bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, p. 48
It was in the morning mail, along with a last few desperate election flyers and Jersey Joe Coffin’s monthly advert for waterproof pasta. The envelope was wrinkled and stained as if from extended proximity to a poorly-corked wineskin, and smelled slightly of old goat. “Jimmy Flecker,” said Liebnitz without even glancing at the return address. Stuffing the junk mail into a nearby aspidistra, he took the letter into his den and opened it. It contained a single sheet of paper, with a pictograph of the sun at the top and the following lines beneath:
(1) Certain in Bolovia
(2) French ecclesiastical district
(3) Peacenik in the white cliffs
(4) LBJ biographer in Egypt
(5) Punctuation marks from Panama
(6) Carioca threesome
(7) Chesterfield in the Balkans
(8) 151 Romans in Colombia
(9) A godfather in the Prairies
(10) The Way of Harmony in the Southwest
(11) Oracle near Raj capital
(12) Scraps from Styria
(13) Spirit in kimchi land
(14) Citified in Natal
(15) Falls behind in West Africa
(16) Raced in Barbary
(17) Revolve in Ferrari-town
(18) The press in a pilgrimage site
(19) Cut in Dalmatian port
(20) Bohemian soprano in vice capital
(21) Bettelheim or Frank from Moravia
(22) Madness in envelope town
(23) A furry weasel in Belarus
(24) Norwegian screamer in Bavaria
(25) Bargain day in witch city
(26) Give up in the Andes
(27) Pound verse in the Pearl River Delta
(28) Parlour socialist in the Pripet Marshes
(29) Recent African victim in Indochina
(30) Former first lady in Lombardy
(31) A little person from Alaska
Liebnitz recognized the format immediately as a variation on the standard city code. Each clue referred to a pair of words: one was the name of a city or town, the other a word that differed from that name by only one letter added or subtracted, with no rearrangements — eg LEEDS/BLEEDS or ORANGE/RANGE. Thirty-one clues, Liebnitz recalled, meant at least five cities from each of North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa/Middle East. The message itself was found by reading off in order the letters added or subtracted
Liebnitz deciphered the message easily enough, but sat for a long time perplexed by the result. Just before noon, the phone rang, and the ace logician heard the voice of his (habitually) incoherent Chief, Hamish MacBannock, demanding his immediate present for an emergency staff meeting. Irked at being disturbed on his day off, Liebnitz coolly asked what the problem was. MacBannock guardedly mentioned a counterespionage case where the suspects were five brothers named Rehnquist. Before the Chief could go into any further details, the logician asked him the first names of the brothers. MacBannock replied with Fortas, Scalia, Burger, Marshall and Warren. Liebnitz told him which one to arrest, citing Jimmy the Turk as his source, and then hung up, leaving MacBannock spluttering into a dead phone.
Liebnitz was right, to the Chief’s disgust. Can you duplicate the ace logician’s feat by providing the 30 word-pairs, the cipher-message and finally the name of the guilty brother? To help out the Service further (but not as part of the puzzle), where would you expect to find him?
A. Aalto Puzzle Winner,
Vol. 10, No. 3
Bob Logie
The Hague, Netherlands
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, p. 48. Read the rest of this issue →
