I was sure the answer was going to be NICAR/AGUA, but sadly NICAR didn't become WATER.Q: Think of a well-known international location in nine letters. Take the first five letters and shift each of them 13 places later in the alphabet. The result will be a synonym for the remaining four letters in the place's name. What place is it?
On my map, the WATER is BLUE and the LAND is GREEN. Also, AGUA is a Spanish word we know to be WATER, while TERRA is a Latin word we know to be EARTH or LAND
A: GREENLAND --> TERRA, LAND
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ReplyDeleteOh, yeah.
ReplyDeleteTry to be indirect this week. I'm tired of wielding my blog administrator power.
ReplyDeleteBlaine, I'm in a similar position vis-à-vis an organization I head. Yesterday, I was reminded of Mel Brooks' pronouncement, "It's good to be the King." Not really.This week, I'll do my best.
DeleteA surprisingly fast solve here. Hardest part was counting through the alphabet, while still in bed, to verify my guess.
ReplyDeleteIt was the second place I thought of.
DeleteThe little circular key next to the question might have provided you a short-cut!
DeleteSuperZee probably had it solved before I created the image and posted the puzzle.
DeleteI actually had one of those miracle solves, and posted a comment, which I then realized was TMI and deleted, on last week’s page at 5:08 PST.
DeleteSometime, you just get lucky.
Me too.
DeleteMe three. First place I thought of, one in the news lately. If that's TMI, Blaine, let me know. Lots of things have been mentioned in the news lately.
DeletepjbWondersIfOneOfHisPuzzleIdeasWillBeUsedNext(HeIsAnotherPuzzlerian,YouKnow)
It is.
DeleteOnly 583 correct entries last week.
ReplyDeleteBlainesvillians rock!
ReplyDeleteLast week, LEGO.
This week, ECO.
Who’s next?
And Bobby the week before that!
DeleteBefore solving, I questioned the wording a bit; now I see it as very clever.
ReplyDeleteYeah same here -- I was primed to complain!
DeleteI've seen others refer to puzzles as elegant but I never have until now. I love the simplicity of this one. Like Blaine, I also looked for foreign words like agua.
ReplyDelete... Or where you might see a fish on the wall.
ReplyDeleteGot it. I also have a guess about the nature of the already removed comment.
ReplyDeleteRearrange the location name to get a two word description for a debt collector.
DeletePardon my ignorance? What is the meaning of international location? Anything outside of US? A location shared by different countries? Or something belongs to all like North Pole or Equator?
ReplyDeleteYes, something like that. 😜
DeleteIt doesn't belong to all.
DeleteThanks!😊
DeleteIronic chortling here.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteNot being a geography expert, I thought this one would be hard. But it really wasn't.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteWhat an appropriate, and useful, illustration, Blaine.
ReplyDeleteNice puzzle, ecoarchitect!
ReplyDeleteFirst time I can recall it my first guess.
ReplyDeleteGood puzzle. I have it...
ReplyDeleteMusic clue: September
ReplyDeleteEWF, TS, or someone else?
DeletePeter, Paul, and Mary.
ReplyDeleteEcoarchitect's puzzle doesn't suck.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteTMI please remove so Blaine doesn't have to
DeleteYes, TMI. I was able to solve based on the clue.
DeleteClever puzzle indeed…..I’d give a good clue but I don’t want to risk being censored, given the trend of late.
ReplyDeleteThank you ecoarchitect. Lovely puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThere are also online Rot-13 calculators, e.g.
ReplyDeletehttps://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder
So it's A = N, B=O, C= P, etcetera? Because I would think A=M, B=N, C=P, etcetera. So which is it?
ReplyDeleteThat is c=o.
DeleteIt's the former. It's symmetric so A=N and N=A.
DeleteThanks, I listened to broadcast late.
DeleteNo "R."
ReplyDeleteThe place has something in common with a lot of the answers to recent puzzles.
