answer: SEW FAST.)
I was all-in for the first part of the solution. That was fantastic.
Then you lost me with the tracks and the video……
Sorry! I’m just being a goof. In puzzle hunts, sometimes you get an answer that ends up being an instruction to do an activity. After you do the activity, and send the result to the organizing team, they reward you with an entirely different answer. In this case, I arbitrarily chose SEW FAST, which is a pun on “Taylor Swift”.
This is awesome! One question I did have was what is the connection between QUERULOUS and Question?
(Oh no! I didn’t even look the word up, because I assumed it meant “asking questions”. Here’s a new version, which uses the word correctly. I like it even better than my original.)
Who else would this puzzle be about than Time’s Person of the Year, Taylor Swift? Each of these words is a clue for a song from a different album. (When possible, we’ll be using Taylor’s Versions, of course.) The puzzle’s missing sixth word is KNICKS.
QUERULOUS — Look at What You Made Me Do — Reputation
HEPTAGON — seven — folklore
DEMONSTRABLE — I Can See You — Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)
MAST — Stay Stay Stay — Red (Taylor’s Version) [Stays are the cables that hold up a mast]
GYMNASTIC — Jump Then Fall — Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
KNICKS — Welcome To New York — 1989
For each entry, count the number of words in the song title and use that count to index into the given word:
QUERULOUS (7) = O
HEPTAGON (1) = H
DEMONSTRABLE (4) = O
MAST (3) = S
GYMNASTIC (3) = M
KNICKS (4) = C
Rearrange according to the title of the puzzle, “Angry, Brave, Loud, Famous, 35-year-old Myths”, wherein each word clues one the six albums above. (In order: Red, Fearless, Speak Now, Reputation, 1989, folklore) The extracted letters now clearly spell a word, SMOOCH. Going back to Taylor’s oeuvre, this can only refer to one song: LAST KISS, which is the answer.
First we must solve for our missing feeder that hopefully doesn’t happen at Mystery Hunt: SCAV HUNT DESPAIR
Considering our answers:
QUERULOUS
HEPTAGON
DEMONSTRABLE
MAST
GYMNASTIC
SCAVHUNTDESPAIR
Er, not sure what to do. Oh wait, that’s it, we can insert an ER to get new words! There is some ambiguity, but this gets resolved once we notice there is one way to do this such that the hidden words start from the 1st through 6th positions and no start position repeats.
(QUE+ER)ERULOUS
HEPTA(GON+ER)
DE(MONST+ER)RABLE
M(AST+ER)
GYM(NASTI+ER)C
SCAV(HUNT+ER)DESPAIR
Now let’s consider the unused letters:
ERULOUSHHEPTADERABLEMGYMCSCAVDESPAIR
This is the same total length as our found words. So let’s break it into groups matching the lengths of those words:
ERULO (QUEER)
USHEP (GONER)
TADERAB (MONSTER)
LEMGY (ASTER)
MCSCAVD (NASTIER)
ESPAIR (HUNTER)
Reading the last letter of each group, we get OP BY DR, a fitting answer for something that might happen when you visit an ER.
Each feeder clues the name of symbol; in order of number of vowels (by Only Connect rules) in the feeder, these are:
MAST (1 vowel) = VERTICAL BAR = |
GYMNASTIC (2 vowels) = HORIZONTAL BAR (an Olympic event) = —
HEPTAGON (3 vowels) = OUTLINE ARROW = ⇦ (which has seven sides)
DEMONSTRABLE (4 vowels) = PROVABLE = ⊢ (math logic symbol)
QUERULOUS (5 vowels) = CROSS =＋
We thus have:
| — ⇦ ⊢ ＋
which is a possible sequence from round two of Only Connect, written right to left, and missing a symbol in the rightmost (“first”) position. This symbol should be ⊣, so the answer is the name for that symbol that has 6 vowels: UNICODE LEFT TACK.
Each feeder almost contains a word that occurs in a phrase with the name of a finger:
QUE(RULe)OUS -> rule of thumb
HEPTAG(ONe) -> little one
DEMONSTRA(BLuE) -> blue pointer (the name for the mako shark in Australia, apparently)
M(gAS)T -> gas ring
GYMN(eAST)IC -> middle east
Put these in hand order:
HEPTAG(ONe) -> little one
M(gAS)T -> gas ring
GYMN(eAST)IC -> middle east
DEMONSTRA(BLuE) -> blue pointer
QUE(RULe)OUS -> rule of thumb
We can now turn our attention to set of arrows in the shell:
⇤ ⇸ ⇷ ⇤ ⇥
This is the extraction mechanism: an arrow with a line through it indicates taking the letter to the left/right of the extra letter, and an arrow next to a line indicates taking leftmost/rightmost letter of the entire word.
[H]EPTAG(ONe)
M(g[A]S)T
GYM[N](eAST)IC
[D]EMONSTRA(BLuE)
QUE(RULe)OU[S]
This spells HANDS, our final answer.
The words in the list are each missing a letter so that they can end with a word.
