An Economic Index “£” indicates that this is British currency. But it’s weird! What’s that s and d stuff? A bit of googling reveals the units of pre-decimalization British currency. The invitation to “write in plain english” suggests that you put this in words, and since you’ve been told about indexing in the rules, you know you need to get this into a number and a word. There are a few non-unique solutions, but not enough so as to make it much more difficult at all. Fiddle around with it. ¼d = ONE FARTHING 5s = FIVE SHILLINGS £2.2s = TWO GUINEAS 3s = THREE SHILLINGS £5 = FIVE POUNDS 2¼d = NINE FARTHINGS £6.6s = SIX GUINEAS 8d = TWO GROATS 2s.6d = FIVE SIXPENCE £2 = FOUR CROWNS ½d = ONE HALFPENCE 1s.4d = FOUR GROATS 1s.8d = FIVE GROATS FLUIDS ARE WHAT So the answer is: WET. While it may be argued that gases are fluids, but are not wet, the word “Chill” in the flavortext suggests you look at the cooler fluids, i.e. liquids, which are wet. Suite For Unaccompanied Telegraph Title should indicate morse code, or even more literally––play this on a telegraph, that’s morse code, whatever. It says CHICKEN ROOSTER RED DEER CHICKEN ROOSTER is an obvious relation, so how does RED DEER fit? Well, what’s a male red deer? The answer is STAG. Weird Science Each set of emojis is a coded movie about a scientist/mathematician - numbers indicate the indexing of the title. 1. The Imitation Game - G 2. Hidden Figures - I 3. The Theory of Everything - V 4. A Beautiful Mind - I 5. Interstellar - N 6. Gravity - G The answer is GIVING. Meta 1: Musty Tomes You have received the answers WET, STAG, and GIVING. Put them in the blanks appropriate to their length. Then you have to add letters somehow––they don’t work when you just put them simply on the end, so you try inserting them. They just go in the order they’re presented, because this is meta 1. That gives you GRIEVING’S WETTEST STAGE One of the five stages of grief is denial. The flavortext asks where the dream will take you; this combined with the word “wettest” suggests that the answer is thenile, which is a pun on denial. You Think You're Clever! Firstly, notice the clue CHAOS < ORDER. It emphasizes that the reader should take into consideration the order of objects. This will be somewhat of a recurring theme in the puzzle. α. OAMOCLES : DWORD :: AROCRUSTES : MED ● The phrase “Sword of Damocles” and the term “Procrustean bed” are both derived from their respective stories in Greek mythology. However, to make matters more difficult, the first letter of each item has been shifted by 11. Hence, the first letter of the answer should be shifted as well, leading us to the answer MED. β. SMALL : LARGE :: OMICRON : OMEGA ● Just as the Greek letter omicron translates to “small”, the Greek letter OMEGA translates to “large”. γ. HOLLOW VICTORY : PYRRHIC :: HOLLOW VILLAGE : POTEMKIN ● Another word which characterizes a hollow victory is a pyrrhic victory (named after King Pyrrhus of Ancient Greece). Another word which characterizes a hollow village is a POTEMKIN village. δ. 677 : SCIPMYLO :: 357 : EMOR ● SCIPMYLO is OLYMPICS backwards. Applying this logic to the other items, the analogy becomes 776 : OLYMPICS :: 753 : ?. The Olympics were first held in Olympia, Greece in 776 BCE, and Rome was founded in the year 753 BCE. Therefore, the answer is its backwards equivalent, EMOR. ε. A Θ B Θ A H B ● These are all letters from the Greek alphabet. Furthermore, suppose we assign each letter to the order in which it appears in the Greek alphabet. Doing this yields the sequence (1 8 2 8 1 ? 