tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Behold: Enigmarch done, before May!




Grid and Bear It

"Puzzle" is such a broad prompt, but for a lot of people it means the Nikoli-style logic puzzle found on this site and its sibling sites. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at writing these. Fortunately, I'm excellent at solving them, and you've put up with a lot from me, so in order to end things on an easy note, I've picked eight puzzles and solved them for you. If you want, you can use the provided links to solve them yourself, but why bother?

(Note: most of them will default to the right puzzle type, but for Mosaic and Renzoku, make sure you choose the right type, because the sites for those default to something else. I was going to link to them directly, but while you can request a specific puzzle, you can't link to them. Grr. The numbers are otherwise meaningless; I just picked the first puzzle it gave me.)

Mosaic 7,325,142 (Go here to solve online)

Hitori 3,536,106 (Go here to solve online)

Slant 1,602,243 (Go here to solve online)

Tapa 4,338,385 (Go here to solve online)

Kakurasu 3,004,550 (Go here to solve online)

Shakashaka 9,033,544 (Go here to solve online)

Heyawake 10,045,921 (Go here to solve online)

Renzoku 8,381,330 (Go here to solve online)



As always, click on the images for larger versions.




Like I said, everything's already solved for you, but since I always include an answer checker anyway, here you go.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Looks like this feller's got another one of them conundra for ya.




Crossroads

Welcome to Crossroads! We don't get many visitors here, least not many as actually stops. 'course, you can see from the town map that there ain't much here, so that pretty much makes sense:




Mostly we're just a town folks pass through on their way from one place to another, what with ten towns around us. Ain't even sure "X" is the real name of that town, by the way, but they're real secretive and maybe they're just not telling us the rest of the letters.

Anyway, let me give ya some sense of what I mean when I say folks pass through here. Couple three days ago, seven different cars came through town, and not one of 'em stopped to look around. Now, that might could be on account of the storm fixin' to come through, but it's kinda par for the course. Let's see if I can remember right: we saw...


  1. an Audi, that came from Raleigh and left towards Toledo;

  2. a Buick, that came from Upton and left towards York;

  3. a Chrysler, that came from Villaville and left towards Raleigh;

  4. a Chevrolet, that came from York and left towards Toledo;

  5. a Dodge, that came from Zilla and left towards Quincy;

  6. an Esemka--don't see a lot of those, gather they're from Indonesia, but that don't really matter--that came from Raleigh and left towards Quincy;

  7. and a Ford, that came from Wessex and left towards Springfield.


A'course, one reason people don't stop here much is probably 'cause they don't like our road signs. There's all the "no left turns" ones you must've seen on your way in, and then there's that stack over there that all got blown over during that storm. Four identical signs per intersection, each one givin' the rule for that intersection about whether you gotta go straight or turn right. Little hard to read when they're all stacked up, but here, I got 'em all written down:

  • If the first letter of the make of car you're driving is repeated later in the name, go straight; otherwise, turn right.

  • If the make of car you're driving can form a new word if a J is added, go straight; otherwise, turn right.

  • If the make of car you're driving ends with a consonant, go straight; otherwise, turn right.

  • If the make of car you're driving is five letters long, turn right; otherwise, go straight.

  • If there's more than one consonant in the make of car you're driving, go straight; otherwise, turn right.

  • If you can form a common American English word by changing the first letter of the make of car you're driving to a letter in the second half of the alphabet, turn right; otherwise, go straight.


Main source of income 'round here is farming and traffic tickets. Seen a lotta people standin' in front of the judge, arguin' over what words are common and whether Y's a consonant, which it ain't, not 'round these parts. (Also a weirdly high number of people tryin' to read our intersections as Braille just 'cause there's a 2x3 grid of 'em, even though the judge keeps telling 'em that if you're reading Braille, you shouldn't be driving, so cut it out.) Honestly, it was kinda unusual to get seven law-abidin' drivers that day before the storm.

Anyway, thanks for comin' to Crossroads. If you're lookin' to make some cash, we could sure use help getting all those signs back up.




Don't take a map to find the answer checker though.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
god I am so close




Think of a Compass

The compass happens to be the symbol of the travelers, a kind of fraternal society at Otherworld. Every year, eleven of them come to the village of World's Edge, where a number already live. (We go through a lot of compass-shaped temporary tattoos.) Anyway, in their honor, here's a chance to think like a traveler.


