Enigmarch 2023: Day 4

[tahnan]

PDF; text below. You can check your answer here.

Enigmarch, Day 4: A Light Puzzle

Absolutely true story:

Day 4's prompt is LIGHT.  My immediate thought was to break from word puzzles and write a logic puzzle: at first I thought of Akari, and then I considered a black-box style puzzle with hidden mirrors and lights that shine from the edges.  Probably ambitious, given that it's outside my wheelhouse.

Then, prompted by absolutely nothing other than the fact that I'm alone in the house for the weekend and have therefore been watching movies (TCM was kind enough to show me both Double Indemnity and Harvey), I decided to pull up The Menu.  Genuinely recommended: I found it far more moving than I expected a horror movie to be.  Anyway, here's a much lighter puzzle.

The answer is three letters, no punctuation (which I had the very real privilege to see in Boston).

·       "The Lottery" and "The Pit and the Pendulum", among many others (1/8 6)

·       Gambler's asset (1/5 8)

·       Sound of the final seconds of a bomb's countdown (8/4 7)

·       A struggle to do the right thing (3/6 5)

·       Mrs. Rubble, if you find her unattractive (3/6 5)

·       What you order from in a restaurant (2/4)

·       Concerted search for a fugitive (1/4 6)

·       See-through (3/6 10)

·       What everyone has, if you don't believe in reincarnation (2/5 5)

·       Uncertainty (3/7 4)

·       What "Montana" or "Havana" does (4/6 5)

·       Womanizing "Bloom County" lawyer (7/6 6)

·       A query intended to determine the person in charge (3/6 5)