Since I joined the National Puzzlers' League in the spring of 1999,
I have had a number of puzzles published. This page is a collection
those puzzles.
(/dj1) August 2000, CF-12. (convention flat; theme was tricky rhymes)
CHARADE (*6) (not MW; *ONE = not MW; phrase usage)
Third quarter: WHOLE THING fakes, then throws the pigskin.
Inside his head, he does the TWO to calculate his pass.)
Sha *ONE *ONE rest, exhausted--halftime gigs can
Leave you feeling down and out, and like you're out of gas.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Namath; Na, math
In September GotS, Treesong said this one had "one of the more ingenious rhymes."
(/dj2) November 2000, 50. FIFTH-TO-FOURTH CHANGEOVER (*7, 7) (WORST = not
MW)
When first I came to Boston, telephones
Were run by NYNEX. Soon, though, James Earl Jones
Announced they'd merged with Bell Atlantic. First
Of August, GTE joins, making WORST.
It just won't stop! It never stays the same!
But what will be the next WORDS of their name?
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Verizon, version
This one may have been easier for those on the east coast (though Verizon is now a nationally known name, they were not at the time), but the striking GTE workers who wanted to save their union during the merger with non-union Bell Atlantic made national news. Tahnan called it, in December GotS, "a great base."
(/dj3) November 2000, 68. FIRST SOUND CHANGE (8, 8)
I owe! I owe! It's off to work I go!
I have an anxious START and I don't know
If I can pay him off before he sends
Collectors to attack, like hungry ENDs.
=KING/joe, Alexanthrop VA
This was a combiflat with King Frivolity, who supplied the base.
creditor, predator
This flat got one kudos, from Tyger.
(/dj4) November 2000, 79. REVERSED CONSONANTCY (9, 7)
I say, this man's a double agent. I will shout it!
I ONE, I know that he's a TWO! No doubt about it!
=KING/joe, Alexanthrop VA
This was a combiflat with King Frivolity, who supplied the base.
reiterate, traitor
(/dj5) Feb/Mar/Apr 2001, C-1. (cryptogram) Unequal and opposite. /dev/joe,
Winthrop MA
*Z E M I E O M Y T H E L S T O R M
M E A ' C U M I U L
F L E X T R U M F E E L F L E I U G I T
E O S L E D
O E L ' U Y M I U L E S I C E
I B E A M Y O R E O U.
Boston sailor finds sou'wester provides poor protection from nor'easter of two thousand one.
In April GotS, Wampahoofus wrote: "Now, why didn't I think of that?"
Notes: A sou'wester is a raincoat. This crypt was written during a northeaster (familiarly, nor'easter, though this spelling is not found in dictionaries) which struck the New England coast in January 2001, which shut down most of the area for two days. It dropped a foot of thick, mushy snow at my place on the coast, and around two feet of drier snow inland.
(/dj6) July 2001, 58. TERMINAL DELETION (*6) (ONE = not MW)
TERMINAL DELETION (*6) (TWO = not MW) (can be rapped, maybe?)
Ms. ONE TWO has left the Pips;
She's quitting music, jumping ships.
She's turned to acting, that's a fact.
Shakespeare wrote her favorite act.
She's now Titania. "Never harm,"
Her fairies sing, "nor spell nor charm
Come our lovely N W."
May those ills never trouble you
Or get anywhere close to you, ONE TWO.
This is the end of the flat--it's through.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Gladys, lady.
Knight, nigh.
This flat got 6 kudos, from ARBUTUS, BACTAM, CACHE, CLIO, CRAX, and KRAY.
Notes: The quotation is an actual quotation (with the answer words inserted) from A Midsummer Night's Dream. When I came up with this base, the two shorter words seemed at home in something Shakespearean, and when I found this quote, I knew I wanted to use it. It wasn't intended to come out as a rap, but when my muse started me going with the verse one night, it came out that way.
Tahnan wrote in August GotS: "How wonderful! The base by itself is mildly clever, but finding it in a quote like that is very nice!"
(/dj7) August 2001, 4. FALSE FEMININE (*5, *6)
For figuring the strengths of struts or complex exponentials
You might use the works of HIM (a man of fine credentials).
And if you live in HER, then you might do this computation
Near Fort Worth in a state, friends, that was once a separate
nation.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Euler, Euless
This flat got 1 kudos, from 415 lb of snake.
Notes: This base was inspired by a bad spell-check in Microsoft Word. I was checking a document at work (where I'm a technical writer working on documentation for the Aspen Engineering Suite). In a discussion of calculation methods, Word found the name of the great mathematician Euler, and told me it thought it should be Euless, a suburb of Fort Worth. Most people not from the area probably don't know about Euless, but I grew up and went to college in Texas and met a student from Euless while I was there.
A number of people working on this puzzle got sidetracked on Dallas, an obvious first guess for HER, but it doesn't work, though people who misspelled it Dalass got as far as using the pair lad, lass to back-form the masculine Dalad before giving up.
(/dj8) September 2001, 84. DELETION (6, *5)
Oh, how my children did CRY
While watching that ogre in CY.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
shriek, Shrek
This was a leftover con flat, one of three I submitted. (The con flat which was actually used was reprinted in the October Enigma.)
(/dj9) September 2001, C-4. (cryptogram) Physics study? /dev/joe, Winthrop
MA
L A N C E R, Z N A N D E N A C D N P R E
N A R N W R, U T N R D,
Y N D L N A C N A S T Y X, O T R
S N A P W N V N R D E N D
W T Q L
O X N A E N O N R N A C L N A C D E N K.
Knight, finishing sixth in tilt, quits, risking injury, but jinx limits his luck by inhibiting kingship.
This was an intentional attempt to make a harder but still solvable and (in my opinion) enjoyable crypt. This crypt features a highly skewed letter distribution, including the complete absence of the vowels a, e, and o. Despite this, it still manages to use 19 different letters, including 2 js, 2 xs, and 4 ks. The resulting crypt has 21 is, which stick out as an obvious vowel, though hopefully it's not immediately obvious which one.
Complete letter distribution: 21: i, 10: n, 8: t, 7: s, 6: h, 5: g, 4: k u, 3: b l, 2: j r x y, 1: c f m p q.
This crypt got 1 kudo from Rick.
(/dj10) October 2001, CF-14. (convention flat -- theme is brand names)
ONE (6-5, 7, *6-*7, ^5) (ONE = not MW usage; THREE = NI3)
When FOUR arrives, I'll often do
Another of those THREEs (or two).
I fill the blanks by solving clues,
Then transfer letters, which I use
To form quotations. (One July quote
Told how TWO bonding forms a zygote.)
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
double-cross, gametic, Double-Crostic, Games
Interestingly, Double-Crostic is listed in the main body of NI3 as a trademark for the type of puzzle which appears in Games. Since Games was not published back when NI3 first appeared in 1961, it presumably was used by some other publication and later was picked up by Games.
(/dj11) October 2001, C-3. (cryptogram) Mixed tweets. /dev/joe, Winthrop MA
*T O U T S *K A I I O G Y X
E T S T Z O Z I W L I W T E
Z A Y T B T
P T C X X Z A J X L J N C A R R O T S
Z W G A X E Z J I M W Z S.
"Y L O O M *D Z W W L X, *X D L H
Z S T K G S P L I Y!"
Elmer Fudd lost cereal ad bid because he kept taunting puzzler about candy bar. "Silly Wabbit, Twix are for kids!"
(/dj12) December 2001, 8. PICTURE REBUS [7 6]
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
pinking shears
The reading is "pin kings hear S"
This flat got 3 kudos, from Crax, Hot, and Rosebud.
Notes: This base was inspired by a Password Plus game in the NPL chat some months before, when I was cluing, and figured out that the final answer was going to be pinking shears, and even used pinking as a 3rd clue for zigzag, but failed to communicate the idea to either my partner or opponent, and I ended up guessing after the fifth word and two wrong guesses from the others.
For farm and field
The Greeks appealed
To SPORT, my dearies
(Not to Ceres).
Six lines of SHORT
I wrote of SPORT.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Demeter, dimeter
Notes: Dimeter is verse with two feet or two stressed syllables per line. This flat received 2 kudos, from Dee Sweet and Wampahoofus.
(/dj14) January 2002, 34. REVERSED CHARADE (*6) (not MW)
My friends tell LA about the L they spend in Rome;
They eat at ristorantes, and have themselves a ball.
But all I ever do is sit right here at home
And watch this crazy chef; "Bam!" he says, on "ALL."
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Emeril; lire, me
At the time this flat was published, Emeril Lagasse (the chef famous for "Bam!" and other attempts to liven up a cooking show) had a weekly NBC sitcom called Emeril. This is a flat that probably won't hold up well through the ages, as it is unlikely that the show will do so.
(/dj15) April 2002, 22. FREEWHEELING WORD DELETION (8 3) (WHOLE = very not
MW; *OUT = non-MW phrase)
I did not grow my WHOLE
In an actual WHOLE.
I bought the tub at *OUT.
Of that there is no doubt.
And when I went to jail
I called my IN for bail.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
homemade pot, ma, Home Depot
Note that pot is used in two distinct senses, the plant that produces the drug, and the container it grows in.
This flat received 3 kudos, from Crax, Spelvin, and Tyger.
Garofalo's getting married! ...
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
(a flat we never finished reading)
Janeane, nee
I couldn't resist the opportunity to do a four-part welded flat and a beheadment down to a single letter at the same time. While the combination of words is entirely plausible, I found it difficult to actually construct a verse around it, so I submitted it as a Flat We Never Finished Reading.
This flat received 5 kudos, from Codex, Cramerica, D. Ness, Treesong, and Ziggy.
(/dj17) October 2002, CF-1. FIFTH-TO-SIXTH SOUND CHANGEOVER (*1**4; 4 4)
(ONE = not MW)
(Convention flat; theme was the Beatles)
ONE, he lives his whole life in a video game.
(He's not the guy who lived with Ernie--no!)
Hopping box to box to box, across the screen,
And in diagonal directions he must go.
ONE jumps round the pile of crates--so good, so far--
But he always must be wary of that snake!
One day, he wonders just what size the boxes are.
Oh, if he knew the volume, he could simply take...
Take the TWO, take the TWO, and he'd find the length!
Oh, it's just the one-third power.
Take the TWO, take the TWO, and he'd find the height!
Oh, it's just the one-third power.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
Q*Bert, cube root
The verse is to the tune of "Ob la di, ob la da."
This flat was originally published as a fourth-to-fifth sound changeover, both at the convention and in the Enigma. Only after its Enigma appearance did somebody notice that this was incorrect. I, and apparently many others, missed that the y sound in "Q" is a separate sound.
The weird enumeration on this one comes from the fact that Q*Bert has a * in his name. These odd words show up occasionally in the Enigma, the classic example being the TV show M*A*S*H which is enumerated *1**1**1**1.
This flat received two individual kudos, from Kray and Satyr Eyes, plus two more kudos in the form of "all Con flats" from Crax and Xelint.
(/dj18) November/December 2002, 124. CHARADE (9)
If you don't want to ONE that TWO
With stains upon your dress of blue,
Use ALL to clean it, nice and new.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
detergent; deter, gent
Note the tricky double-use of ALL as a standard charade cue-word and a clue for the word that goes in that slot.
(/dj19) May 2003, C-3. (cryptogram) Space oddity. (*TEZKZU = not MW)
/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
T E L U X Q K U W *T E Z K Z U
K U W L C J T E L C R A Z U
A U K Y
*J K P, W R Q K O B *S P E C K.