  • Think of a bird, eight letters long. If you add a letter you get a word meaning "unexpected"; if instead you remove a letter, you get a word that might describe someone reacting to something unexpected. What is the bird?
  • Think of a colonial-era American author, enumeration (4 7). Add a space to his first name and you could read the resulting three words a spider might use to explain that he's not from Boston. (Look, they can't all be gems.) Who is the author?
  • Think of a compass with eight points. Number them clockwise from the top, and then use the numbers as indexes. What is the word?
  • Think of a movie of the last twenty years that was nominated for Best Picture (and won three other Oscars), eight letters long. If you remove the first letter and add a space, you get two words for two different body parts. What is the movie?
  • Think of a number, spelled out. Remove two palindromic sequences from the start and you'll be left with a letter. What number is it?
  • Think of a piece of jewelry, enumeration (4 7). The first word can be anagrammed to make something that might be an annoyance, and the second can be anagrammed to make a word meaning "more annoyed". What is the jewelry?
  • Think of a piece of sporting equipment, enumeration (4 5). Move the space to get two sequences of letters. If you swap the first and last letters of the first sequence, you get a word naming some magical items; the second sequence is the second word in the name of a village you might find those items. What is the sporting equipment?
  • Think of a region that many people call home, enumeration (4 4). Ignoring the space, remove a word meaning "region"; you'll be left with a word meaning "home". What is the region?
  • Think of a word meaning "component". Remove every component that's a vowel, and add new vowels in every other position to get a new word meaning "remove". What is the original word?






Need a pointer to the answer checker?
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Well, it's what the prompt said to do...




Draw Eight

I had two rules: no text, and no references. I had to bend the latter for #5, because what I drew the first time was so wrong that it wasn't a puzzle, it was a tragedy.

The answer to this puzzle is not "Is that what you think that looks like!?", no matter how many times you say it while solving.



(Click for larger versions.)




Look! I drew you an answer checker!
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Imperfect, needless to say, but done, darnit.




A Strange Loop

Start with...

  1. ...a word that's also a concept in mathematics.
  2. Add a comparative suffix (even though it's not a comparative adjective) to get a time-loop movie.
  3. Take the second half and add an E to the end to get a French word.
  4. Translate that word into English. (Make a note of the third letter.)
  5. Take the second half of this word, and put the word's second letter after it, to get a female figure from Greek mythology.
  6. Write down their male counterpart.
  7. Think of a bird that rhymes with him. (This is not your final anser.)
  8. This bird was the nickname of a MLB pitcher who started his career with the Chicago White Sox. Take his first (given) name. (Make a note of the second letter.)
  9. That name is also the first name in the possessive in the title of a BBC show (i.e., the first name in "[1] [2]'s ..."). Take the second word in the name.
  10. Pick three letters from that name, rearranging them as necessary, to get a word that follows "tin" in a compound word.
  11. Add a letter to that name to get a prominent feature of a great cat....
  12. ...and take the name of that cat. (Starts with an L, but note its second and fourth letters.)
  13. Take the collective noun for that cat. (Note the second letter, which will appear at the start of the final answer.)
  14. Change a sound in that noun to get...


...and then anagram the given letters into a single word.




When you're done clicking here, click on the answer checker.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Press Play to Start

All you have to do here is identify the clips in the montage below, made slightly harder by the lack of sound. Press play to start.







In case the above video fails to load, here's a rough transcript.

(0:00-0:05) A blonde woman stands by a window, which fades to a boy in a prep school uniform with glowing eyes.

(0:05-0:10) A man in a gray suit and maroon tie dances alone in a hotel lobby.

(0:10-0:16) Two figures with black hair and white skin play drums and sing, all made entirely of Lego.

(0:16-0:22) Fruits and vegetables encircle a man's face as he sings, and then envelop him and form a face which continues to sing.

(0:22-0:30) A blonde woman wearing diamonds, a pink dress, and long pink gloves is carried across a red set by men wearing tuxedos.

(0:30-0:35) Two very rectangular men, a tall thin one wearing a red hat and a short unshaven one wearing a blue hat, carry kitchen appliances past a television showing a band performing.

(0:35-0:38) Teenagers in school uniforms, the girls' shirttails knotted above the waist and the one in front wearing a gray sweater, dance down a hallway and in front of lockers.

