bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1989), p. 44
“By the look on your face, chief, we’ve got another coded report in from Jimmy the Turk,” said ace logician LDC Liebnitz. Chief MacBannock looked up from a stiff scotch, grimaced and tossed Liebnitz two pieces of paper, adding grimly “We know he’s holed up on one of the Aegean islands — but we don’t know which. These just came in, wrapped around a block of feta.”
Liebnitz scanned the fetid papers. One was a maze. The other had written on it: THREAD THE MAZE TO GET A TWO- WORD ANAGRAM (7-10). STUTTGART OPERA, 1912. “I see what he’s done. The direct route through the maze picks up, let’s see, 17 letters. Re-arranging them must give a clue to his hide-out. Hmmm. Ah, one of the word’s the heroine’s name. That clarifies the Stuttgart reference. Let me just verify that in the Britannica… yes!” Liebnitz began absent-mindedly to whistle “The Blue Danube” but then caught himself short, chuckled and said, “The wrong one, of course — the mind does play tricks. Anyway, I can tell you where Jimmy is. It would have been easier to phone us, but he always was bull-headed.” MacBannock looked over Liebnitz’s work, sighed heavily and set the machinery in motion to rescue the Turk once again.
Can you too solve the puzzle by giving (a) the unscrambled anagram and (b) the name of island where the Turk is hiding? Please send your answers to bout de papier. The first correctly drawn answer wins a book prize!
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1989), p. 44. Read the rest of this issue →