ReplyDeleteGreenland has the color green in it. There have been a lot of puzzles recently with things containing colors (pan-seared red snapper, red maple, Grey Poupon, Greenland).
DeleteI am new to these puzzles .. it took me a while to arrive at the answer
ReplyDeleteSarma, that's cool. You certainly don't have to solve them before you get out of bed. 😉
DeleteThank you
DeleteVery nice, Sarma.
DeleteI understand very few of the clues here! But I do understand the ones about timeliness.
Clever puzzle.
ReplyDeleteA few puzzlers always get it quickly while for others it's not easy being a solver.
ReplyDeleteI tried to avoid direct references to Sesame Street or Kermit who knows it's not easy being green.
DeleteI finally have it. I had rejected my first guess as impossible, based on Will's instructions. Blaine and others made a different assumption and were obviously correct to do so.
ReplyDeletePDB Eco. Pretty damn brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle would be legendary except for one small problem.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. If I catch your drift, perhaps think deeper?
DeleteYes and No.
DeleteAh, intrigue.
DeleteI caught your drift, Scarlett, which allowed me to really appreciate your response to WW. Well done!
DeleteThanks Lancek!
Deletecoke jr
ReplyDeleteNice puzzle, Eco! But hard to clue without drawing the ire of Our Fearless Leader, Blaine.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of new at this, hope I don't put myself there, drawing a blank, drawing the ire of anyone, it kind of all blurs together and is all unimportant, all important, all at the same time. Quit now? I'm resisting.
DeleteI'm kind of new at this (Green), hope I don't put myself (land) there. "Quit now? I'm resisting" is "Dave" with letters moved forward 13. Drawing Greenland is difficult, most maps out of proportion.
DeleteAnyone try the new Orange Cream Coca Cola yet?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteBeats me!
DeleteThat's TMI if you're a fan of a certain music group.
DeleteQuite searchable, hence tmi.
DeleteThink of the twelve-letter screen name an excellent puzzle-maker. Shift the first three letters 10 places later in the alphabet (A=>K, B=>L, C=>M, etc.). The result will be the twelve letters that are missing from:
ReplyDelete"_ __ ! This person is an _________ not only of beautiful buildings but also of beautiful puzzles!
LegoWhoCongratulatesMrVanMechelenAndInvitesBlainesvilliansToTrySolvingNineMoreOfEco'sPuzzlesThatAppearThisWeekOnPuzzleria!
Donovan and Aretha
ReplyDeleteLiterary clue: I'm clutching my pearls! (Dr. K might get this one...)
ReplyDeleteClutching my pearls here.
DeleteAn oblique hint... Three things come to mind, one rich and strange, but it's probably a fourth....
DeleteI was thinking of Sir Gawain and the *Green* Knight, which brought me to the Pearl Poet.
DeleteThat was the first thing I thought of as it had the most obvious connection. But then I began to second-guess myself: Shakespeare (“Those are pearls that were his eyes”)? Or maybe Eliot sampling Shakespeare (The Waste Land)?
DeleteShift the eighth letter of the international location 7 places earlier in the alphabet. Then change the order of the resulting eighth and ninth letters. Reading left to right you should get two synonyms (or a common two-word phrase).
ReplyDeleteI'm stunned at myself for having stumbled upon the correct international location on my FIRST GUESS! [That's not a clue of any kind, because I am terrible at clues, especially the confusing type we are meant to give on this blog.]
ReplyDeleteI think they are called faux clues.
DeleteI can't even give a clue for this without making Blaine use his admin powers. I'll just leave it there...
ReplyDeleteI've spent all day searching every nook and cranny on the globe and cannot come up with the answer.
ReplyDeleteRickster. Moi aussi
ReplyDeleteLikewise
DeleteAw, drat. Have you tried working it from the 4-letter word? That's what I did, then dumped the 5-letter word into a shift-cypher program.