(0:38-0:46) A blond man in a white jacket fixes the makeup of a woman who is seated at a banquet table, wearing a wedding dress, and dead.

(0:46-0:54) An animated man wearing a leather cap with goggles approaches a window where an animated woman is looking at a non-animated man, and smashes it with a pipe wrench.

(0:54-1:00) A man sings in front of a window in a bare apartment, interspersed with several old men seemingly recreating a Renaissance painting.

(1:00-1:12) A pale man dances, alternately wearing a trenchcoat in front of a blue-lit brick building, and wearing a blue shirt, jeans, and sunglasses in front of a chain link fence.

(1:12-1:18) A black man with long red dreadlocks and wearing only black and white boxers and thigh-high boots grinds against a leather-clad, horned man painted red, surrounded by skulls and fire.

(1:18-1:26) A man in a suit with a bowtie and glasses dances jerkily in front of a white screen; when a video of a dancer appears on it, he imitates her hand-chopping motions along his own arm.


The answer is six letters.




No video here, just an answer checker.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
I need more puzzles where I get to import random in Python. I spent forever on yesterday's prompt trying to come up with an idea and then hours finding the text I needed. This one: about five minutes.




The Priming Effect

"Priming", in psychology, is where being exposed to one stimulus makes you interpret another stimulus in a related way. For instance, if I wrote a sentence about seeing patterns in random numbers, and then presented you with random numbers, you might be primed to see patterns in them.

5713 8303 5431 1583 2519 5063 1867 9841 9763 9107 6673 6967 1181 
6487 1155 1494 6147 2263 7680 9352 4020 7061 2604 1080 5364 5279 
3353 8520 3685 5616 2833 5670 5441 1860 4493 2280 4907 2590 7957 
9703 8700 4656 9750 6839 7680 4182 6990 1679 4770 1185 5750 8101 
2773 9210 8041 5158 8215 3120 4973 3135 6701 3750 7139 2540 8161 
3173 6510 1829 4222 1361 3420 2071 4785 2533 9000 4392 8220 8081 
1639 5927 9043 5711 6893 5059 3461 1303 7211 7721 1759 4897 1249 





And if I mention an answer checker, you might expect this link to go to one.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
This prompt really stymied me for a while. Oh well.




No Substitutions

The following excerpt is from my fantasy novel, still in the editing stage.

...would need nine ingredients: the angled harp of a bard, a basilisk's scale, a fin from a shark, a fist-sized topaz set in silver, four dried tulip petals, the eye of a hanged man, the horn of an aged steer, three ibis feathers, and the toe of a swamp newt.

I know this sounds crazy, but please reserve your judtopazent. You must understand that I have seangled high and low through every book of magic I can find, and this ritual is the only cure for my vamptulipm. How I miss the sun! So I set off at night, sneaking through the countryside and terrain more varied than I had ever seen: mountain cliffs, low swamps, distant lakes, isolated taverns.

Ultimately my search took me to the capital. I stood outside an anewttoir, pleading with a butcher whose stone-faced expression and standofshark body language made me despair of ever acquiring the horn I needed. I knelt in front of an irritable jeweler, who ssteerled at being awakened at midnight even as I bscaleed for her help. I even faced down a palace guard, the light of the ceyeelier above him glinting off his armor; he dismissed my description of the ritual as a holibisr from more primitive times. I began to fear there was...





Looking for an answer checker? Search no further.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
One Moment, Operator

I don't have a puzzle for you, but one of these companies might--the services they provide are given, as are their phone numbers. Most of the number. Why not give them a ring?


(601) 2x6-4287 [astronomy]
(205) 242-737x [babysitting]
(604) 776-865x [cheesemonger]
(502) 377-x687 [copyediting]
(303) 638-423x [drug rehab]
(504) 463-x742 [East Asian imports]
(405) 282-84x3 [estate sales]
(404) 467-7x59 [etiquette]
(203) 78x-9255 [gay rights advocacy]
(602) 325-2x77 [hunting animals]
(402) 226-8x73 [language classes]
(204) 39x-7283 [legal defense]
(304) 347-4x78 [lie detectors]
(305) 46x-2253 [machine repair]
(501) 26x-2837 [mediation]
(201) 468-375x [monopoly busting]
(202) 995-674x [percussion instruments]
(403) 338-35x7 [real estate building]
(605) 77x-8437 [real estate sales]
(302) 74x-8427 [recording equipment]
(505) 28x-6368 [restorative justice]
(401) 762-7x27 [scripted television]
(301) 722-55x7 [shellfish]
(603) 4x9-6666 [travel agency]
(503) 2x7-8642 [wagons]






Hello, Mabel? Get ANswerchecker 5-1212 on the line, will ya?
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
You know what else I never write but could? Image identification puzzles.




