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A flat-out enigma.
Dec. 5th, 2002 05:30 amWith my new computer and many new things around my house, I've been disinclined to continually update, which saddens me a bit. To give myself something to post for a while, I've decided to put up dome of the word puzzles that I've written for the Enigma, the publication of the National Puzzlers' League.
The puzzles that grace the pages of the Enigma are unique. The majority are called flats and involve a set of words or phrases that interrelate somehow. For example, if you change the fifth letter in the word "irrigate" you get the word "irritate;" this is called a fifth-letter change. (Simple enough, then.) These words form the answer, also called the "base", to the flat.
The kind of base forms the title of the puzzle. The text of the puzzle is written in verse. (I don't know why, they just are.) Each time a word from the base would be used in the verse, the baseword is replaced with a "cueword." Cuewords are usually easy to spot because they are in ALL CAPS and often clash with the rest of the verse. Using the irrigate/irritate example, a sentence might go "Whenever I have to ONE my crops, I get mad and TWOed." (Note the way that "irritate" was conjugated. This applies to making plurals as well).
To make things easier, the flat comes with an enumeration that tells one how long a word is and whether it's capitalized or not. The enumeration also includes tagging that will tell you which dictionaries to find words in. As a default, the NPL uses Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary, which can be found online at www.m-w.com.
More information on all of these topics can be find in the NPL Guide, and I'll give more information as it becomes necessary. For now, here's an easy puzzle to get you started, from last year's December issue:
DELETION (6)
At TreeForever, fake perennials
Built to last through bicentennials
Leave small bits of plastic offal
On the plant floor by the troughful.
Pity, then, the lonely runt who's
ONEing up by sweeping ONE TWOs.
=TABLESAW, West Hills, CA
(This flat is a deletion, which means that "ONE" is a six-letter word, and "TWO" is a five-letter word that can be found by removing one letter from "ONE". Both words are in MW's Tenth Edition, and neither is capitalized. Good luck!)
The puzzles that grace the pages of the Enigma are unique. The majority are called flats and involve a set of words or phrases that interrelate somehow. For example, if you change the fifth letter in the word "irrigate" you get the word "irritate;" this is called a fifth-letter change. (Simple enough, then.) These words form the answer, also called the "base", to the flat.
The kind of base forms the title of the puzzle. The text of the puzzle is written in verse. (I don't know why, they just are.) Each time a word from the base would be used in the verse, the baseword is replaced with a "cueword." Cuewords are usually easy to spot because they are in ALL CAPS and often clash with the rest of the verse. Using the irrigate/irritate example, a sentence might go "Whenever I have to ONE my crops, I get mad and TWOed." (Note the way that "irritate" was conjugated. This applies to making plurals as well).
To make things easier, the flat comes with an enumeration that tells one how long a word is and whether it's capitalized or not. The enumeration also includes tagging that will tell you which dictionaries to find words in. As a default, the NPL uses Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary, which can be found online at www.m-w.com.
More information on all of these topics can be find in the NPL Guide, and I'll give more information as it becomes necessary. For now, here's an easy puzzle to get you started, from last year's December issue:
DELETION (6)
At TreeForever, fake perennials
Built to last through bicentennials
Leave small bits of plastic offal
On the plant floor by the troughful.
Pity, then, the lonely runt who's
ONEing up by sweeping ONE TWOs.
=TABLESAW, West Hills, CA
(This flat is a deletion, which means that "ONE" is a six-letter word, and "TWO" is a five-letter word that can be found by removing one letter from "ONE". Both words are in MW's Tenth Edition, and neither is capitalized. Good luck!)