2). This sequence is the first digits of the well-known mathematical constant e (2.718281…) backwards. Therefore, the next term is the seventh letter in the Greek alphabet, H. ζ. ALPHA.jpg : BETA.jpg :: -NELOPE : -TEMNESTRA ● ALPHA.jpg and BETA.jpg both refer to the first and second images, which have respective answers of EREBUS and APOLLO. Therefore, the analogy can be represented as EREBUS : APOLLO :: -NELOPE : ?. Erebus is the Greek god of darkness, and Apollo is known, among other things, as the Greek god of light. Therefore, these words behave as antonyms and, applying the same logic, we need to find someone who has a well-known feature that juxtaposes Clytemnestra in some way. In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope is known for her fidelity to her husband Odysseus while he was absent, even despite having many suitors. In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra was unfaithful to her husband Agamemnon while he was at battle in Troy. Their opposing traits resemble antonyms. Finally, the clue omits the first syllable of PENELOPE (-NELOPE) and so the answer is, by the same logic, -TEMNESTRA. η. ALEXANDER : ARISTOTLE :: PLATO : SOCRATES ● Alexander the Great was a student of Aristotle just as Plato was a student of SOCRATES. θ. PERMITTIVITY : EPSILON :: RESISTIVITY : RHO ● In physics, the permittivity of free space is represented by the Greek letter epsilon just as electrical resistivity is represented by the Greek letter RHO. 1) AIR + REBUS = EREBUS ● Through rebuses and some clever wordplay, we can decipher the analogy. The first image is the alchemical symbol for the element AIR. The second image demonstrates what a REBUS is, and each expression is an example of one (“TOP SECRET”, “HEAR/HERE”, and “THUNDERSTORM” are their respective interpretations). Concatenating the first and second associated words, we arrive at AIR + REBUS = EREBUS (using homophonetical wordplay). 2) A + POLLO = APOLLO ● Similarly, the first component is a report card that has the grade A on it. The second image is a chicken wearing a sombrero. With wordplay, “Mexican Chicken” leads to the Spanish word for chicken, POLLO. Concatenating the first and second associated words, A + POLLO = APOLLO. The answers to all of the sections of the puzzle are thus as follows: MED OMEGA POTEMKIN EMOR H -TEMNESTRA SOCRATES RHO EREBUS APOLLO The clue that “α β γ δ ɛ ... → _ _ _ _ _ … ???” means we can rearrange these terms to arrive at the answer. (This is hinted at by the CHAOS < ORDER clue.) By taking the first letter of each word, we get MOPEHTSREA. The only word that can be created using these ten letters is the answer to the puzzle, ATMOSPHERE. Tessel(ish)on Well first it’s an actual tessellation: the pieces with letters all fit to make a rectangle. E C O A H I S T V B S H E R U U A J E G R E L L T S M T P Y E L L N H C T I B G I A N L S B L G D S I L A L S A U T O N S L U O A D N E A P O N O M F I B Y F L O N E T B G I O I F E T T T S I O N E C O A H I S B E T B G I O T V H M T S G I A I O I F N B S E P Y I N L S E T T T S R U U E L L B I L G D B A D A J E L N A L Y F L O N N E G R E H C T S A P O N O M F L L T S I A U T O N S L U O E C O A H I S B E T B G I O T V H M T S G I A I O I F N B S E P Y I N L S E T T T S R U U E L L B I L G D B A D A J E L N A L Y F L O N N E G R E H C T S A P O N O M F L L T S I A U T O N S L U O Now it’s a tesselishon. The remaining pieces fit together (without rotation) to form a rectangle, but not quite. It leaves holes. The rectangles are of the same dimension, so it makes sense to lay one on top of the other. This gives you the letters: H S I F E L B I B R E T S N O M HSIF ELBIB RETSNOM Or, reversing it, MONSTER BIBLE FISH. Which clues LEVIATHAN––but wait, it was backwards. So that’s NAHTAIVEL. Mostly Accurate Images The trick is to realize that each of the pictures describes a commonly-used phrase BUT it uses one word wrong (hinted by the title, where “cat” is the wrong word and “cap” should be substituted). By identifying each phrase and word that is wrong, then correcting it and indexing the correct word as hinted by numbers in brackets, we get the answer. Here are the phrases in order: 1. In the picture: sneak peak Should be: sneak peek Indexing: e 2. In the picture: pour over Should be: pore over Indexing: p 3. In the picture: you’ve got another thing coming Should be: you’ve got another think coming Indexing: i 4. In the picture: mute point Should be: moot point Indexing: m 5. In the picture: piece of mind Should be: peace of mind Indexing: a 6.