Board Meeting



(click for larger image)




Bored? Answer checker is here.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)

This is probably one of the harder ones I've written. Hey, at least you get the words rather than another long list of clues!


Combination Lock and Key

If you want to insert a key into a lock, all you have to do is combine. But does it come with a bin?

LocksFourth LockKey
BOON, LIE, PAGE______ [4]_______ [2]
BOUT, DIAL, SAME______ [3]_______ [1]
LATE, OPAL, SKIER______ [4]_______ [2]
BORING, EARN, HEAR______ [3]_______ [1]
REBATE, REDUCE, USE______ [5]_______ [1]
COMPLY, PRICE, TILE______ [2]_______ [1]
COED, CUB, SPA______ [1]_______ [3]
BETH, GATE, PRUDE______ [1]_______ [3]
BEGGED, SLY, TINE______ [2]_______ [1]
BET, CAUL, TOIL______ [1]_______ [3]
DENY, HEATED, OBEY______ [2]_______ [3]
BARTER, DESCANT, TRY______ [5]_______ [1]
CONE, MANA, PARED______ [5]_______ [3]

Fourth locks: CATER - COCK - FATED - HEIST - HOLLY - JOEY - LOSE - OFFER - PACE - PESTER - POLIO - REACH - VARY


If your answer is a key, you can insert it into this lock (aka the answer checker).

tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Words of Wiſdom

'Tis not the Caſe, That Puzzles muſt be Complex, nor take ſev'ral Hours in the Writing; for Even Quite Simple Puzzles, ſuch as Steganography, Cyphers, Codes, Hidden Meſſages, Hiſtorical Quotes and Such Things may Serve Juſt as Well, Dear Friend, nor Cauſe Complaint among your Deareſt Companions henceforth.

--Benjamin Franklin





Anſwer checker here.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
What you are not getting is a puzzle about the Scottish clans of MacHine, MacArena, MacAron... Unfortunately, you're also not getting puzzles that involve my ability to draw a Rube Goldberg machine (since I do not have that ability) or a cleverly-programmed web interface to the following machines (since I do not have that ability either).




Welcome to the Machines

User Manual


Thank you for purchasing the Series Machine Series! You should have received five machines that can be hooked up sequentially. To register your machines, simply do the following.

  1. Hook up the machines in the proper order, so that the output of one is the input of the next.

  2. Feed in the proper starting word. Keep track of the intermediate steps, and note the region of origin of the final output.

  3. Index properly into the five outputs, and type the five-letter word into our registration form. It may be unfamiliar, but it has the same (broad) area of origin noted previously.


Troubleshooting


To ensure your components are working properly, you can test them with the following inputs and outputs, each of which can be produced by one of the machines.

  • Twin brother of Artemis → Pew prognostication

  • Opening song from Hair → Millie Bobby Brown character

  • Source of support for many women → Dystopian Terry Gilliam movie

  • TV show about witches with the Power of Three → Furnish with weapons

  • Word after "electoral" or "liberal arts" → One of three on a tripod

  • Bird sent by Noah when the raven didn't return → Seedy bar

  • Actress and president of SAG-AFTRA Drescher → Tan on television

  • Prefix for "earth" → She's on Ray Charles's mind

  • Defender of the Prague ghetto → It precedes "Trombones" in a song from The Music Man

  • Sport where "par for the course" is par for the course? → 1995 Morgan Freeman/Brad Pitt thriller

  • 1990s music genre from Seattle → One step on a ladder

  • Setting for Lilo and Stitch → First word of three E.L. James titles

  • Tomb, like the one at Halicarnassus → Food fish Dover is famous for

  • It communicates via synapses → Currency in twenty countries

  • Performer of symphonies and concertos → What you might bury treasure in

  • Goat-footed Greek god → White straw hat from Ecuador

  • The Nike Ajax was the first → Caramel DeLite alternative

  • Component of baby powder → Song by the Bee Gees, Metallica, U2, Creed, or Ed Sheeran, and probably hundreds of other artists

  • Middle of an insect's body → Circular dance seen at bar mitzvahs

  • A field medic might dress one → Boreas or Zephyrus, for instance






Registration form, which doubles as an answer checker, here.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
I wrote the first puzzle. I hated it. I wrote the second. I didn't like it a whole lot more. But combining them seemed worse. I don't know, is either one worth the paper it's never going to be printed on?