Z J C U K O K Y R U J B R W Z C R
L C J S P Z O R C Z U Q J C Z C E J.
Quirky orb Quaoar orbits quite far from Sol, beyond Pluto. Astronomers debate its planetary status.
A couple months before this crypt was published, the largest Kuiper Belt object known was discovered, about half the size of Pluto. Some people argued that this should be accorded the status of a planet, but this isn't really taken seriously. Regardless, it has been given this odd name with four consecutive vowels, the name of a native American deity. There is, however, debate whether Pluto should be considered a planet. Now that we know about the Kuiper belt, it seems that Pluto is nothing more than a large object of this type. (At the time, I thought Pluto would be grandfathered as a planet, but a few years later its planetary status was revoked along with a new definition requiring that a planet has swept its orbit clear of other large objects.)
(/dj20) June 2003, 17. TRANSPOSAL (3 5, 8)
I asked, "Why is the image of Betelgeuse blurred?"
They said, "Lenses aren't good. They've deformed over time."
"Since this telescope won't show that ONE (I've inferred)
very clearly, I'm TWO it." (Wrong spec? It's a crime!)
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
red giant, derating
(/dj21) June 2003, 31. TRANSPOSAL (6)
Out of all the META colors,
Anna chose the very TAME one.
(TEAM all round her skirt would show this
Hue so very nearly white.)
For the top, she picked a print with
Flowers everywhere (with red MEAT).
Anna's tailor MATEd a des-
Cription of the outfit ordered
To her measurements to keep the
Two together. (What a smart plan!)
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
pastel, palest, pleats, petals, staple
Hart King kudized this flat.
(/dj22) August 2003, 11. REBUS (3, 6 5 4)
Did you know that there are competitions for lumberjacks?
In one event, each competitor, armed with a sharp axe, faces a row
of ten logs,
each a meter in diameter. They stand on end with one end firmly
planted into
the ground to simulate trees, each with a line painted around it
where they
are to be cut in half. Several loggers compete on similar rows,
and whoever
finishes hewing his wood first wins.
Young Johnny enters the competition only due to the encouragement
of his
father, an experienced lumberman. But he has practiced his skills
so he would
do a good job in the tournament. When his turn is up, he jumps out
to an
early lead, and, like a REBUS trunk before any of the other axemen
finish.
Johnny wins, making his father proud.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
It is not so evident on this web page, but this flat was printed in the Enigma across both columns at the top of one page.
pro, severs every wide
Reading: prose verse, very wide.
(/dj23) August 2003, 29. ENIGMATIC SUBER (9) (firing back at June 45)
TH8I-70
Built much like a catapult, the WEAPON was fun
If you got your kicks (but you had no big gun)
From hurling huge objects to make your foe run.
=/dev/joe, Winthrop MA
trebuchet
Reading: te, h, cube, rt.
This is a response flat, a reiteration of a previous flat with minor changes. This was inspired by what I thought the answer to the other flat mentioned in the puzzle heading should have been. At one point I tried to put Q-Bert in this rubric, making it partially phonetic, but since it was possible to do it without being partially phonetic, I did so. I also considered "cube root", to be represented by a radical with a 3, but "rt." is not an 10-C abbreviation for root. I-70 is an interstate highway or "route," and one which passed near the site of the convention which occurred the month before this issue came out.
(/dj24) November 2005, 14. LETTER BANK (*4, 6, ^4 *3) (FOUR-THREE =
inferable)
"Soylent Green is made of SIX!"
Screamed the pontiff, John Paul VI.
"But out of all the SIX, they roast
The holders of my office most!
They already used that FOUR,
The second with my name, before.
FOUR-THREE XIII was eaten, true,
And when I'm dead, they'll eat me too."
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Pole, people, Pope Leo
Clio gave kudos to this flat.
(/dj25) June 2006, 37. FOURTH-LETTER CHANGE (7)
Every day on board the train,
Sunny sky or sleet or rain,
FOLKers crave seats, where they use
FOLDers and e-mail peruse.
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
commute, compute
(/dj26) September 2006, 34. HOMONYM (*4 *4 ^2, *4 *7) (* words = not MW or
not MW usage) (can be sung)
Baby, I got banned for life from baseball.
Gambling, it was the end of me.
But now my train glides over Cincinnati:
Cincinnati's *DOUBLE *YOUKAY ^ARPEE.
My namesake made his name with football,
Made the NFL what it is today.
After nearly thirty years the Commish retired
The same year my Hall of Fame dreams went away.
*WK *RP was from California.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Pete Rose El, Pete Rozelle
Clio gave kudos to this flat.
April 2007, F-8. CUBOCTAHEDRON
Grendel wrote this three-dimensional form after I suggested this
as an interesting
shape for a three-dimensional form, gradually progressing from
diamond through octagon
to square, and back again.
(/dj27) August 2007, CF-9. PHONETIC CHARADE (*5 *4)
In ALL did Thomas Edison
Design a lot of neato stuff.
He also hire many ONE
To help develop from his rough
Ideas great and wondrous plans.
His inspirations came from life
Around him – shapes of frying pans,
The TWO of a horse, the blade of a knife,
The THREE a pendulum makes as it swings.
And soon this made him very rich.
And some now say his ghost still sings
When not reciting a slick sales pitch.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
The bold italic words form a mutation, a non-apt
transposal. The con
flat theme required one of these involving the name of a famous
person appear
in the verse, separate from whatever base is involved in the flat,
so ignore
them while solving.
Menlo Park; men, lope, arc
(/dj28) December 2007, 23. LETTER BANK
This letter bank (not reproduced here) was written one line at a
time by six
composers: 530nm330Hz, T McAy, Ucaoimhu, Southwest, /dev/joe, and
Treesong.
It received kudos from Badir and G Natural.
(/dj29) April 2008, R-18. FALSE SCORE (6, 5)
All the fans were TWENTY as the Pats and Giants met.
Would New England finish perfect? Could the Giants yet
Cause the Pats' ALONE? The 6 to 5 result did set
Records as the falsest score we've ever seen, I bet.
=RALF P. OLIO, Devo EJ
This is a Ralf, one of the non-scored rule-breaking April Fools
that appears
in each April issue. This one is less rule-breaking than some, but
you'll
have to figure out what a "false score" is (aside from the
distracting example
in the verse).
demise, tense (based on demi = 1/2, ten = 10, and a score = 20)
This flat got kudos from Jigsaw.
(/dj30) June 2008, X-6. CRYPTIC DOUBLE CROSTIC.
This puzzle is not reproduced here. It was a cryptic
double-crostic written in
conjunction with Groucho. I did most of the cryptic cluing while
Groucho
selected the quote and did most of the anagramming into words.
This puzzle got kudos from Askew, Bactam, Cramerica, Dragonfly,
GrandBairn,
Hart King, Libra, Lyric, Quicks?lver, Serendipity, and top kudos
from Dee Sweet.
=GROUJO, Cliffsalem Park NA
July 2008 Notes: This was the 125th anniversary issue, and to
assist with
the editor's request to try to get 125 contributors, I offered to
combiflat
with anybody for this issue. The end result was 5 combiflats and
one solo flat
from me in this issue and a couple in the following issue.
(/dj31) July 2008, 11. LAST-LETTER CHANGE (4)
LAST LETTER CHANGE (4)
The SURF caresses coastal sand.
When low, it leaves the beaches WINE
And SURE across a stretch of land,
Each grain in order smooth and fine.
The WIND's the same when it falls back.
Although its sweep is less, not more.
An artifact of our moon's track,
Twice monthly does it wash the shore.
=G.I. JOE, N. Hollem CA
(Base by Jigsaw, verse by me)
tide, tidy; neat, neap
(Note that 11C defines neap as a noun meaning the same as neap tide.)
This flat got kudos from Cramerica.
(/dj32) July 2008, 27. PHONETIC FALSE FEMININE (7, 7)
Do not drum up trouble CONCLUDE man and wife,
Especially not king and queen.
You could get yourself the BEGIN of your life.
Royal scars are among the worst seen.
=DEVVURRY, Sal York MY
(My base, verse by Jeffurry with a fair bit of coaching from me)
beating, between (based on the model of king and queen)
This flat got kudos from Aleph and Cramerica.
(/dj33) July 2008, 54. FREEWHEELING THIRD-LETTER CHANGE (8, 3 5)
Dear Abby, I've a problem date these days.
From you I need some ONE.
My Charlie cringes when the music plays.
How do I make my DONE?
=ERJOE, Scarlem NA
(Base by Ergo, verse a joint effort more Ergo's work than mine)
guidance, guy dance
This flat got kudos from Bactam.
(/dj34) July 2008, 60. INTERLOCK (5-5)
Oh, summer is here and the weather is hot!
With ONEs on my feet I go walk on the beach.
Removing them shows the skin neath them is not
A uniform color or TWO. I beseech:
Come visit the store on the shore where I buy
The ONEs that I wear on the dunes and the pier.
It's totally ALL. There's no power line nigh.
No gas and no plumbing extends out to here,
And no other structure for almost a mile.
The shop uses solar cells; no other source
Of power's available out on the isle.
Their batteries help through the nighttime, of course.
=DUNEBUG, Saltham MA
(Base by Junebug, uncharacteristically long verse mostly by me.
And yes, I wrote two "on the beach" flats for this issue. Both
bases suggested it and it was for the July issue, so in season.)
stand-alone; sandal, tone
(/dj35) July 2008, 74. DELETION (9) (continuing the tradition of Dec. 48 and
Feb. 60)
My dad, the chemist, said to me,
"You spend all day beneath that tree,
Just planting flowers in your yard.
Go get a job, it's not that hard!"
"And what of you?" I answered back.
"You're just a nerdy science hack.
You're gaga for an element!
Now there's a truly worthless bent.
So I enjoy cranesbill and oak.
But your obsession, what a joke!
You go for ONE, what useless stuff!
Of TWOs, I'll never plant enough."
=GENEJOE, Crosslem TA
(Base by Geneac, verse by me, both parts inspired by the previous
flats
by Ully Bird and Lirath mentioned in the tagging, which featured
this
father-son pair, with the father always "gaga for an element".)
germanium, geranium
(/dj36) July 2008, 89. BEHEADMENT (5) (thanks to Nov. 49, 2003)
Space probes have searched for signs of life on Mars.
So far, they've found no STARS of Martian TARS.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
(While searching through past Enigmata for base ideas jotted in
margins,
I found this alternate answer to the flat five years earlier by
Amalgam.
The entire puzzle is the same except for swapping the cuewords,
and of
course the different answer.)
Way up on FIRST, the lobbyist must try
To influence the laws of Boston so
That SECOND corporations at his high
But standard hourly rate, to earn his dough.
=ERJOE, Scarlem NA
(Base by Ergo, verse by me.)
Beacon Hill, he can bill
This flat got kudos from Mercury.
(/dj38) August 2008, 39. LETTER BANK (9, 11, *6 *7) (WEE, BIG, TEXAN) (BIG =
NI3; can be sung)
She's a yellow rose from TEXAN, and her Texan heart's pure gold;
I am gray and mine is silver, like a BIG (a coin of old).
Since the two are in alloyance, we conduct a spark-filled WEE,
For our wooing is electric (as electrum ought to be).