QUERU LOUS+E
HEPT AGON+Y
DEMONSTR ABLE+T (it’s in a couple of dictionaries)
MA ST+Y
GYMNA STIC+K
and the missing word:
A LOOF+A
We added EYTYKA which anagrams to YAKETY
and that indicates the solution word YAK.
(Even though it’s not elegant, “don’t talk back.”)
For the shell of the meta, we are given the following sequence: (4)-(5)-(3)-(9)-(4)
Additionally, there is a sixth feeder answer of EXPRESSWAY. Based on the fact that we have 6 feeders and 5 numbers given in the shell, we can see that there is a single unique way of making a sequence of the feeders, such that neighbouring feeders have an overlapping letter in the position given in the shell. The sequence is as follows:
MAST
HEPTAGON
GYMNASTIC
DEMONSTRABLE
EXPRESSWAY
QUERULOUS
Note that DEMONSTRABLE and GYMNASTIC have multiple overlaps, but we will be taking the overlap at position 3, according to the given numbers. Taking the letters in order, we get TAMAR, Judah’s daughter in law in the Book of Genesis. Other meta answers give other figures from the Hebrew Bible.
My brain is not cut out for these puzzles, so I always go in somewhat intimidated by Eric’s genius friends. But in this case the solution sort of jumped out at me.
Fortunately it doesn’t take a genius to see that each supplied word contains letters from the succeeding word: EO, ETAON, MAST, MAST, and S if we wrap around from GYMNASTIC to QUERULOUS. Those repeated letters provide us with EOETAONMASTMASTS, obviously an anagram for TOMATOES TEASETS MAN. So the answer is going to be some guy. But whom?
The best-known tomato-form tea sets were majolica porcelain pieces produced under the Maruhon Ware mark in Japan from the 1920s to the 1950s (interestingly the pre-war pieces were marked “Made in Japan” while the post-war sets were often marked “Made in occupied Japan”). The Maruhon Ware mark (variably spelled by collectors as Maruhon, Marumon or Marukon, due to the lack of definition in the maker’s marks on individual pieces) is believed to have been produced by a division of the Nippon Toki Gomei Kaisha Company in the town of Noritake. The company was established in 1904 to make electric insulators, and branched out into tableware in succeeding decades through diversification and mergers. After the war the original tableware division, Gomei Kaisha Nitto Shokai, rebranded as Noritake Tableware Co., Ltd.
Because the designer of the original c.1920s tomato-form sets does not appear to be documented (and the maker would likely be deceased in any case and thus unable to provide the next puzzle if asked), the solution is most likely one Mr. Hiroshi Kato, President/Executive Officer, Noritake Co. Ltd.
No doubt Mr. Kato is watching this space and awaiting a query as to the next puzzle in the sequence.
With the addition of the answer OLD PURCHASE, the answer becomes clear. First we remove all vowels, giving a unique ordering.
MST
QRLS
HPTGN
GMNSTC
LDPRCHS
DMNSTRBL
Reading this as a string, we can add trigrams of consonants to form a vowelless list of my top twelve favorite board games (in order, no less!).
MST(RPC)QR(BTT)LSHPTG(BLH)NGMNST(RTG)CLDPRCHSDMNSTRBL
Mouse Trap, Acquire, Battleship, Ta Yu, Go, Balu, Hangman, Stratego, Cluedo, Parcheesi, Dominoes, Trouble
The four trigrams we added are:
RPC
BTT
BLH
RTG
Starting at the T and reading clockwise around the edge of the box, the answer is what the winner of this game-themed round wins.
THGTRBBRPC
THEY GET A ROBBER PIECE
(From my 13th-favorite game, Catan)
The trick to this puzzle is to notice that each word transdeletes to a kind of set when you remove enough letters:
Querulous: Rules set (-4)
Heptagon: Open set (-4)
Demonstrable: Mandelbrot set (-2)
Stam: {} (empty set) (-4)
Gymnastic: Magic set (-4)
Index into each by the number of letters removed to get {E, N, A, T, I}, which yields ATE IN.
Now if you ate in, what did you need to do?
Set… THE TABLE, the answer
First, we must order the feeder answers. This can be done by counting the number of vowels, excluding Ys.
MAST – 1
GYMNASTIC – 2
HEPTAGON – 3
DEMONSTRABLE – 4
QUERULOUS – 5
Now I feel bad for excluding the Ys. Lets get them involved! You can now notice that a 5 letter word can be made by adding a Y to the end of a substring of each of these answers:
MASTY
NASTY
AGONY
STRAY
QUERY
Using this, we can get some letters by interpreting their vowels and consonants as 1s and 0s in binary. But is Y a vowel or not? Yknow, I still haven’t decided. Best to do it both ways. We get the letters IIUCM and HHTBL doing this.
But what now? Well, once again, we can make some words that end in Y. By anagramming this set of letters, we can form ITCHY and HUMBLY
But that leaves us one letter left! Yes, it does, an I, or its homophone and the answer to this puzzle, AYE. We can confirm this is correct, as it is synonymous with “Yes”, or Y
Yknow, I just realized the ordering step was completely unnecessary except to set up the bit about feeling bad about Ys. Whatever.