The Space Between the Notes

What they said was: A 1974 single - A computer - A 1978 single - A disease - A 1970 single - An ancient text - A superhero - A 1983 single - A 1991 single.

But what I heard was:


  1. [pause] A tent by the beach (3/10)

  2. Actress Summer [pause] (3/8)

  3. [pause] A Vedic aphorism (6/4 5)

  4. Short span of time [pause] (3/7 5!)

  5. [pause] A color-changing lizard (10/5 9)

  6. [pause] "The" in French, and a Star Trek villain's first name (10/6 4)

  7. [pause] Stated: "Defeat you at boxing" (8/4 4 5 3 3)

  8. [pause] Receive the adoration that belongs to you (4/4 3 3 4 4)

  9. [pause] A French printmaker (albeit unaccented) and a square number (8/9 2)


(The answer is a nine-letter word.)




The Anatomy Lessen

Some mammals have parts that I just don't have.


  1. Part of some mammals that hesitates (1/5)

  2. Part of some mammals that got its JD in Durham (2/7, 2 wds.)

  3. Part of some mammals that's absolute or outright (2/5)

  4. Part of some mammals that is short, wears glasses, and works in a mine (2/3)

  5. Part of some mammals that's primary (4/4)

  6. Part of some mammals that's evergreen (2/3)

  7. Part of some mammals that's a sentence (1/6)

  8. Part of some mammals that's a story (4/4)



(The answer is an eight-letter phrase.)




The first answer checker. [pause} Also, the second answer checker.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
This prompt did nothing for me, alas. I have a back-of-the-mind Bridget telling me "This feels too similar to other puzzles in this round," but as always, the goal here is getting it done, not getting it perfect.




Lucky Colleagues


  1. Small strapless handbag (4/6) [3]

  2. According to Quint, he drives the boat (5/6) [5]

  3. First name for judge Stone, conman Gittes, or the actor who played both on '80s TV (2/5) [5]

  4. Michael Buffer wants you to get ready to do it (3/6) [1]

  5. Amphetamine tablet, slangily (3/5) [2]

  6. Clark who served as Speaker of the House during the Wilson years (3/5) [1]

  7. Composer Louis Hardin, professionally (1/7) [6]

  8. US capital named for a fur trader (3/6) [7]

  9. George Carlin wanted a place for his (1/5) [3]






Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
His Last Bow

Pack your mustache wax, we're going on an adventure.



(Click for larger image.)




What's behind this link? It's a mystery! (Well, no, it's an answer checker.)
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Progress, I tell you. Also, good lord it took me so long to get the graphics to work. So many diagrams, so much math, so many rewrites of my Python code.




Star Piece

No Star Wars here! (That was Day 5.) Just pieces. You'll want to assemble the fourteen pieces into seven stars (Fig. 1), and then assemble the seven stars into a single image (Fig. 2).

a six-pointed star
Figure 1
a six-pointed star with six other six-pointed stars arranged in a circle around it, touching point to point
Figure 2


The pieces:

ERRATUM: In the first triangle, "AC" should be "AX". Updated image may come eventually.

See below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text versionSee below for text version

Text-only version: Each equilateral triangle has a bigram at each point (facing outward) and a single letter partway down each side (facing roughly inward). As presented [with the erratum incorporated], the triangles (clockwise from the top vertex) are:

AL S LY O HY V
AQ T US U MI U
AT E DR I RN I
AU N RA S RE Y
AX O NX T FR N
CR G CR U OU C
EM R LA S FO A
EN C PI R VO U
ER B VE O TH E
ES N LA G GA M
GR S SC C TO A
IV E US C UX N
LY S UI O RA T
PA R RI A QU C





And the star of the show: an answer checker!
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Happy April! But that doesn't mean March is done, because my god I am going to make it through the remaining prompts.




Let's Go to Camp

The clues are vague, so along with the index, there's a letter given. Not that ROLKNIGN spells anything...wait, where was I going with this?


