bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1990), p. 48
As ace logician LDC Liebnitz entered the corner office of his boss, he was puzzled to hear a low sobbing from the apparently empty room. Then a shaking hand emerged from below and behind the massive desk, placing an uncorked bottle of scotch on the counter. “Have a drink, Liebnitz,” came the voice of Chief MacBannock. “We’ve got another winner from Jimmy the Turk. This time he’s somewhere in Central Europe, on the trail of a ruthless man selling adulterated medicine to ignorant refugees.”
“Why does that sound familiar?” mused the ace logician, sipping his malt.
“Because all the Turk’s assignments are crazy,” snarled MacBannock. “Just like his reports. We know he wants us to cover him at a meeting with this scoundrel, who he says is a real old-movie buff. But does he tell us where, or even in what city? Ot course not! He just sends us one of his made puzzles.” With that, a paper airplane sailed out from behind the desk and landed in Liebnitz’s lap. Unfolded, it read as follows:
The first list below (a to oo) is a series of clues to 41 movie titles, each with a number in it. The number can be ordinal or cardinal, but not a sequel number (so Seven Days in May and Seventh Heaven would be fine, but not RAMBO 7). The movie titles are in ascending order of the numbers they contain, but a given number may appear in more than one title. The longest word in each title (excluding the numbers) fits into the skeleton. There are only 39 words in the skeleton; this is because two of the clues lead to movie titles that are numbers and nothing more, so they make no entry in the skeleton. Two of the words (one 4-letter and one 5-letter) are placed in the skeleton backward. Finally, two of the movie titles have two equally long longest words; you must choose which fits the skeleton.
(a) Tom Courtenay plays Solzhenitsyn title role (b) Acey-deucey with Marion Brando (c) Jack Nicholson meets Big Nurse (d) Money under water in Rome (e) Adam’s rib does Janus one better (f) voici Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay (g) Courage, cowardice and moulting in the Sudan (h) Jack Nicholson gets one-sixth of Judas (i) Olivier at Agincourt (j) Kurt Vonnegut from Dresden to outer space (k) Ingrid Bergman in a pleasant Chinese hostel (1) Multiple marriage out west (m) Holmes, Freud and “snow” (n) Akira Kurosawa’s eastern western (o) Ingmar Bergman plays chess with death (p) Marilyn Monroe comes up to scratch (q) Liz Taylor’s telephone exchange (r) Fellini self-portrait (s) CB de Mille plays God (t) Agatha Christie and the aboriginal peoples (u) Henry Fonda plus other good men and true (V) Gregory Peck’s noon-hour (w) Crazy Jason’s favourite day (x) John Barrymore takes the modern expressway to Chicago (y) Death Valley helps with the laundry (z) Spencer Tracy quickly bombs Nippon (aa) Santa Claus between Macy’s and Gimbel’s (bb) Hitchcock’s long staircase (cc) the ultimate crossing-Broadway musical (dd) Wartime Jennifer O’Neill (ee) U-Boat man at the Canada-US border (ff) Disney goes to the dogs (gg) Truffaut directs a hot Ray Bradbury tale (hh) Jason Robards at a big circus (ii) Phil Silvers meets Aladdin (jj) George Lucas directs Robert Duvall and other automatons (kk) Richard Burton meets annual George Orwell (II) Stanley Kubrick meets voyageur Arthur C. Clarke (mm) Kirk Douglas meets deep Captain Nemo (nn) Betty Grable and the horse both had them (oo) Raquel Welch in the stone age.
To help you, here is a list of anagrams of the 39 words in the skeleton. Once the anagrams are solved, the words will be in alphabetical order:
GYRAN, SHERBORT, FLEDERTUBIT, CRYTUNE, WCNOLS, MOMDAMN- SCENT, USKOCCO, AMAILSTAND, DOVESHINIC, LALORD, SCAFE, HEATHERFIN, HARSFEET, FUNATION, ARDIFY, SNEAPSHIP, RHYNE, ADIN- NIS, THIC, CASJK, GAULESE, CREMAIL, TURKEEMESS, THINGS, COLCKO, YESDOYS, LEAPRALL, ESPICC, MAURIAS, ALES, SCONSED, USEGHOSTHAULER, TUNIOLOS, SEPTS, SETTER, MUREMS, MATE, XHT, RESAY.
Finally, the letters that fall in the numbered spaces in the skeleton form a three-word anagram giving the city and meeting place; the letters for the first word are numbered with a I and so on.
“Actually,” said Liebnitz after a while, “this isn’t as tough as it looks. You don’t even have to know all the movie titles — if you miss a few, you can just figure out the anagrams. Not only have I cottoned on to the place where Jimmy wants protection, I also think I can probably tell you the cover-name the villain is using, if he really is a traditionalist.”
Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s feat by filling in the skeleton and solving the three-word anagram to say where Jimmy the Turk will be meeting his quarry? For extra satisfaction (but not a necessary part of the answer), how many of the movie titles can you get? What name is the villain using? And what movie does this all remind Liebnitz of?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1990), p. 48. Read the rest of this issue →