=DEJA MHU, Saville MA
(Base by me, verse by Ucaoimhu but see the answer section below for
additional
notes about this flat which was in development for eight years.)
courtship, cistophorus, Corpus Christi
The combinom DEJA MHU (which is naturally pronounced the same as déjà vu) was suggested by somebody at a party Ucaoimhu and I both attended in 2000 (when Uc did not live in the Boston area but happened to be visiting). It may have been Eric's birthday party that August.
Within the next month or so I sent just "courtship, Corpus Christi" as a letter bank base for Uc to versify so we could use this combinom. (A few members know that I was born and grew up in Corpus Christi. The flat could possibly describe my parents, though the hair colors do not really match.)
That October Uc came back with a flat (also a pastiche on "The Yellow Rose of Texas") using these words and tricophorous, which I objected to on the basis of its obscurity. This word is listed in NI2 as a form as trichophore which has an extra H and thus is somewhat separated from where its derivative form would appear in the dictionary. It appears on the web mainly in word lists. I offered cistophorus as an alternative (since it is in NI3, and is the name of an ancient silver coin of some interest to collectors and historians, there are research paths to find this word other than just searching word lists for letter banks of "courtship").
Then the flat sat idle for years. I believe I brought it up again once or twice in intervening years without a response. Then after the anniversary issue project was announced, I brought it up again and Uc wrote the beautiful verse that got published.
This flat got kudos from Endgame, Hart King, and Libra, which I only deserve partial credit for due to my long memory.
(/dj39) August 2008, 53. PHONIGMATIC REBUS
The Democrats will soon convene to SOL Barack Obama,
And should he win, he'll have to end this long war with Osama.
= ,
Salem MA
nominate (nom in eight)
This flat got kudos from Alice, Dragonfly, and Tyger.
(/dj40) August 2008, 57. PHONETIC FALSE MULTIPLES (6, *5, 6)
My occupation is naming the perfumes
That come from the chemistry lab at our plant.
It's not as easy as you might conjecture —
The ideas are many, but good ones are scant.
For an aroma we recently tested,
The team floated "^ALPHA" ("He'll marvel at you!").
It seemed just perfect, but then some bread company
Got a bit huffy and threatened to sue.
Next we tried "BETA" ("The scent of a monarch!"),
Which felt pretty good, but it just wasn't right.
Seven more names ended up in the trash bin.
I thought that we'd be in the office all night.
Finally, someone said "^KAPPA," evoking
An image of softness and gentle caress.
This was the answer — we knew that we had it.
Our factory reeked with the smell of success.
Sometimes we triumph, and sometimes we stumble,
And sometimes the chemists bring scents that appall.
One time we even came up wuth "Absentia,"
A perfume whose odor was nothing at all.
=/dev/scarab, Salem St. MN
(Base by me, verse by Scarab)
wonder, Tudor, tender
Scarab came up with a very different idea than I had for this verse, based on a take-off of "odor" being the zero-multiple of the same form (as is clued at the end of the verse).
This flat received kudos from Aleph, Badir, Earl E. Byrd, Ergo, Tril, and WebCatt, and top kudos from Newrow.
(/dj41) September 2008, 25. WORD DELETION (8) (ALL AND OUTSIDE = overloaded)
In Manhattan I recently purchased an ALL AND OUTSIDE
From my favorite Krispy Kreme store. One bite . . . IN! And I
sighed.
The new ban on trans fats means things just don't taste right. I
'bout died.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
BAL ETI GGE HEL IME ITS LDI LLE MES MET OUI RES RET RSO SLU SOM
SVI SYO THE TRA URE YOU
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger. Sometimes you're the ball. Dire Straits
The lyric is from their song "The Bug."
(/dj43) October 2008, 21. BIGRAM DELETION (7) (ONE = NI3 usage; inspired by
July 119)
Sir Ballyhoo fights dragons
With his knightly sword and spear,
For those two arms are what he chose to wield.
He dons his leather ONE to give
Protection to his chest.
I TWO he's safe enough without a shield.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
doublet, doubt
The flat this one was in response to features the same knight wearing a different leather garment which can be bigram-deleted, and this was a wrong answer I considered while solving that one.
This flat got kudos from Tyger.
(/dj44) October 2008, 59. PHONETIC REBUS (*5 *7) (not MW; phonetics are a
bit loose)
THE SOL is seen in Narnia, Constantine,
And Vanilla Sky, all on the silver screen.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Tilda Swinton (tildes win tin)
Crax was generous in running this one with the "loose phonetics" tag; it's really just wrong (the "s" sound in Swinton does not match the "z" sound in tildes). But the whole concept was very cute, so it ran anyway.
Readers agreed that the cuteness overcame the phonetic inaccuracy. This flat got kudos from Earl E. Byrd and Lyric and top kudos from millirem.
(/dj45) February 2009, 49. ENIGMATIC REBUS (*3 *3) (not MW)
until 2009
Silent movie star,
He died in nineteen forty.
Rest in peace, COWBOY.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Tom Mix (to MMIX)
I meant to submit this for the January 2009 issue, but forgot about it. When, to my surprise, nobody used the base in January, I wrote it up for February.
This flat got kudos from Askew, Dragonfly, and Mercury.
WARNING, it's another one of those Ralfs. This one is not that hard,
but it
seriously strains the concept of a false flat.
(/dj46) April 2009, R-8. FALSE ONLINE VIRGIN BIRTH (7, *7)
Higgledy piggledy,
Ralph Waldo JESUS CHRIST
Stopped writing essays and
Went out to sea.
Unrealistically
He saw MADONNAs there.
Women with fishy tails?
How could it be?
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
mermaid, Emerson (E- prefix indicating the online nature, and the switch from maid (i.e. supposedly a virgin) to son indicating a virgin birth)
This flat got kudos from CipherStomp and Wampahoofus.
(/dj47) April 2009, 48. REBUS (7) (can be sung)
He:
Grey Lab'rinth is the place to be.
Puzzle solving is the life for me.
Code cracking makes me feel so bright.
Keep those Kenkens, just give me that great website.
She:
Those crosswords I can barely do.
At Grey Labyrinth, I've no clue.
Paragraph puzzles confound me too.
I'm stuck on this stumper, give me a SOL or two.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
inkling (ink L in G)
This is a pastiche of the "Green Acres" theme song (though I left out the last little bit), revising it to be a sort of an ad for Grey Labyrinth. And it's a response flat, too! It was inspired by March 20, another rebus with a big G in the rubric. In this case, the answer is somewhat related but the verse is completely different from the verse of the flat that was my inspiration.
This flat got kudos from CipherStomp and Lirath.
(/dj48) August 2009, 66. FREEWHEELING DELETION (5 4, 8) (in response to May
41)
Raised in a bowl, now under the stars,
Aquarium fish swim free from jars.
Upon the shore, a stone lion peers.
From its mouth, a stream appears.
Lily pads float; upon them frogs hop.
My PAINT, you see, has PINTs on top.
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
tetra pond, tetrapod
The flat this was based on had the solution "water lily, waterily"
This flat got kudos from Munro and Serendipity.
(/dj49) August 2009, X-3. CRYPTIC DOUBLE-CROSTIC by GROUJO, Cliffsalem Park
NA.
As it says, this was a cryptic double-crostic I co-wrote with
Groucho.
(Sorry, it's not included on this page.) It got kudos from Askew,
Bactam, Dada,
Dee Sweet, Dragonfly, (e)met, and Marcus Asparagus.
(/dj50) September 2009, CF-25. THIRD-LETTER CHANGE (6)
Even if you're
The LIKE of space
And time, and more,
You still must face
The facts of LIFE,
'Cause everything
Is made of LIFE.
It's the real thing!
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
The theme for this year's con flat competition was slogans. Every verse had to end with one.
EAST LA. WINNERS, HONEST!
N.O. ATHLETES AS WINNERS
WINNERS STATE: "LOSE? NAH!"
ANSWER IS NON-ATHLETES
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
Each line is an anagram of the answer (the last one untrue).
The New Orleans Saints
There is a bit of a tradition of submitting anagrams of the names of championship teams. The Saints had just won the Super Bowl when this was submitted.
This flat received kudos from andma-Gray/turk.
(/dj53) March 2011, 6. QUANTUM PHONETIC BEHEADMENT (<7>, 8; <7>,
7) (stress shifts for EIGHT; SEVEN = inferable)
Morris, 22, has trained for nine years.
Many different EIGHT have helped him master
Leaping every hurdle as it appears,
Running 'tween them faster, ever faster.
Competition day is here; the venue's
Decked out very QUANTUM. Waiting for his
Heat, he fidgets SEVEN, watching men use
Skills they must have practiced just like Morris.
=VRA/JOE, Millem NA
This was a combiflat with Vraal, who supplied part of the base.
fancily, ancillae; fancily, antsily
When Vraal told me he had a phonetic beheadment base on fancily, I thought the other half was going to be antsily, but he had the less common word ancillae that he'd just seen used somewhere. When I found that both were 11C-valid phonetic beheadments, but based on different pronunciations, I realized I had found a quantum flat base. Per 11C, fancily is pronounced \'fan(t) sə' lē\ where the (t) indicates an optional t sound. Antsily has the t sound; ancillae doesn't.
June 2011. Hidden contest results
This is not a puzzle, but my entry to a hidden contest in the
April 2011
issue. The examples of a mosaicquote and shuffled quote which
appeared in
the puzzle notes claimed to have the same solutions as the ones
usually
printed there, but they were actually different puzzles and their
solutions
revealed a hidden contest which required writing a haiku to enter.
The
rather factual one I wrote was:
In the puzzle notes
in April's issue I found
the hidden contest.
=/dev/joe
Convention 2011 cryptic.
This cryptic was written for a special cryptic-constructing and
solving event.
The solving took place at the 2011 NPL convention. These
mini-cryptics were not
reprinted in the Enigma, but you can see my puzzle (as it appeared
at the
convention) here.
The extra letters spell NETHACK, a roguelike game where everything is represented by ASCII characters. Your character is usually an at sign, which is the shape formed in the grid by the shaded squares.
It is not necessary for solving, but there are a number of Nethack-themed words in the clues (lava, ring, kobold, gold, rolling boulder, rope, ghost), answers (bear), and wordplay (ant).
(/dj54) August 2013 CF-8 PHONETIC TERMINAL DELETION (3 5, 5)
"Hey, Charlie, look! We found a map!
A map to CANDY Mountain. Now
Let's take a trip to CANDY Moun-
Tain. Come on, Charlie, you old cow!"
"All right, I'll go." "Yippee! Hooray!"
And so this troupe set out to find
A mountain made of CANDY. First
They had to cross a bridge. Behind
The other unicorns' backs, Char-
Lie said, "I know there's really not
A CANDY Mountain. It would melt.
The sun would melt it. It's too hot!
And all that would be left would be
A pond of milk. And where would so
Much milk be, anyway?" "I heard
That! There's a mile still left to go."
And soon the group arrived. "It's real!
There really is a mountain made
Of CANDY!" Charlie cried. Around
The mountain's base they found was laid
A lot of AND, big piles of rocks:
All sizes, pebbles, stones, and boul-
Ders, "Yum! The AND is made of CAN-
DY!" Now they all enjoyed their goal.
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
The theme for this year's con flat competition was simply food.
ice cream, scree
This flat was based on the video Charlie the Unicorn Goes to Candy Mountain. I am not a huge fan of the video, but when I put this base together, thinking about scree made of ice cream was only a small leap from a candy mountain, and so there it was. This verse is longer then most of my verses, but I was having fun giving a synopsis of the entire video (except its ending) in my verse, while still fitting in the clues.
