In this ambidextrous puzzle, the answer to each clue is a 2-word made-up phrase with a transformation between the two words: L changes to R or R changes to L. The L/R can be anywhere in the word, and there might be other Ls and Rs that don’t change. For example, “faithful prince” clues a LOYAL ROYAL.
This also can be a phonetic transformation - the spelling of the word might change, but the words sound the same other than L/R substitution. For example, “weapon with an interwoven hilt” clues a BRAID BLADE.
There’s no extraction, so your answer will just be a list of phrases.
Clues:
- Flowers and trees do a jig
- Instrument made from a pineapple
- Protection for an inanimate pet
- Surly Santa
- Butterfly pea flower tea, before turning purple
This is also a creative challenge! After solving the above clues, I encourage you to think up one of your own. I’ll share my favorites in the next issue.
Submit your answers here.
Solution to last issue’s puzzle
There was a ton going on in
this puzzle! The solution is fairly long so I’m not going to rot13 it… so stop reading here if you still want to solve it yourself.
As noted, there were answers of lengths 4, 5, 16, 20, and 8. The answer lengths themselves led to the answer of length 5: DEPTH (with 1=A, 2=B, etc).
Around the edge of the stamp, dots and dashes in the eyes were Morse code for: MORSECRETS FOR YOU.
In the bottom left, the color swatches match colors in the main part of the image, visually indexing letters from the original design (which had the message MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE.) Double swatches clued taking the second instance of that color in the stamp. This led to the message: RESONATE.
Some of the letter blocks had solid frames and others had double frames. Treating these as 0s and 1s, or As and Bs, in a Baconian cipher (5-bit binary encoding), this gave the word PLAY.
And one final message used the Crayola color names of each color block. (But unfortunately, everywhere I uploaded the image slightly changed RGB values and this layer became nearly impossible to solve.) These colors were: Asparagus, Denim, Denim, Electric Lime, Denim, Lavender, Asparagus, Yellow Orange, Electric Lime, Razzmatazz, Shocking Pink, Outer Space, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Mango Tango, Electric Lime, Asparagus, Neon Carrot, Indigo, Neon Carrot, and Granny Smith Apple, forming an acrostic of the final message: ADDED LAYERS OF MEANING.
Congrats to everyone who submitted a correct answer: Sandy, Brett, Deejed, Diane, Maude, Jonathan Sheffi, and Scott Kominers.
Cryptically yours,
Matthew