  1. A captain of the Enterprise (2 = R)

  2. Inveterate reader (3 = O)

  3. An Avenger (2 = L)

  4. A playing card (3 = K)

  5. A Greek goddess (3 = N)

  6. A pharaoh (2 = I)

  7. Intellectual, brainy person (2 = G)

  8. A flightless bird (7 = N)



The answer is a single eight-letter word.




I'm a wrecker, I'm a necker, I'm an answer checker, I get my puzzlin' on the run.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
I did a word search. What else do people love? Connect-the-dots!

Also: I don't know if Ali and Nell are following, but this one goes out to y'all, for reasons that'll become clear when you're done, I hope.




Get to the Points

Here we have a straightforward connect-the-dots puzzle:

a blank 10x10 coordinate grid

Of course, let's be honest, if I just gave you the dots, you'd be bored by it, right? Here are the labels for the dots, with the x-coordinate for each one in parentheses. They're in the order you should connect them, which is also, conveniently, alphabetical order.


  1. Sport whose only Olympic appearance was in the summer of 2024 (4.5)

  2. Chocolate dessert whose consistency ranges from cake-like to fudge-like (2)

  3. Ammunition for a firearm (1)

  4. Be unable to breathe, as from the trachea being obstructed (4)

  5. Condensation, as seen on grass in the morning (3)

  6. In a pool, it may be deep or shallow (4.5)

  7. "Amazing!" or "My god!", perhaps (5)

  8. Over the top to the point of dramatic, in modern slang (5.5)

  9. Alter ego for Barry Allen, with "The" (7)

  10. Resting atop water (6)

  11. Like the life in a 1986 Steve Winwood album title, or (comparatively) like the love in its first single (9)

  12. Dating app, or what you hope to get on a dating app (6)

  13. Crucial component of a record player or tattoo gun (7)

  14. Word following "House of" or "T-" in the names of hip-hop artists (5.5)

  15. The digits you need to use an ATM (5)

  16. "She-Ra and the Princesses of ___" (4.5)

  17. What a Bourdon gauge measures (3)

  18. Werewolf : wolf :: selkie : ___ (4)

  19. Offering in exchange for money (1)

  20. "Screw your courage to the ___ place" (line from Lady Macbeth or Gaston) (2)

  21. Conversing or orating (5)

  22. Practice that supplements the $2.13 minimum wage for servers in the US (8)

  23. What the falcon is doing in the widening gyre (9)

  24. Disappearing, as if by magic (8)

  25. Actor Adam or Mae (5.5)



And here are the y-coordinates, but rather than write entire clues, I thought I'd get to the point and just give you the most important word in each one.

Annoyance (4) - Attractive (5) - Cadet (9) - Coloration (4.5) - Completion (6) - Craft (3) - Currying (8) - Decision (5) - Exploitable (3) - Impasse (2) - Irreversibly (2) - Kick (6) - Limit (9) - List (5) - Narrow (5.5) - Notation (5.5) - Perspective (8) - Pinnacle (5) - Precise (1) - Punctuation (10) - Slides (4) - Suddenly (7) - Temperature (7) - Tennis (4.5) - Topic (1)

The answer is a seven-letter word.




And here's a link pointing to the answer checker.
tahnan: It's pretty much me, really. (Default)
Some day I will learn that I am not a graphic artist. Image editing is not my strong suit. Serious thanks go out to the authors and maintainers of Python's PIL package, which has been so, so useful in making all these images.

[EDIT: But only as useful as my ability to correctly do the math to place things in images. A previous version of this puzzle had the wrong images; if you're seeing five gray rectangles that are not all the same size, reload.]




False Flags

Please note that your puzzle has been hand-crafted in small batches. A natural amount of variation may occur in subtle shading, size, and aspect ratio. These mark your images as your own unique puzzle and should not distract you from solving.

At least the flags are well-organized. If it helps, the first letters of the 40 countries represented can be rearranged to spell the otherwise utterly irrelevant phrase "BOMBING? STUMPED? CHECK BACK: FLAGS CAN CLUB BLIMP".

Eight flags at the eight compass points, connected to the center by lines.Eight flags at the eight compass points, connected to the center by lines.Eight flags at the eight compass points, connected to the center by lines.Eight flags at the eight compass points, connected to the center by lines.Eight flags at the eight compass points, connected to the center by lines.

(Click for larger images.)




Flag down an answer checker here.