This flat got kudos from Tyger.
(/dj55) August 2014, CF-21. FIRST-LETTER CHANGE (*5, *5) (neither MW)
There was once a man from Nantucket.
A cabinet member, John BUCKET
Was recently senator, loser
To Bush in '04. On a cruiser
He served in the sixties. And TUCKET
Was also a man from Nantucket.
A Stiller, and father to Ben, he
Portrayed Frank Costanza. And when he
Was done with that role he appeared (Oh!)
On King of Queens as a real weirdo.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
The theme for this year's con flat competition was to make a pastiche on any well-known poem. (More on this in the answer section.)
Kerry, Jerry
This had to be a pastiche on any well-known poem. I chose the Nantucket limerick, which exists in several forms but usually ends with the f-word in the final line, and wrote a clean poem actually about men from Nantucket. Unbeknownst to me, Neendy also submitted a flat which was a completely different pastiche of the Nantucket limerick.
(/dj56) September 2014, 61. ANAGRAM
SUPERVILE
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
repulsive
This flat received kudos from Tyger.
(/dj57) October 2014, 61. REVERSED DELETION (6)
Oh, what to eat for breakfast? Go try YUM!
That fruity grainy cereal's good for your
Digestive tract from your duodenum
To your MY. Hang on a sec, I want some more!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
muesli, ileum
This flat received kudos from NJ Ninja and
R/EDS.
Ralf alert! You really need to know how flats work and the types
of flats that exist in order to have a chance at this one.
Explanation accompanies the answer.
(/dj58) April 2015, R-4. : ) (8) (8, D)
8 (5) (:-), )-:) ()-: = not MW)
:-) (10) ())
)-: (10 (:)
M/D0P
A lot of D
Is in the sea.
=RPO, Jove DE
This flat was
inspired by the addition of emoticons as words in the Oxford
English Dictionary.
All the cue words in this flat are emoticons or parts of
emoticons. In addition, all the flat types have been replaced by
cue words. In each line at the top, except for the centered lines
containing rubrics, there is a flat type replaced by a cue word,
an enumeration in parentheses, and a tag indicating which cue
word(s) replace the answer(s) to this flat, with an additional tag
indicating the non-MW status of one of the answers in the second
line. The answers are:
8 = reversal
D = sal (defined in 11C as salt)
:-) = rebus
:-( = suber
) = beheadment
: = palindrome
So the four flats are:
a palindrome beheadment (reversal, sal)
a reversal (rebus, suber)
a rebus (beheadment, read as "be head, M, en, T" where be head is
the top half of a letter B)
a suber (palindrome, read as "em or D, nil, a P"; note that / is
"used to mean or" per 11C's signs and symbols section and the
fourth character of the rubric is a zero)
In addition to all this, note that the cuewords for the reversal are actually reversals.
This flat received kudos from Alice, Hot, and Treesong, and
top kudos from Wordsmix.
(/dj59) August 2015, FB-12. FIFTH-TO-FOURTH CHANGEOVER (6, /3/3) (NOM =
/3/3 = not MW)
At Con you meet your follow Krewe
At last. That's when you find
That no one ends up looking like
The picture in your mind.
Take me: before we met I bet
You never would have guessed
That I coould WORD such effort that
My nom could fit a base the best.
=NOM, Recouvery BC
This flat was part of the First Base event at this year's
convention in which the first six lines of the verse (except for
the last word of the 6th) were supplied, and attendees were
challenged to write a flat using their nom and any other word(s)
as bases, with the clue words for these other words to appear in
the remainder of the verse they wrote.
devote, /dev/joe
(/dj60) November 2015, CF-5.
FIRST-SOUND CHANGE (4)
The marvels of positive and negative space!
What's this? Do I see an ACE?
Or is there a BASE?
Or are there two?
Both things can
be seen, it's true.
What shall I do?
Is this verse
part of the
neck of a fine
ACE or is it
only the space
between two
noses and two
pairs of lips? Between both it
flips. Staring at this, how my brain trips.
=/dev/joe,
Salem
MA
This convention flat was written for an event based on concrete
poetry (where the words are arranged in a shape which is
thematic).
vase, face
This flat received kudos from DelphiRune.
(/dj61) August 2016, 26. DOUBLE-CROSS (6, 9, 9, 6)
Oh, too much chocolate ONE is bad for you.
It's not that you might get some in your THREE.
A life of rich desserts will send (boo hoo!)
You early to the FOUR. But docs agree
That you can eat like that sometimes, so do
Not get TWO from having none. Live free!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
mousse, heartache, moustache, hearse
This flat received kudos from Jo the Loiterer and Quicks?lver.
The following was a "miniganza" puzzle - a hunt-style puzzle with a
word or short phrase as its final answer.
(/dj62) October 2016, ROAD TO BeaCON: ROADBLOCK!
They closed all the roads here for Trick or Treating on Halloween,
so you stop driving and join in the fun.
Santa's helper, flee endlessly! Get back! (3)
Extend back, ignoring third warrior princess (*4)
Progressive hides monster (4)
Cannon taken by military man after headless downer doll (*7 *3)
Weird bow, coy roper (6)
Little devil is wimpy at heart (3)
Kent, eat before Melville loses his head (*8)
Tony, for one, is somewhat anti-Germany (5)
Quiet, mad raider (6)
E. Nigma riled Dr. Strange (*7)
Archaeologist Ross wears one normal habit (*7 *5)
Lanchester is a main character in Frozen (*4)
Decoy befuddles cow racers (9)
Mutant teenager, perhaps, is playing roulette without old English leaders (6)
Stark 6 key goes back into Middle Eastern country (*4 *3)
Blaze runs back through quiet, loud lawman (7)
Stepsister hides back in caller Ed nicely (*10)
Sidekick robes amidst disrobing (*5)
Train follows mob, headless cherub (5)
Creepy thing in every other part of zoo a mob likes (6)
The king lives, surprisingly (*5)
Force user's projectile header with velocity, not energy (*5 *5)
"Quiet! My, a preserved body." (5)
Armstrong, for one, sat out, ran out (9)
Hidden man in Japan! (5)
Thy door is broken, Ms. Gale (*7)
Transformer changed to supper, Mimi (*7 *5)
This marks the spot, and, er, a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (*6)
Mario's sidekick: "You oughta stop having intermittent starts" (*5)
Virginia baseball official loses head, making undead creature (7)
Luke's mentor, pale Ken, wears two sashes (*3-*3 *6)
Monster bloom? Yuck! Run back (8)
Olympic sledding event is nothing but bones (8)
"^8 6 2 6 3," 4 4 (*3 3 *5)
Santa's helper, flee endlessly! Get back! (3)
ELF (FLEE - E reversed)
Creepy thing in every other part of zoo a mob likes (6)
ZOMBIE (alternating in ZOO A MOB LIKES)
The king lives, surprisingly (*5)
ELVIS (anag. LIVES)
Force user's projectile header with velocity, not energy (*5 *5)
DARTH VADER (DART + HEADER - E + V)
"Quiet! My, a preserved body." (5)
MUMMY (MUM + MY)
Armstrong, for one, sat out, ran out (9)
ASTRONAUT (anag. SAT OUT RAN)
Hidden man in Japan! (5)
NINJA (ma(N IN JA)pan & lit.)
Thy door is broken, Ms. Gale (*7)
DOROTHY (anag. THY DOOR)
Transformer changed to supper, Mimi (*7 *5)
OPTIMUS PRIME (anag. TO SUPPER MIMI)
This marks the spot, and, er, a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (*6)
XANDER (X AND ER)
Mario's sidekick: "You oughta stop having intermittent starts" (*5)
YOSHI (initials of You ... intermittent)
Virginia baseball official loses head, making undead creature (7)
VAMPIRE (VA + UMPIRE - U)
Luke's mentor, pale Ken, wears two sashes (*3-*3 *6)
OBI-WAN KENOBI (WAN + KEN in OBI, OBI)
Monster bloom? Yuck! Run back (8)
WEREWOLF (FLOWER + EW rev.)
Olympic sledding event is nothing but bones (8)
SKELETON (2 defs.)
"^8 6 2 6 3," 4 4 (*3 3 *5)
The initial letters of the answers spell "EXORCIST PRIEST IS CRAZED MAN," DOXY VOWS. This is another
cryptic clue for the final answer, MAX VON SYDOW (anag. MAN DOXY VOWS)
This puzzle got kudos from Firetruck, Linko, and Tyger.
(/dj63) December 2016, 59. SECOND-LETTER CHANGE (5) (with a nod to Dec 1)
The prices were high on the prime cuts of meat,
But deals on the poultry just couldn’t be beat.
For QUIRKs, the store CLERK offered two dollars off;
A turkey alternative? Please do not scoff.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This flat was a response to a flat by Witz published in the same issue, and
the verse was entirely his creation - I only changed the answer, the flat type
(was a second-sound change), and the number of dollars off to be more modest as
befits this answer.
fryer, flyer
This flat received kudos from Firetruck.
(/dj64) May 2017, CF-4. PROGRESSIVE WORD DELETION (9)
Elaine played TENNIS in an N green top
And scarlet skirt. She won game one: the score
Was twenty-one to ten. Yelled Lucy, “Stop!
Enough! Oh, I can’t EN this anymore!
Just TIS those colors or I quit!” No cop
Of fashion came, so Lucy hit the door.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This was submitted for the 2016 convention's flat-solving competition "Casey at the
Flat" which simply required athletic themes.
badminton, mint, do, ban
May 2017 editorial
This is not a puzzle, but an essay describing some of the ways the written rules for
flats in the Guide may typically be extended to cover the continuum of puzzle
variations and extensions, difficulty, cluing, and the overall sense of fairness
that governs all of these.
FAIRNESS AND THE RULES FOR OUR PUZZLES — by /dev/joe
We have a set of rules published in the Guide to the Enigma which are
designed to ensure our puzzles are fair. The rules can't cover everything, though.
They are guidelines for the editor, who has discretion to override these rules, by
permitting puzzles he thinks are fair but break the strict wording of the rules as
well as by rejecting puzzles which may follow the letter of the rules but violate
their intent, or which are simply not clued well enough to give solvers a reasonable
chance at determining their answers.
There are several different aspects of the rules which relate to this sense of
fairness. One of these is in the allowed bases. For most puzzles, we expect words
in answers to be in one of three official dictionaries (and if they're not in the
collegiate dictionary, we tag them to alert solvers). Exceptions can be made, for
names of people, titles of movies, etc. which are well known or of current interest,
and for names from the NPL (which are occasionally tagged as NPL instead of
just not MW, for fairness, at the editor's discretion).
In addition, when answers are phrases, for most puzzle types we expect those
phrases to be dictionary entries, or at least meaningful phrases which might
potentially appear in some dictionary, a condition referred to as “dictionary
nature.” There are a small number of puzzle types where we allow arbitrary
phrases such as “Sarah started the car.” In the front matter of the Guide in the
section “Nondictionary Phrases,” and also in the masthead of the Penetralia
section in each issue of the Enigma, you will find a list of flat types where
phrases without dictionary nature are allowed as answers. This includes
anagrams and their ilk, rebuses and subers, heteronyms and homonyms, some
other types where the answers are homophones of other words which should
usually be dictionary entries, welded flats, palindromes, and spoonergrams. In
all these cases, though, fairness is considered in determining what is acceptable,
and some bases are acceptable for some of these flat types and not for others.
