Enigmarch 2026, Day 11: PAST

[tahnan]

OK, I'm back. Things get hard sometimes. (In this case, I had a mental block that I just had to get....)

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Over

"Commencing first training mission of the newly-formed NATO Defense Time Travel Unit. Everyone sound off in turn with an item from your provided lists. Indicate comprehension with a simple 'Yankee' for yes and 'November' for no."

"Yoke!"	"Yorker!"	"Yokohama!"	"Young!"
A Rent character	A Fortune 500 company	A European country	A Gashlycrumb girl
A woodwind	A baking ingredient	A member of the Coppola family	A state capital
A Commodores single	A British relative	A winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture	An acting nominee at the 97th Academy Awards

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"Uh, squadron leader, detecting an answer checker on your six."

Comments

[lorelei]

This was pretty cool. The idea here was reasonably clear, but the research was more work than I expected. But I did solve it.

I kind of wish there were a spoiler tag I could use for comment (cuts don't seem to work). Pretend there's a spoiler tag for the comments below.

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There are a lot of variants and maybe I missed a clue, but it took me a long time to find the actually correct data to use. (For instance, I found a variant with three state capitals, and a variant with none, before I found the variant with only one.) Even so, I think "A British relative" is just wrong, unless this is just a fact about British families that I did not know. ('Uncle' is clearly a relative, 'Nuts' is not.) Also, Italia is arguably a country in Europe? Anyway, fun, but noisy.

[tahnan]

Yeah, I knew I was treading on some dangerously ambiguous ground throughout. A few author's notes on that point, in the good ol' spoiler tags of "rot13":

Vg vf *ernyyl* uneq gb svaq na Rqjneq gung qbrfa'g nyfb vapyhqr n Trbetr. Gb fnl abguvat bs Wbua. V gubhtug "Gjvyvtug punenpgref" jbhyq qb vg hagvy V fnj gung Oryyn'f sngure jnf Puneyvr.

Naq gura, lrf, V xvaq bs jebgr zlfrys vagb n pbeare ol univat gb hfr "Vgnyvn" naq gur Oevgvfu eryngvir, juvpu vf "Ana".

Fb...lrnu. Abg cresrpg. Tynq vg jnf fbyirnoyr naljnl.

[lorelei]

Totally forgot about rot13. Unfortunately, I can't seem to eit my older comment, or I'd fix it.

Bu, V qvq frr Ana ba n yvfg, ohg Hapyr jnf evtug gurer fb V qvqa'g cnefr vg yvxr gung. V raqrq hc reebe-pbeerpgvat sebz gjb yrggref jebat/zvffvat juvpu jnf abg gbb onq (gur eryngvir, naq gur fgngr pncvgny).


Anyway, glad to see you getting back to these.