DeleteI have what I think is the intended answer, finally. But I don't understand why the descrption "international". is appropiate. I also have a (lesser) problem with term "location". "Somewhere in the world", or "political/geographic entity" would be better, at least for me. I would suspect my answer inncorrect if not that the rotated 5 letter word matches perfectly to the four letter word.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThe second five letter word was the reason we named our first rescue dog "Nita."
ReplyDeleteCute!
DeleteA solution I have in mind has just one problem. One of the first five letters is AFTER M in the alphabet, so the ROT13 works backward for THAT letter.
ReplyDeleteBecause the puzzle does not specify that formulation or indicate any trickery, I do not believe the intended solution expects it. And there is a truly lovely solution that is straightforward in terms of the shift cypher, no foolin'!
DeleteThe ROT-13 encryption would work the same forward or backward. I think Will should have been clearer about the circular nature of the code, because his instructions clearly implied that the location's first five letters would be limited to the first 13 letters of the alphabet.
DeleteI agree that the first 13 letters of the alphabet are the implied limitation.
DeleteTake the Caesar cipher as an example where each letter is 3 later in the alphabet. A=D, B=E, C=F... When you get to the end it wraps around to X=A, Y=B, Z=C. You could call it Rot-3 because everything rotates 3 places. To decode, you could go backward 3 or go forward 23. They are equivalent operations.
DeleteIn Rot-13 everything shifts 13 places later as shown in my wheel image at the top. So N=A, O=B, etc. Because our alphabet has 26 letters, it has the side effect that A=N and N=A.
This symmetry means an encoding or decoding is both using a shift of 13 places and going forward or backward doesn't matter. You can use Rot-13 to encode or decode.
But yes, this could have been made clearer in the puzzle.
Lewis Carroll would have liked this paradox: you run as fast as you can, only to discover that you have ended up behind where you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen's_race#/media/File:Alice_queen2.jpg.
DeleteJay-Z too.
Ok, Splainit, I see that every solution now posted is my solution, Greenland, in which the fifth letter, n, occurs AFTER the letter m in the alphabet, and so is ROT13'd BACKWARDS from n to a. So what is this "truly lovely solution that is straightforward in terms of the shift cypher, no foolin'!" solution to which you were refering?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet we imperfect humans, who don't always check every word in Webster's Eleventh Collegiate, somehow recognized the connection between the two. Humpty Dumpty would like to have a word.
DeleteBlaine?
DeleteMusinglink, please delete your giveaway post.
DeleteMusinglink, please remove your post. Spoilers therein.
DeleteI just read his post and realized my mouth was wide open with surprise someone could possibly be so flagrantly disrespecting the guidelines of this blog. Thankfully it has been removed quickly.
DeleteOr a math aficionado.
ReplyDeleteSplainit, your moniker invokes a memory of an occurence I witnessed at work one fine day when an assoiciate of a certain ethnic persuasion arrived late to discussion in progress, and wanting to catch up on the subject in play said, "I needs someone to put the 'splain on me".
ReplyDeleteI loved it,
I envy those who arrive at the solution with the flight path provided by Blaine
ReplyDeleteTo Thom G: Just wanted to say that I understand what you’re saying. Indeed, if we get the answer quickly, then of course the puzzle was easy. For instance, I’m great with anagrams, lousy with math puzzles. But I would never make anyone feel bad because they didn’t get the answer in 5 seconds.
ReplyDeleteI got this week’s answer quickly, but was stymied last week.
Sometimes you can see something quickly, sometimes you need to mull things over for a while.
Just hang in there!
My comment was intended only as a hint, noting less experienced (greener) puzzlers and Kermit the frog.