Letter banks are noted in this section of the guide as often containing familiar
non-MW phrases, but are tagged when doing so. However, note the word familiar
in this statement. The nondictionary phrases that commonly appear in letter
banks are maxims and quotations and such like “a stitch in time saves nine,”
proper nouns like “the New England Patriots,” titles of movies and books and
songs, and other similar phrases which might be found in a very inclusive
dictionary. They are not the completely freewheeling answers often seen for
rebuses, where any sequence of words which can fit together into a cue word's
space in the verse is permitted. To distinguish them, rebus-style answers will be
henceforth called freewheeling answers in this article.
Anagram answers are a bit looser than letter bank answers, but aren't
completely freewheeling; they should, at heart, describe a single thing. Anagram
answer forms have included an actor and role, a slogan and its associated product,
and a fairly specific noun phrase such as “a presidential running mate.”
Spoonergram answers tend to have one phrase with dictionary nature and its
freewheeling spoonerized version, as in “lame duck” and “dame luck”, but they
can sometimes be completely freewheeling if well clued. Welded flats are limited
to having N consecutive words or dictionary phrases if there are N parts welded
to form the base; in other words, no more separate entries than a non-welded
flat of the same type and construction. They can have fewer (as in the welded
progressive beheadment “Janeane, nee” which has four welded parts but only
two words). Heteronyms, homonyms, and palindromes are commonly completely
freewheeling, but need appropriate levels of cluing.
Other flat types can have freewheeling answers, but with the discretion of
the editor, and we tag those phrases or label the flats as freewheeling to indicate
such. This is one of these areas where the editor judges, among other things,
how fair the puzzle is using that freewheeling phrase. Note that the puzzle types
which are generally allowed to use freewheeling answers are among the most
restrictive base types and those which give the most information about the
answer. Heteronyms have the exact same sequence of letters in their answers.
omonyms do the same using sounds. Spoonergrams are nearly homonyms,
with very specific sounds swapped. In palindromes, the letters in the second half
of the answer strictly follow the reverse order of the first half.
Therefore, in deciding when other flats may use freewheeling answers, one
consideration should be to how restrictive the flat type is. Deletions, beheadments,
letter shifts, letter changes, and similar types where the answers are very nearly
the same are good candidates for considering freewheeling answers. Freer types
such as interlocks and transposals, where having one answer provides less
information for the other(s), are poorer choices for such treatment. Letter banks
are actually one of the freest types, but remember as noted above that their
non-dictionary answers are not freewheeling ones.
In addition to this, the cluing for the phrase must be considered. The less
restrictive the flat type which includes a freewheeling answer, the tighter the
cluing must be to ensure that solvers can find the phrase. A deletion in which
only one of the answers is freewheeling might not need much stronger cluing
than a standard deletion. A freewheeling transposal, on the other hand, needs
very good cluing for every word in all of its answers.
Answers in forms, cryptic crosswords, and certain other clued extras like
German sausages also generally are dictionary entries or have dictionary
nature. Cryptics may make an exception for one or two special theme answers.
In forms, all entries should have dictionary nature except in the “Something
Different” form variety, which usually appears only as a square too large to
create from legitimate entries, and is intended as a humorous take on the usual
forms. The clues for these are as detailed as necessary to ensure all words in
each entry can be determined.
There are other fairness considerations in the rules as well. In the Guide’s
entry on phonetic flats there is a list of phonetic forms considered equivalent.
This has been the source of some contention in the past since these sounds are
not equivalent for all Americans, let alone all English speakers, but it is a
compromise editors of the past have decided on. Don't abuse these rules. The
guide says r = schwa or nothing, but this is meant to apply after certain vowels
where r-dropping speakers may omit the r sound. Don't try submitting try, tie as
a homonym. The editor is just going to reject it or retitle it as a phonetic
deletion. Another consideration appears in the section “General Principles”: “If
two or more cue words are used consecutively, solvers are deprived of contextual
clues; constructors should be aware of this and take special care that the
answers are thoroughly clued in spite of the loss of context.” This should also
apply to all welded flats due to their nature, and consider it a more general
guideline: Whenever the flat does something which makes it unusually difficult
for solvers, compensate by providing sufficient cluing elsewhere.
This article got kudos from Treesong.
(/dj65) July 2017, 4. HETERONYM (*6, 6) (*THE SAME = not MW)
*THE SAME is now the president of France,
You might have heard if you weren’t in a trance.
I think there’s one long vowel within his name,
But French does not mark those with a THE SAME.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Macron, macron
(/dj66) September 2017, 37. BIGRAM DELETION (6)
FOURTH-TO-LAST CHANGEOVER (6)
(with a tip of the rod to June 11 and July 53)
I am quite a fan of fishing;
I’ve spent many hours wishing
While at the PINERS swabbing, I could
Be out angling on the PIER.
But Caribbean sharks are a hassle
And I sometimes have to rassle
Just to get a massive PINCER
Aboard, avoiding its long spear.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This flat was a take on two previous fishing-themed flats with largely similar verses,
but different answers.
marlin, main; marlin, marina
(/dj67) September 2017, 76. METATHESIS (7) (apologies to Poe)
Just outside the Public Garden (if I may please beg your pardon)
There’s a statue of an author and a bird from verse of yore.
Edgar’s cloak is wildly flying and the bird seems to be crying
As behind him books are lying—from his BAG they do outpour
Since its GAB no longer seem to hold it shut, not any more!
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This was a variation of a flat I wrote for
a handout puzzle during the 2017
convention which represented a walkaround of the Boston Public Garden and the
area between it and the hotel. The statue mentioned is a real one convention-goers
could locate. To avoid any issues over the flats having been previously published,
I just adapted the existing verse (which I loved - a pastiche of "The Raven")
to fit a different base.
satchel, latches
This flat received kudos from Anomaly, Badir, Linko, Mercury, NJ Ninja,
Pebbles, Quicks?lver, and Tyger.
(/dj68) September 2017, CF-21. PHONIGMATIC REBUS (^4 ^4)
collis
Half a century ago, THE ANSWER did debut.
Spaceships, robots, alien life, THE ANSWER had it all.
Half a dozen TV shows, and thirteen movies too
Several ships named Enterprise and others did enthrall
Generations worth of TV fans who oft did view
Kirk and Spock, Picard and more. These men I do extol.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Star Trek (start wreck - the rubric is the start of the word "collision")
(/dj69) October 2017, 82. ANAGRAM
HURRY, EVAC! HE RAIN. (^9 *6)
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Hurricane Harvey
(/dj70) November 2017, 32. TRANSDELETION (*7)
TRANSDELETION (7)
(*SEVEN-A = NI3; *SIX is overloaded; FIVE, FOUR, and THREE do not change)
*SEVEN-A did never sail the *FIVE.
Jason’s crew perhaps did so, but these
Soldiers serve the Turkish army. I’ve
Heard that they’re Albanian, and geez,
That old river FOUR through It’ly, true,
And it isn’t called that any more.
*SIX is yet less likely a venue
Since no man has trod upon the four
Gassy giants orbiting our THREE.
*SEVEN-A have skins of browns, ecrus,
Bronzes, chestnuts, tans, and SEVEN-B.
THREE exposure colors them those hues.
=/dev/joe, Salem, MA
This was submitted for a theme issue based on astronomy and astrology.
The base/cuewords are a bit complicated, but what the tagging notes are trying to say
is that one transdeletion uses SEVEN-A, SIX, FIVE, FOUR, THREE (with the first two
capitalized) and the other uses SEVEN-B, SIX, FIVE, FOUR, THREE with only SIX
capitalized. SIX is a different word in the two solutions, while FIVE, FOUR, and
THREE are the same (that is, these two transdeletions merge into the same answer
sequence part way through).
The witness told a wondrous tale
Of New Year’s in the south of France,
The WIND so cold, it hurt like hail,
But sights and sounds still did entrance.
The judge soon found twelve jurors dozed.
They dreamed of holidays abroad.
Because they were so indisposed
He called a WINED. “This court isflawed!”
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
mistrial, mistral
This flat received kudos from Badir and Lirath.
(/dj72) April 2018, R-13. PARTIALLY OVERLOADED PHONETIC CHANGE OF HEART (*6, 6, *4, *6) (ONE, THREE = not MW; TWO = inferable; FOUR = non-MW usage)
The year was twenty oh five.
At Mouse, Inc. a change did loom.
Would ONE/THREE keep it alive
Or lead it to its doom?
The shoveler’s made a grave.
Would FOUR lie in that TWO?
FOUR kept on kicking. Save
That hole for some other crew.
=RPO, Jove DE
This Ralf is mainly a Ralf because TWO is a bit of a stretch as an inferable word (though worse has appeared in some non-Ralf flats). ONE and THREE are overloaded; either one fits in the space where ONE/THREE appears separately and the verse makes sense.
Eisner, diggee, Iger, Disney
Yes, Bob Iger really did follow Michael Eisner as CEO of Disney.
This flat received kudos from Treesong.
(/dj73) April 2018, 8. FIRST-SOUND CHANGE (3, *4) (B = not MW) (the saga of Feb. 22 continues)
The Eagles fans all did A
When leader B passed away.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
cry, Frey
This was a response flat to others by AroundEve in the previous two issues.
The earlier flats were about the football team, but this one was about the
band, potentially throwing some solvers for a loop.
This flat received kudos from AroundEve, Bad Angel, and R/EDS.
(/dj74) May 2018, 65. LETTER BANK (7, 10)
The part of the egg that’s not the yolk,
It’s not PEKOE. It’s called the POKE.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
albumen, unnameable
This flat received kudos from AroundEve, Dragonfly, and Linko.
(/dj75) July 2018, 48. WORD DELETION (*10) (can be sung)
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how
THE MUSIC used to weigh a crown.
He lifted water with a screw,
Focused sunlight to sink a crew,
Their burning ship just sinking, sinking down.
212 BC made me shiver.
The giant war bell shook my liver.
Every time it EMUS,
THE MUSIC it did bemuse.
To Syracuse the war did ride.
When a soldier ran him through I cried.
*THIC did not fight on his side
The day THE MUSIC died.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Of course it's sung to "American Pie", or a small part of it, anyway.
Archimedes, chimed, Ares
This flat received kudos from Anomaly, A-Plus, Drauk, Linko, Lyric, NJ Ninja, Quicks?lver, RUgame?, Treesong, and Tyger.
(/dj76) October 2018, CF-13. CONSONANTCY (*5 5, 7)
The SPOOKY THING told
To Kim and her fold,
“Look out!”
When she was quite bold
They would her behold
Without
A stitch on her cold
Naked-as-a-MOLD
Bod stout.
Letter by letter
A ghost typesetter
Revealed
Kim would regret her
Choice to forget her
Clothes. Squealed
Laughs would upset her.
She’d have been better
Concealed.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This was from the flat constructing and solving competition at this year's convention, and the constraint this year was that we had to use one of three specific French poetic forms. This was the Lai, which specified the syllable counts and rhyme scheme.
Ouija board, jaybird
This flat got kudos from Linko and Treesong.
(/dj77) November 2018, 20. THIRD-LETTER CHANGE (8) (in response to October #53)
My pal has learned to pin on GUM.
She kissed him and baked him some MUM.
