bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 51–52
“Get in here Liebnitz,” came the stern tones of Lydia Kraantz over the ace logician’s intercom. He hurried to the office of his Deputy Chief, who was acting head in the absence of MacBannock on his annual Hebridean haggis tour. “We have another of Jimmy the Turk’s screwball reports to work out,” she told him. “He was on assignment to find the thief who made off with the Maharajah of Riga’s gold-plated toenail warmers — John Jonathan Jones.”
“Who?” replied Liebnitz.
“A brilliant free-lance agent with a penchant for fancy cover-names. Of the guests at the Maharajah’s hotel the night the warmers were stolen, we have narrowed the suspects down to five: Mordecai Langhorne Brews, Lloydminster Juteman Crudewell, Prosper Immanuel Summerhayes, Balthazar Hope Belmont and Maxim de Quincey Woze. The Turk’s job was to figure out which one was Jones in disguise. He breezed in this morning, announced the case was solved, tossed his report on my desk and vanished.” So saying, she passed a dog-eared sheaf of paper to Liebnitz. He caught it and found the following puzzle.
This pyramid of boxed letters contains 34 word-chains. Each chain is made up of a word or phrase involving the concept of three — such as TRIDENT, THIRD PERSON or THREE LITTLE PIGS. The chains are formed by connecting letterboxes that are adjacent horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The letters have to be in the right order. A chain does not have to be a straight line, but it cannot cut across itself or another chain. In 31 of the 34 cases, the following clues apply. The words or phrases answering the clues come out in alphabetical order (phrases are considered as one long word for this purpose) and the number at the end of each clue gives the number of letters in the corresponding word or phrase.
(a) Jackie Robinson played here, and
sometimes stole it (9).
(b) A PhD, or what they do to make you
talk (11).
(c) The Comintern (18).
(d) It didn’t last 1000 years (10).
(e) They chased an agriculturalist’s spouse
(14).
(f) Nocturnal canine rock group (13).
(g) They come between the calling birds
and the turtle-doves (15).
(h) A speed contest handicapped by tying
ankles together (15).
(i) The old line of offshore legal jurisdic-
tion in the USA (14).
(j) It links Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht and
“Mack the Knife” (15).
(k) What Holmes called a “difficult
conundrum” (16).
(l) A perfect touchdown at an airport (17).
(m) What you find under the Big Top (15).
(n) Two’s company — — (12).
(o) The human lifetime, according to the
Bible (21).
(p) Very drunk, like a tipsy sailing ship (20).
(q) Larry, Moe and Curly (12).
(r) Explosive abbreviated (3).
(s) To add 200%, or a high singing voice
(6).
(t) Muscle at the back of the upper arm (7).
(u) Three-horned dinosaur (11).
(v) Common marine fossil (9).
(w) A three-volume novel (7).
(x) Caribbean island-state (8).
(y) Baron von Richthofen’s Fokker D-7,
for example (8).
(z) Three players out as the result of a sin-
gle hit in baseball (10).
(aa) Camera stand (6).
(bb) Exam for an honours BA at
Cambridge (6).
(cc) Painting or carving in three panels (8).
(dd) Ancient Greek warship with three
banks of oars (7).
(ee) City on the St. Lawrence (13).
“That shouldn’t be tough, although some of the references need checking in the Oxford Dictionary or the Britannica,” mused Liebnitz as he started sketching lines on the pyramid. “What the devil — ah, some of the chains have branching possibilities. Well, all I can do is pencil them all in and wait for other chains to eliminate the false branches. Yes, that’ll do nicely. I’ve marked off all the chains, and there are 3 areas left — presumably the last 3 chains of the 34 mentioned in the puzzle, the ones without clues. But where do we go from here?”
“Try looking over the report for additional markings, special hints from the Turk,” suggested Lydia. The ace logician scrutinized the paper minutely and eventually found what she had suggested — a message in faint pencil on the back, reading “One from each of the three left over.”
“That of course makes the answer obvious,” said Liebnitz. “That’s what you said about that awful Warlords of Tang puzzle, Ludwig, just before it put me to sleep,” retorted Lydia. But Liebnitz did in fact have the solution. Can you duplicate his feat by providing the words and phrases corresponding to the 31 clues (a to ee)? Can you also name JJ Jones’ alias? Did you know that the roots of the word “trivia” are also connected with threes? Are you at all surprised?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 51–52. Read the rest of this issue →