DeleteLast May 15th I submitted a poem I composed to Submittable, as required by The New Yorker for them to consider. It has now been 8 full months today since I sent it. I just now checked and it is still listed at "Received." This is what they say:
ReplyDeleteOur reading time is usually about 6 months, but may be longer. Please do not call or email regarding the status of your submission; you can track its progress by logging into your Submittable account and consulting the "Status" column. ("Received" means your submission has reached us, and is in our reading queue. "In-Progress" means it has been assigned to an editor, and is either soon to be read or is currently under consideration.)
And people are wondering why it is so many of us are unhappy with how things are going these days. I am not one of those people.
Take the name of a well known, contentious Israeli settlement and Spoonerise it to get the name of the dangerous game Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is playing.
ReplyDeleteGREENLAND, TERRA
ReplyDelete"Ecoarchitect's puzzle doesn't suck." points to Nuk baby pacifiers. Nuuk is the capital of GREENLAND.
"Ironic chortling" over who owns GREENLAND given 47's recent blustering about taking it for the US.
No "R." It's a topical puzzle, not a tRopical one.
"Or a math aficionado." That's an ANGLE NERD.
Greenland/Terra - Land
ReplyDeleteGREENLAND → TERRA = LAND
ReplyDeleteGreenland (“terra” is a synonym of “land”)
ReplyDeleteI wrote:Not being a geography expert, I thought this one would be hard. But it really wasn’t. This was a very subtle reference to Kermit the Frog’s song, (it’s not easy)“Bein’ Green.”
GREENLAND —> TERRA, LAND
ReplyDeleteHint: “Peter, Paul, and Mary” —> “Greenland Whale Fisheries”
“Greenland Whale Fisheries,” aka “Greenland Whale Fishery,” is an old British song of the sea that originated in the 18th c. There have been versions by many artists, from Pete Seeger and the Weavers to Judy Collins and Peter, Paul, and Mary, who released their version in 1986.
R. I. P., Peter Yarrow.
Prepare for a ton of fun! A five-pack of puzzles penned by our prolific pal Plantsmith appears on the pages of this week's Puzzleria!
ReplyDeleteThey are packaged in his ever-popular "Garden of Puzzley Delights," and are titled:
~ Shoreside trees,
~ Prolific puzzler, (like Plantsmith, for example!),
~ Making & breaking laws,
~ Buds & “duds,” and
~ Tunes & “spoons.”
We will be uploading Puzzleria! very soon, this very afternoon.
Also on this week's menus are:
* a Schpuzzle of the Week titled "Contrarian Conundrummery,"
* a “Who Was That Masked Man?” Hors d’Oeuvre titled “Birds of a feather...”
* an Anatomical Slice of Puzzle titled “One letter plays ‘musical chairs’,”
* a Shakespearean Small fry Dessert entitled “OH HO-HUM OUT frOM My MOUTH, THOU MOTH!” and
* twelve Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Entrees entitled “Something’s ROTthirTEEN in the state of Greenland!” (including six riffs gifted by our prolific puzzle-riffer Nodd)
(That's Greg VanMechelen, also known as Ecoarchitect.
And, that adds up to 21 puzzles for your solving enjoyment.... So, join us, and enjoy!
LegoWhoSaysYouJustCannotGoWrongWithTheLikesOfPlantsmithNoddEco&AndAllTheOtherBedazzlingPuzzleMakersWhoseBrillianceAppearsOnPuzzleria!
"I've spent all day searching every nook and cranny on the globe..." Nook = Nuuk (pronounced Nook) = capital of Greenland.
ReplyDeleteGREENLAND and FIRMA
ReplyDeleteWhy FIRMA?
DeleteLOL I meant TERRA
DeleteI wrote, “Rearrange the letters of the location and you get a word for a native of another international location.” That’s ENGLANDER.
ReplyDeleteGREENLAND -> TERRA, LAND
ReplyDelete>> Rearrange the letters of the location and you get a word for a native of another international location.
> ... Or where you might see a fish on the wall.
ANGLER DEN
Greenland --> terra, land
ReplyDeleteLast Sunday I said, “Donovan and Aretha.” Donovan for Mellow Yellow, Aretha Franklin for being in The Blues Brothers. Yellow and blue make green.