(They’re breads with egg and butter.) Yum!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Comments about the flat it was in response to with the answer.
brooches, brioches
This flat was in response to a flat that also had a character pinning on brooches, but depended on using the spelling broaches, which I initially thought was wrong (being a homonym which means to raise a subject for discussion), but 11C permits it as a spelling for the pin. So my response was to write a brooch flat using the spelling of brooches people generally think is correct.
This flat got kudos from Anomaly.
(/dj78) January 2019, 56. LETTER BANK (9, *9 ^4) (TWO = not MW)
When after meals and on the run
Oft I chew gum, and I choose ONE,
A flavor I will not resent.
It gives my breath a nice fresh scent.
But when I have no breath at all,
When asthma comes, I make the call
For TWO, relief beyond compare.
(Now kinder to the ozone layer.)
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
spearmint, Primatene Mist
This flat is not meant to advertise this product -- it doesn't need it.
Sufferers of the kind of asthma Primatene Mist treats know how well it works.
Relief in seconds is not an exaggeration. The only problem was that the inhaler
used a banned CFC which was eventually banned to such an extent that even the
tiny amount released with the medication was not allowed. It was off the market
for a few years until a version without banned chemicals could be tested and
approved. The rerelease happened in late 2018, and inspired me to write this
flat.
This flat got kudos from Barkis and Tyger.
(/dj79) February 2019, 2. CHOP 'N' SWAP (6)
Piles of coupons, rebate slips,
IOUs and Vegas chips.
Gift cards—twenty-seven stores.
Rain checks—when it rains, it pours.
Subway tokens up the wazoo.
ONE! I have a lot of TWO!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
cripes, scrip
Scrip is, per Merriam-Webster, "any of various documents used as evidence that the holder or bearer is entitled to receive something." It's also used for substitute money, generally when it is issued in emergencies. The word is not generally, to my knowledge, used to describe the modern-day substitute money I used in the verse, but the idea had been going in my head for a while that this was a good term to describe all the things of this sort.
WET TWO! The WET ONE and his courtiers
Puffed on a WET THREE all day.
Filtration reduced all the tortures
That smoke put on lungs. The way
They raised all the hoses to TWO
Avoided FOURing too hard
On the pipe, for fear it could do
Much harm if it fell and scarred
One of them. The smoke, WET FOUR
It was filtered through water, contained
Organic compounds, some or-
Tho-, some meta- or ONE. Strained
As it was, it smelled nevertheless
Like THREE or yam. God bless!
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
RALF Alert - this flat is a Ralf, meaning that it does something nonstandard in a fun way for April. What's a hydration? Figuring that out is all part of the puzzle.
para-, pharaoh; ora, hoorah; oka, hookah; tug, though
To hydrate is to add water to something, so these flats add the chemical formula for water, H-O-H, in that order, interleaved with the other letters. Because there aren't a lot of words in English with two Hs, the examples used here represent most or all of the viable examples of this flat type.
This flat got kudos from DelphiRune, Frampold, Linko, Marcus Asparagus, and Tyger.
(/dj81) April 2019, R-8. HETERONYM (7)
*PLACE BEAST *PLACE BEAST
VERB VERB *PLACE BEAST.
=Ralf P. Olio, Jove DE
Yes, another Ralf. What's going on here?
buffalo
This flat replaces all the words in the verse with cuewords, yet does so in a way that still leaves a solvable flat. It's a heteronym, so all the words are spelled the same way. You can either try to figure out what word is the proper name of a place, and a beast, and a verb, or you can just Google for sentences with the same word repeated several times in a row and you will find this one about buffalo pretty quickly.
This flat got kudos from KayZero and Marcus Asparagus.
(/dj82) May 2019, 45. OVERLOADED HOMONYM (7, 4 5)
Short messages like “hv u packed?”
Were part of his illegal scheme.
But how to catch him in the act?
They hired a white-hat hacking team.
They set a trap. “hot phones in van”
“i’ll meet u up around the bend”.
This tactic worked. They nailed the man.
This EITHER has come to its end.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
texting, tech sting
This flat got kudos from Dischorran, Jabberwock, Pebbles, QT-Oh, Quicks?lver, and Witz.
(/dj83) July 2019 40. COMPLETE TURNABOUT (6)
^ONE’s not looking all that great some days.
Her eyes are TWO; it seems she’s in a haze.
Pa says drinking makes her look these ways.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
There was a TURNABOUT flat in an issue shortly before this one which replaced a direction with its opposite. This was the natural followup, accompanied with the puzzle note: In a “complete turnabout”, every letter representing a direction (U, D, L, R, N, S, E, W) is replaced by its opposite.
Granny, glassy
This flat got kudos from Dischorran, Mercury, NJ Ninja, and Witz.
(/dj84) August 2019 72. LETTER SHIFT (*5, 5) (ONE = part of phrase)
I went to Alice Springs to see ONE Rock.
It’s been around for TWO and TWO and TWO.
To go there feels like turning back the clock.
Looking at it makes me feel brand new.
=JOJOE, Sydlem, Austrachusetts
This was a combiflat with JOEY from Australia, written during the 2019 convention.
Ayers, years
This flat got kudos from NJ Ninja.
(/dj85) September 2019 8. TRANSPOSAL (*7, 7) (SNOOPS = *7 = not MW) (munching away with August #10)
An entire bag of SNOOPS?
That’s a lot of nacho cheese!
I just snack on SPOONS, so please
Can you pass me those Froot Loops?
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Doritos, toroids
The flat this was in response to had a similar verse about another snack food.
This flat got kudos from Deansk, DelphiRune, Quicks?lver, and Teddybear.
(/dj86) September 2019 18. HETERONYM (8, 4 4)
FIRST are what a creature made of SECOND
To connect internal parts, it’s reckoned.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
meatuses, meat uses
This flat was written more than a year earlier than this, and the editor lost it. When I was updating this page, I realized it had not gotten into the Enigma, and I resubmitted it.
This flat got kudos from Tyger.
(/dj87) September 2019 34. DELETION (7) (With a tip of the hat to July 46)
He goes one step MORE for us,
But his lame jokes make us groan.
Still, that LESS is a good fellow
Whom we’re glad to call our own.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
farther, father
The flat this one was in response to spoke of "bad jokes" and the answer was punster. But it made me think of "dad jokes" and this base. When I realized that answer was wrong, I wrote up this flat for the other answer.
(/dj88) September 2019 51. LETTER BANK (5, *9)
The Astros train in LONG no more.
Now they go to West Palm Beach.
Announcers come to call the score.
Into SHORT they make their speech.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
EAW ICH ITT MPT NNE PTY RLE RMO TME UST WHE
ANSJ ITHE NIUS OMEA OOSE ORDI RENO SSHU WHAT YDUM
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
In an alternating anaquote, the pieces go together alternating shorter and longer parts. It begins with one of the parts listed first (the three-letter ones in this case).
When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less. Humpty Dumpty
This followed another quote puzzle submitted by Vroo with the answer "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Inigo Montoya". The Humpty Dumpty quote is from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.
This extra got kudos from DelphiRune, Jo the Loiterer, LaDiDa, Lyric, and Treesong, and (along with Vroo's puzzle) was nominated for a Golden Sphinx award (but did not win).
(/dj90) February 2020 CF-41. PHONETIC CHANGEOVER (7, 6)
I knelt on the cold, hard BEGUN of the square
And pulled out the ring to which none could compare,
Since not just diamond, but DONE was there too.
I knew her birthstone would please her, it’s true.
The birthday she shared with King Junior was when
I asked. She agreed. We married. The end.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This was from the flat constructing and solving competition at the 2019 convention. Unlike most years, this year featured an Iron Flat competition in which we had one day to write and submit a flat featuring the secret ingredient after the secret was revealed. It was "anything rocky."
granite, garnet
(/dj91) April 2020 R-8. ORDER TAKEOUT (*1*1*1 3 3, 3, *1*1*1? 4! *1*1, *3, *1*1. *1*1*1; 3) (most words are tagged)
Sutcliffe, hey! I saw an ad for awesome Indian butter
“Offered only by our TV network,” they did mutter.
Also saw some shiny coal, a Dutch commercial airline,
Scanned some 2D bar codes on a Beetle, fixed my hairline.
What’d I buy? The comb, SO LONG; you’ve not done up your pants. We
Can’t go ‘round like that e’en in the heat of SHORT in France, oui!
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
This is a Ralf, one of those rule-breaking flats. In an order takeout, every sequence of two or more consecutive letters of the alphabet that appears in the first answer is removed to form the second answer. This one basically does do that, but is a bit outrageous in how much it does so.
The concept behind this Ralf was to take out the entire alphabet.
This flat got kudos from DelphiRune, Lyric, Quicks?lver, and RUgame?.
(/dj92) August 2020 33. TRANSPOSAL (10)
The continental shelf is where
Some rocks and stones and silt and more
Got caught in currents. ONE now, they’re
All TWOed around the ocean floor.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
turbidites, distribute
(/dj93) October 2020 43. ENIGMATIC REBUS (6) (abbr. in reading)
BMW i3 Z1
The palace guard was quite in love;
Young Eros shot him true.
But she’s a rich, young actress! Oh,
Now what was he to do?
Unlike his uniform, he’d have
To go a bit off-kilter.
He sought the local apothèque
And bought a potent philter.
The loyal guard then asked his king
To help him look the part;
Upgrading fustian dress to purp-
Le silks was just the start.
And with a wink, the king gave leave:
“Here—borrow this fine car.
Perhaps a luxury sedan
Will help you woo the star.”
With car and brew, our dapper MAN
Drove to his heart’s delight. He
Obtained her heart (or so I’ve heard)
With thanks to Aphrodite.
=DEVRAAL, Milfem NA
This was a combiflat with Vraal. He came to me with the interesting answer word but not a flat idea, I designed the rebus around it, and he wrote the verse.
evzone [EV (electric vehicle, the BMW i3), Z, one]
This flat got kudos from Dischorran and Witz.
(/dj94) October 2020 60. PHONETIC DELETION (4-2-4, 6-2) (ONE = NI3, TWO = NI3+)
You’ve stumbled on my ONE, dear boy,
And now you’re really stuck.
Your efforts die here in my trap.
So long, TWO, darn your luck.
=DEVRAAL, Milfem NA
Another combiflat with Vraal. We collaborated on the verse for Vraal's base.
trou-de-loup, toodle-oo
This flat got kudos from Endgame, KayZero, Linko, Newrow, and Treesong.
(/dj95) November 2020 F-1. CONNECTED DIAMONDS
A. HOLLOW DIAMOND
1 Excellent
2 Wife
3 Five, in combinations
4 A yellow melon
5 When birds, such as the ones represented by these forms, shed their juvenile feathers (not MW)
6 John McCain’s wife (Wikipedia); Asian assorted appetizers (perhaps served on platters)
7 Chums; Spasm
8 Sloppy; Of age
9 Painter Max; Beehives, for example
10 Imprint; Having more frost
11 Near; One who touches up imperfectly dyed cloth
12 Leader of the pack; What form C is most
13 What you get if you arrange the birds represented by these forms in the same way as the solutions fit
14 More liquid (and perhaps containing bits of the birds represented by forms B and C)
15 Like some statesmen
16 Rocky hill
17 Satisfactory
B. HOLLOW DIAMOND
1 An offensive football formation
2 Islands known for their giant stone money
3 Wooden shoe
4 Tuber; Age
5 Bill; Bird not represented by any of these forms
6 He wrote of a raven; 106 in old Rome
7 District of Rome with a famous fountain (Wikipedia)
8 Friend
9 Characteristic of the upper class
C. DIAMOND
1 Good grade
2 West for whom a life jacket was named
3 Coat with liquid while cooking, as you might do with one of the birds represented by these forms
4 And so on
5 Error
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Connected forms appear rarely in The Enigma. The concept is that two or more forms share the letters that lie along one or more edges, so that you can overlap the forms along that edge to make a larger construction. Usually, the forms are of the same or similar types and the same size, such as two diamonds which share a diagonal edge, or a pyramid and an inverted pyramid that share the long base word. This construction arose from the thought "what if we nest them inside one another, instead?" The entire inner edge of A matches the outer edge of B, and the entire inner edge of B matches the outer edge of C.
E
MRS
PENTA
CASSABA
FIRSTMOLT
CINDY PUPUS
PARDS THROE
MESSY ADULT
ERNST UPDOS
STAMP ICIER
ABOUT INKER
ALPHA INNER
TURDUCKEN
SOUPIER
ELDER
TOR
S
T
YAP
SABOT
YAM ERA
TAB EMU
POE CVI
TREVI
AMI
U
B
MAE
BASTE
ETC
E
It's also possible to write the solution with the diamonds nested, but harder to read what the words are.
This form got kudos from Anomaly, Badir, Bartok, DelphiRune, Dischorran, Inka, Jo the Loiterer, Newrow, NJ Ninja, R/EDS, Toototabon, Treesong, and Witz, and top kudos from Tyger. It was nominated for but did not win a Golden Sphinx award.
(/dj96) December 2020 63. AMBIGRAM
RELIEVED AMERICANS PICK HER AT LAST (^4 ^9-5 *6 *6)
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Ambigrams are anagrams where it may be ambiguous as to whether the text is apt or opposed to the meaning of the answer, and commonly includes controversial or political subjects.
Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris
This flat got kudos from Badir, Dischorran, Lirath, Lyric, R/EDS, Treesong, Witz, and Yarom, and top kudos from RUgame?. I also received from a couple other people private, enthusiastic congratulations for such a nice anagram. The anagram is particularly nice because it doesn't have any "fluff" - words that don't contribute to the cluing of the answer - and because it reads naturally.
(/dj97) March 2021 52. THIRD-TO-FOURTH CHANGEOVER (8)
The need for uniforms at every school,
In every B, keeps every A, with spool
In hand, employed full-time with garb to tool.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
seamster, semester
This flat got kudos from Witz.
(/dj98) April 2021 R-9. PHONETIC CONSONANTCY (3-3, *9) (clued in order) (MAN = not MW)
Waiting at a recent online con
(Someone wasn’t ready to go on),
Justin grabbed his axe and amp and MOON
Pedal, plugged it in, and played a tune.
No one knew he jammed so well! One fan
Yelled out in the Zoom, “Hey, go go, MAN!”
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
This Ralf depends on insider knowledge within the NPL. Non-members and even members who were not especially observant of the thing it references are likely to find themselves at a loss, but the spoiler explains.
wah-wah, Firetruck
In the June 2020 issue, Firetruck (real first name Justin) added a new
pronunciation for his nom: WEE-oo WEE-oo. This flat was entirely inspired
by reading this, and I wrote it up within days of publication, but the
flats editor immediately decided it was a Ralf and held it for April.
The online cons were held as a response to the in-person con being
canceled due to COVID-19.
This flat got kudos from Treesong.
(/dj99) April 2021 R-F3. SQUARE
1 With “The”, band known for “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
2 Aloe vera genus
3 Cape near Nome, Alaska
4 ____ Blue, computer that beat Garry Kasparov via deep analysis
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
Another Ralf, but this one is very solvable.
BAND
ALOE
NOME
DEEP
This form violates the rule TETCBN (the error that cannot be named)
in every single clue, by including the answer to that clue within
the clue.
This form got kudos from Mercury and Treesong.
(/dj100) April 2021 35. TOTAL LETTER BANK
(*9, 6 5, 11, 6 6, 11, 13, 7 4, 12, 6 7, 11)
(TOTAL = *9 = non-MW usage;
ONE, TWO, SIX = NI3; FIVE =
NI2; THREE, EIGHT = not MW)
(can be sung)
Brilliant ONEs streaking across all the heavens,
Dark places’ brightnesses measured in SEVENs,
THREE named for Oldham grown tall as hot springs,
These are a few of my favorite things.
FIVEs that give pressure reports from a way off,
Hypnotic sedative NINEs on a day off,
Rosepink, a flower that’s also called TWO,
These are a few of my fav’rite things too.
Brains with a SIX that lies o’er the eye socket,
EIGHT groups that travel with guns or a rocket,
Programs and banners and cheap plastic rings,
FOUR are a few of my favorite things.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Warning: Though this flat is not a Ralf, it's extremely hard. TOTAL in the
heading is a cue word (the first enumerated), adapting a modifier seen with
other flat types to appear with a letter bank for the first time. And the other
answers span all our references and two non-MW ones.
Baltimore,
meteor trail, bitterbloom, timber bamboo, memorabilia, telebarometer,
orbital lobe, millilambert, mobile militia, amobarbital
A Baltimore deletion is one in which each letter in a word is deleted in
turn to form a new word. A Baltimore transdeletion deletes each letter
and transposes the others for each other word. This Baltimore letter bank
This flat got kudos from Dischorran, Quicks?lver, Treesong, Witz, and
Wordsmix, and top kudos from Deansk and Newrow.
(/dj101) June 2021 34. PALINDROME DELETION (8)
A snake looked at me and let out a LONG hiss.
I threw a small rock at it; ’twas a near miss.
It hissed once again, and it SHORTed in haste.
A-slithering toward the far corner it raced.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
sibilant, slant
(/dj102) August 2021 39. LETTER BANK (5, 8)
If you are suffering from PEER,
To measure ringing in your ear,
Would you use REP like decibels,
Or would that need some actual bells?
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
units, tinnitus
(/dj103) August 2021 CF-1 ACROSTICAL ENIGMA (*7)
(B = not MW, contains hyphen, abbr.)
ACROSTICAL ENIGMA (*10) (This breaks a rule in the guide; details in solution)
A. Tempting apple, or pumpkin, or blueberry pie.
Can’t refuse a potato cake catching my eye.
B. Education on calories? I turned it off.
Now it looks like a line at the bakery. <cough>
C. Never question my size. I don't care 'bout my scale.
Unit? Kilogram, pound, or whatever. I'm hale.
Hey now, what's that you say? In a city we love,
You can find it all there! Oh my heavens above!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Toronto (city we love) [tor/te (cake), on/e-d (like a line), to/ne (scale unit)]
Washington (city we love) [was/te (refuse), hing/ed (turned), ton/ne (scale unit)]
The rule this flat broke is that the guide requires partwords in acrostical enigmas to use three initial letters from the verse if one is the suffix -S or -D from a verb tense or plural, or four if the suffix adds -ES or -ED to the word. Hing/ed has such a -D but only uses two letters.
(/dj104) September 2021 36. TRANSPOSAL (7)
A Canine DDR World Finals fight:
The last two dancers rocked “Get Down Tonight”.
Though Scooby tried his hardest, Snoopy HIED
The best and proved himself to be the HIDE.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
grooved, overdog
Overdog might be unfamiliar to you, but it was coined from underdog back in 1938, according to 11C.
This flat got kudos from DelphiRune, Dischorran, Jo theLoiterer, Pebbles, and Quicks?lver.
(/dj105) October 2021 C-7. (cryptogram) Only six. /dev/joe, Salem MA
*X J Z Z J X Q V J Z Z Q X Q X, K Q X X Q J K J V V Q Z J K K Q
X Q Z J K, J X X Q X V J Z Z J, V Q X X Q X V J Q, Q K K J Z Q X V J X
X Q Q X, K J Z Q X *Z J J V J.
Dacca deb acceded, fed deaf abbe caffe decaf, added bacca, bedded bae, effaced bad deed, faced Caaba.
That might be a bit hard to understand. It means "A debutante from Dacca (a city in Bangladesh) approached a deaf French abbot, gave him decaffeinated coffee and tobacco, slept with this man she now considered her sweetheart, and atoned for having sex while unmarried, facing the Kaaba (in Mecca, to say a Muslim prayer)." All the words are in 11C or NI3, the current collegiate and unaabridge dictionaries, though bae is only in later 11Cs. And it only uses the first six letters of the alphabet. This was a response to a bit of a challenge that had seen cryptograms using only 9, then 8, and then 7 letters appeat in the Enigma.
This crypt got kudos from DelphiRune, Linko, Quicks?lver, Tyger, Violette, and Witz. It was nominated for a Golden Sphinx award, but did not win.
(/dj106) November 2021 1. HOMONYM (5, 1 4; *10)
Oh, what to get for A. Chemem?
One hundred years and going strong.
To help her in some game, or two,
I'd start with one less pawn in THEIR
For her of cards in bridge. Ahem!
I know a gift that can’t go wrong:
This flat that’s dedicated to
The centenarian from *THERE.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This was part of a tribute for A. Chemem's 100th birthday, as the verse implies.
chess, a peek; Chesapeake
This puzzle got kudos from NJ Ninja, RUgame?, and Witz. Additionally, Endgame gave kudos to the entire A. Chemem tribute of which this was a part.
(/dj107) January 2022 24. LETTER BANK (4, *7, 4 3)
(*7 = not MW, 4 3 = online MW)
DELETION (4)
HETERONYM (3) (VERB, BAN)
VERB you now in the market for buying some land?
In the US it still would be measured in BANKs.
In nigh every other place BANs are used and
The hect- prefix most often applies. I give thanks
To the guy with a thousand-plus BANKs (forty thou-
Sand-some BANs) who devoted them all to a track.
That loop gives me a place to just drive (Wow, wow, wow!)
Super fast in a SEVEN or FOUR THREE. Stay back!
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
There was a reason I wrote a flat using BAN, but it's spoily (and spoily for another flat, not mine, which is not printed here), so appears below with the answer.
acre, carrera, race car / acre, are / are, are
In October 2021, LeXman submitted a flat which was a fourth-letter change on DECLARE, DECIARE, the letter being 1/10 of the base metric area unit ARE which many people only know from HECTARE, its 100x multiple, which is used in measuring land. But of the people who only knew HECTARE, a surprising number of them had mis-parsed the word as HEC+TARE rather than HECT+ARE and, additionally not doing the math provided in the flat, came up with DECTARE as a word for 10 ares rather than DECIARE for 1/10 ARE. And I wrote this flat to make sure people are familiar with the ARE and how big it is. When I discovered there were two fast-car words that letter-banked to ACRE, I immediately decided to go with that as part of the flat.
(/dj108) March 2022. 7. CHANGE OF HEART (*4, *4, 4, 4)
(ONE, TWO = not MW) (can be sung) (dedicated to ONE TWO, who passed away in January)
Heaven can wait,
But only for so long; his time is through.
Now Marvin’s turned the final FOUR,
Crossed the bridge o’er the THREE.
It’s the end, the end.
Heaven can wait.
And all the Gods wait up there just to sing for him.
In that pearly castle up in the sky
There’s no pain.
There’s no fear.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Meat, Loaf, moat, leaf
I wasn't Meat Loaf's biggest fan, but I was a fan, and it was sad to hear of his passing. I mostly only listened to the Meat Loaf songs Jim Steinman wrote; he also passed away recently, in 2021. We got the news of Meat Loaf's passing right before the MIT Mystery Hunt, and it being an all-virtual event this year, we had a sing-along session on our Discord after Hunt was over.