I don’t think the puzzle statement is quite fair to a puzzle solver for two reasons.
(1) The puzzle only works with a rotational cipher, which assumes an infinitely repeating alphabet. It doesn’t work if one reasonably assumes just a single alphabet which – in the case of this 13-character offset – would prevent a substitution for any letter greater than M.
(2) “International location” is a very contrived description of Greenland.
Even given those shortcomings, the puzzle presents an interesting observation, is quite creative and is fun doing the thinking it took to get to Greenland.
1) You do not need an infinitely repeating alphabet, just a single repeat would do the trick. Also, I've dealt with many puzzles that ultimately require that you wrap around to the beginning of the alphabet when shifting, so that is my default way to go.
Delete2) I felt that international location was chosen as the wording to be intentionally vague. Saying "really big island with a lot of ice on it" would have been much too obvious. International location is technically correct (the best kind of correct), and slows down people that will just start searching lists of countries, cities, islands, etc. Even with that vagueness, a lot of people found the answer quickly. I enjoyed the puzzle.
GREENLAND, TERRA, LAND
ReplyDeleteI clued ...hard to clue without drawing the ire of Our Fearless Leader, Blaine.
If you had guessed Greenland, then you knew that Blaine isn't the "fearless leader" I was referring to.
GREENLAND>terra/land (synonyms)
ReplyDeleteMy clue was "This puzzle would be legendary except for one small problem." With the exception of one letter, Greenland can be rearranged to spell Legendary. My Yes or No reply to Word Woman pointed out that the letters involved are Y and N.
ReplyDeleteGreenland (terra, land)
ReplyDeleteI wrote:
ReplyDeleteShift the eighth letter of the international location 7 places earlier in the alphabet. Then change the order of the resulting eighth and ninth letters. Reading left to right you should get two synonyms (or a common two-word phrase).
If you follow these directions, you get: Greenlawn. Green and lawn can be synonyms (and green lawn is a common phrase),
Find a pair of fairly common 4-letter words that are Rot-13 of each other *and* the reverse of each other in spelling.
ReplyDeleteI was gonna try to encrypt the answer, but how? ROT13ing the answer clearly won't work here! Oh well, maybe ROT5:
ReplyDeleteLSFY and YFSL.
I posted "The second five letter word was the reason we named our first rescue dog 'Nita.'" "Nita" was short for "incognita," which was short for "Terrier Incognita."
ReplyDeleteI had said, "Rearrange the location name to get a two word description for a debt collector." That would be LENDER NAG.
ReplyDeleteMy Clue - “I’d give a good clue but I don’t want to risk being censored, given the trend of late.” - “clue” was referring to a board game, and then “risk” was referring to the specific board game of “Risk” where Greenland prominently appears.
ReplyDeleteSubtle, Snipper!
DeleteSubtle seems to be the key to survival on this blog, lately! I used to love playing Risk in my youth.
DeleteRisk is a great game. I liked playing it too.
DeleteI strive to be as subtle as the "b" in subtle but I don't always get it right.
One of my clues was: I envy those who arrive at the solution with the flight path provided by Blaine
ReplyDelete“Green” with envy and arrive with flight path is “land”
My second clue was: “I am new to these puzzles .. it took me a while to arrive at the answer”
ReplyDeleteNew= green
Arrive= land
This week's challenge comes from Sandy Weisz, of Chicago. He runs puzzle hunts and trivia events under the name The Mystery League. Think of a familiar two-word phrase that means "a secret mission". Move the last letter of the first word to the start of the second word. The result will be two words that are synonyms. What are they?
ReplyDeleteGot it. Pretty easy.
DeleteA tip of the cap for this week's puzzle.
ReplyDeleteProbably TMI. ChatGPT and Gemini were both pretty helpful on this one.
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ReplyDelete