This puzzle got kudos from Dragonfly, T McAy, and Tyger.
The rules are NINE at Kona’s SEVEN match.
Whole ONEs are needed. Use a fresh-ground batch!
But it is FOUR if you do add some fruit
Like EIGHTs, or eggs (from your own TWO) to boot.
But tea is banned and sure to get you THREEd;
A cup of joe is what you really need.
Add water and some SIX to make your brew.
And for a fee you all can try a few.
I liked the coffees most from Ralph and Ben.
Those FIVE made brews that certainly did TEN.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
A successive consonantcy differs from the regular consonantcy in that instead of having the same sequence of consonants in all the answers, each answer's consonants are shifted 1 forward in the alphabet (skipping over vowels, which are all A, E, I, O, U, and Y for NPL purposes). This puzzle started as one of those crazy ideas I get sometimes. If you do some counting you should be able to figure out the idea.
bean, coop, DQ, fair, guys, heat, java, kiwi, lax, amaze
The concept here was that by NPL rules, there are 20 consonants. So what if I used them all? The easiest way was to use two consonants per word, so I needed ten words, and quite a bit of verse to fit them all in. Among the words I could choose were bean, fair, and java, and one of the few choices for the consonants D and Q was the abbreviation DQ, so I wrote about a coffee-brewing competition.
This puzzle got kudos from Badir, Cache, Femur, Glee, Hot, Jo the Loiterer, Linko, Newrow, T McAy, Toototabon, Violette, and Yarom, and top kudos from Drauk, Tyger, and Witz. It was nominated for a Golden Sphinx award.
(/dj110) July 2022. C-7. (cryptogram) Service call. /dev/joe, Salem MA
G X S V H U O K X W R C M Y J H Y Q S. G W Z O V T L Y Q E W Z V
Y Z Y M J I V T. K X W N S P U X Z T. P N U I V Z R U Z V Y N L
This cryptogram doesn't use any especially difficult words, but the letter frequency is off the wall, with multiples of J, K, Q, X, and Z, but only one S.
This puzzle got kudos from Anomaly, DelphiRune, Drauk, Femur, and Witz. It was nominated for a Golden Sphinx award.
(/dj111) September 2022. CF-2. BIPHONEME BEHEADMENT (*7, 5)
The folks of ONE have been besieged this year
By Russian forces bent on genocide.
So let us wish for peace and shed a tear.
Make origami TWOs for those who died.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
For this year's flat-solving competition, the submitted flats had to include the name of a country or its demonym (adjective form) in the base (the answer). A phoneme is the word for a sound we use when we are manipulating specific sounds. A biphoneme beheadment means we are removing the first two sounds of the first answer to make the second. Realize that spelling may change in phonetic flats, and the two removed sounds may be made by fewer or more than two letters.
Ukraine, crane
(/dj112) December 2022. 31. OVERLOADED PHONETIC CHARADE (9)
At the beach, I heard Ann, ESL student, say,
“I am going to check out that cute surfer bay
Who is standing out there on the paint by the shore.”
She took off over dunes. At a low point, sand tore
Both her flip-flops right off of her feet, and she fell.
So, “Take care with the ALLs!” I cried, clear as a bell.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
diphthong; dip, thong
This puzzle received kudos from Cache, Munro, Next Lingo, Violette, and Witz.
(/dj113) January 2023. 40. LAST-SOUND CHANGE (*10, 9) (FLEET = *10 = not MW) (with a tip of the chef's hat to October 64)
I savor learning stories of how place names came to be.
A ruff or standing collar led to FLEET, a London street.
I ate a meal there recently, a Latin dish called FLEER;
Meat, vegetables, and spices made a very tasty treat.
=NJ NINjoe, Ridglem NA
This was a response flat, a takeoff very similar to the cited previous flat from October 2022 by Witz, which used the same FLEET but a different sound change leading to a different answer. NJ Ninja submitted the answer to this flat as a wrong answer to that one, and I advised him that it was a suitable base for a response flat. He declined to write that flat, so I wrote it, giving him credit for coming up with the base (even if unintentionally).
Piccadilly, picadillo
(/dj114) April 2023. R-11. (Ralf) ACROSTICAL ENIGMA (10)
A. There is a name at the head of the line.
Once and still common, but it isn’t mine.
B. Middle part tells you just what you will be
Falling for tricks like the one you now see,
C. Oh, when you pause, um, while speaking, you know.
Or if you fall (in caps) here’s where you’ll go.
D. Letter left over’s a place to work out.
Everyone needs one of these, there’s no doubt.
Run it together, in print or out loud,
Yes, it’s an act of which Ralf would be proud.
=RALF P. OLIO, Jove DE
Yep, it's a Ralf again. And this puzzle very definitely breaks a rule. But figuring out what rule is part of the puzzle.
tomfoolery. The puzzle isn't actually an "acrostical enigma" but rather an "enigma," a generalized kind of wordplay puzzle where the verse provides its own description of the wordplay involved. The word is clued as a charade, Tom + fool + er + Y. The "acrostical" part is that the answer is hidden as an acrostic, in the first letters of each line (ignoring the couplet identifiers, which are purely red herrings).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
I T S T H E M O S T R E M A R K A B L E W O R D I V
E E V E R S E E N A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q
R S T U V W X Y Z I W I S H I K N E W E X A C T L Y
W H A T I M E A N B I G B I R D
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
Be aware that some jokey puzzles can appear in the April Enigma, even when they aren't Ralfs.
ABC-DEF-GHI-JKL-MNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ: it’s the most remarkable word I’ve
ever seen. ABC-DEF-GHI-JKL-MNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ: I wish I knew exactly what I mean. Big Bird
It's a real Big Bird quote. The joke is that it starts with the alphabet, so the sorting keeps the columns in the correct order. An anaquip was published as a Ralf some years earlier where the quip was constructed so that the trigrams were in alphabetical order, and this was meant as the vertical equivalent (once I found the right quote!)
This puzzle got kudos from DelphiRune, Drauk, Foobar, and Violette, and top kudos from Jo the Loiterer and Tyger.
(/dj116) June 2023. 39. OVERLOADED SECOND-LETTER CHANGE (5)
Oh, that Girl with a Pearl Earring! That’s sure my fave!
Do you know who RESPONSEd the great work that I crave?
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
print, paint
Girl with a Pearl Earring is a famous painting and also a famous novel about that painting.
(/dj117) June 2023. E-10. SOMETHING DIFFERENT SQUARE
1. Ripley’s tagline
2. The act of letting your pants snap against your waist
3. Version of Othello in which the ensign is a young boy
4. “Did you finish the ‘Canticle’ to go with our ‘Scarborough Fair’?”
5. Greek letter removed skeleton from harem’s quarters
6. Actor Mortenson: ixnay on Barack
7. Attire for the thrifty ballerina
8. /dev/joe performs the plowman constellation again
9. Senator Cruz: indeed, Battling Bella serves as prosecutor
10. Oprah’s magazine fibbed: one noisy granular snow
11. Mary Lou’s leotard lost color
12. Water nymph not in Italian river
13. Spanish bear carried on about wordplay
14. Number of Maniacs after Edward Nygma joined the band
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
A something different square is line a word square but the entries can be arbitrary, sometimes contrived phrases, so long as the clues are sufficient to let solvers figure them out. I believe this puzzle set the record for the largest published something different square (a 13x13 one appeared previously during my time in the league).
The entries are "Believe it or not!", elastic release, lad Iago edition, "Is it done yet, Art?", eta deboned odah, "Vig, Obama's a no-no", economical tutu, I re-enact Böotes, "Ted, yes, Abzug's DA", O lied a loud firn, Retton tog faded, naiad outside Po, oso ranted re pun, ten thousand one.
This puzzle got kudos from Cache, Dragonfly, Drauk, Glee, Hot, Jo the Loiterer, Linko, Lyric, Toototabon, and Witz, and top kudos from Femur, NJ Ninja, Tabellion, and Tril.
(/dj118) September 2023. CF-19. CONSONANTCY (4, 5) (clued in order)
I so love the scent,
I sell a whole line of PIES
Of UPSY daisy.
=/dev/joe, Salem MA
This convention flat was submitted for the theme "A puzzlers' botanical garden" which was dedicated to Marcus Asparagus, a member who passed away in 2023.
eaux, oxeye
(/dj119) November 2023. C-7 (cryptogram) Double trouble. /dev/joe, Salem MA
X K G G A M F W D D I L *F P D D N C Y E L L C B. A J H H K Z
Q E H H C B O J B B A M Q E G G D N. V E A A C I G A K K B M
H J A A E P O J F F C B, F D I I C B.
Fair warning: C-7 is the hardest cryptogram published in the Enigma and this one is fully deserving of the slot. It requires advanced techniques. (Remember that the * indicates a capitalized word. It doesn't use any words needing special tagging besides that; all are in online MW.)
It took two years from the time I submitted it for it to be published, despite the crypt editor pleading for people to send crytograms in the interim. Did he lose it? Need that long to solve it? It was quite a challenge for me to solve my own puzzle, since after so much time I had forgotten what I had written. But I did. Anyway, I've offered a separate spoiler box with hints which can make it possible to solve this one.
Every word has the same cryptogram pattern, but you can use collective data across the words to help identify consonants and vowels.
It's possible for some words in English to have a double consonant followed by another consonant, such as in LITTLE. The reverse doesn't exist in English, though MW has IJssel which would be tagged with two capital letters, and arccos and arccot, which are abbreviations, but it doesn't use those.
With that determined, you can mark that each word has a vowel either at the double letter or immediately before it. There are a very short list of words in English that have double vowels other than E and O, and cipher E and J each appear before four different doubles, and that short list isn't compatible with filling four of these words, or even two of the E words or two of the J ones.
At this point, try to locate all the vowels, even though you can't yet determine which ones they are. You'll find that you're still stuck with something weird, which could be a non-E/O double letter, a word with a vowel followed by a double vowel, or a word with a double consinant followed by two more consonants. Minimize the number of these and guess possibilities for the words forced to follow such a pattern.
Wobbly skiing Shiite zagged. Lummox rammed cuddly rabbit. Fallen bloody mullah cussed, sinned. (Jagged is also acceptable as the fourth word.)
This puzzle got kudos from Annie Gram, DelphiRune, Drauk, ManyPinkHats, Munro, and Toototabon.
June 2008 X-6 and August 2009 X-3 (cryptic double crostics with
Groucho) to be added
2024 and later Enigma puzzles to be added. But at the time of this update, none of those puzzles have been published, so I'll just say at least one each of flat, extra, crypt, and cryptic have been submitted..
Many thanks to the editors:
Xemu, Saxifrage, Crax, Teki, Btnirn, Hale, and Sidhe for flats,
Fuldu and LeXman for crypts,
Hot, Trazom, and Xemu for cryptics,
Jo the Loiterer for forms,
and Vroo for extras.
Uncanny and Saxifrage handled submissions for con flats, and
T McAy for the con cryptic. All the editors have made minor changes
to my puzzles to help in cluing, meter, etc. and it is appreciated.
Fuldu wrote the titles for my earlier crypts and Vroo did for one extra.
Also thanks to my combiflatters for writing bases, verses, or whatever
it is that you wrote. And thanks also to the other editors who didn't
happen to be editing when I submitted stuff, and to all the Krewe for
making the NPL what it is.
