Another Round of Spaghetti
I choose the words that get used in each game of Spaghetti using a random-number generator, first choosing a page from an abridged dictionary and then a word from that page. Sometimes the gods of randomness are merciful: In the last round, three separate players capitalized on the fact that the given words all had repeated letters. (Although the eventual winner, Kevin Wald, went in a completely different direction.)
It’s hard for me to judge whether a given set of random words is easy or hard, but I suspect the gods of randomness are done fooling around. Let’s find out.
Here are the words for a new round of Spaghetti:
EVER
PIT VIPER
ROUSE
SUCCEED
SUPPLY SIDE
As before, you have the option of adding a sixth word to the list if that should prove useful to you.
And of course, even if you can’t see an answer hiding in this list of words, please come back later and Like all the responses you, well, like.
Good luck!
11 Replies to “Another Round of Spaghetti”
Order the words by length. Observing that U is, historically, just a variant form of V, we note that each answer contains exactly one V, in an interior position; the words thus form a list of X-versus-Y competitions:
E V ER
RO V SE
S V CCEED
PIT V IPER
S V PPLYSIDE
The winning string in each case is the one that is “further ahead” — that is, later alphabetically; the set of winners thus forms the phrase ERSE SPITS. There are many words for “spits” (promontories) in English, but only one immediately brings Scotland to mind; the answer is thus NESSES.
Supply sides economics succeed whenever the pit viper is roused.
A theme in all five of the puzzles that gave us these answers was the difficulty of finding one’s place in this turbulent world. With this as our guide, we can arrange our answers from top to bottom. Uppermost are those who SUCCEED and are already sky-high. Then comes a word that implies upward motion: to wake people up or rile them up is to ROUSE them from a stasis. In the middle are those who continue on horizontally, EVER the same. Next we have something that moves downward (or at least, is promised to): the social benefits of the ‘trickle-down’ system of SUPPLY SIDE economics. Finally, we have something that is already down: a pit or abyss, suggested by PIT VIPER.
Arranging these in order, we get
1. SUCCEED
2. ROUSE
3. EVER
4. SUPPLY SIDE
5. PIT VIPER
Indexing into these by their respective numbers, we get the letters S, O, E, P, I. Unscrambling them in the only way possible, we get an apt description of the quality one needs in a mixed-up world of ups and downs: POISE.
All six of the words (the five given ones, plus the sixth word DARLING) are chock-full of country code top level domains, often overlapping. In fact, five of them have only a single letter that isn’t covered by these CCTLDs. The sixth, ROUSE, is fully covered, but the CCTLDs don’t quite fully overlap, forming a natural split into RO USE, telling us to use RO for that one. In the order the puzzles are presented on the round page:
SUCCEE[D]: .su, .cc, .ee
[RO]USE: .ro, .us, .se
[P]ITVIPER: .it, .tv, .vi, .pe, .er
SU[P]PLYSIDE: .su, .pl, .ly, .si, .id, .de
[E]VER: .ve, .er
[D]ARLING: .ar, .li, .in, .ng
This spells DROPPED, a result of not-quite-complete internet coverage.
The five items all have appropriate synonyms — in the case of SUPPLY SIDE, it requires knowing about the LAFFER curve as the basis for supply-side economics. Each synonym has a one-word anagram.
EVER → ANYTIME → AMENITY
PIT VIPER → CROTALINAE → LACERATION
ROUSE → STIMULATE → MUTILATES
SUCCEED → PROSPER → PROPERS
SUPPLY SIDE → LAFFER → RAFFLE
Here are the anagrams:
AMENITY
LACERATION
MUTILATES
PROPERS
RAFFLE
Reading the second letter of each word in order reveals the solution, MAURA. Clearly this is in honor of the late great cruciverbalist Maura Jacobson.
Given the sixth answer EASE, each answer shares a bigram with exactly one other answer:
ev[er]/pitvip[er] [su]cceed/[su]pplyside, and rou[se]/ea[se]. Furthermore, each shared bigram is at either the beginning or the end of both words. Take the letters at the other end of each word, with the shorter word in each pair coming first and the word pairs order by decreasing total length:
[su]cceeD
[su]pplysidE
Ev[er]
Pitvip[er]
Ea[se]
Rou[se]
The letters at the ends spell DEEPER.
With the additional answer of PR, you notice that the total sum of letters in the answers equals 36, indicating three pairs of words containing 12 letters, below arranged alphabetically:
EVER|PITVIPER
PR|SUPPLYSIDE
ROUSE|SUCCEED
You will then notice that the letters in the smaller words are, mostly, contained in the larger words.
Pulling out the unused letters looks promising:
E|PITvIPer
R|SUpPLYSIDE
RO|suCCeED
Of course, the rest of the answer is found at the end of the longer words, and the final answer is ERRORED.
Taking a hint from the last spaghetti, again this one focuses on the number of letters — or one letter in particular: the E. Some of the above answers were again on the right track with a location being involved. To tie them together, count the Es in each word:
EVER 2
PIT VIPER 1
ROUSE 1
SUCCEED 2
SUPPLY SIDE 2
Which leads to France. Knowing that, we get more specific by associating a synonym to each:
EVER — Perpetual
PIT VIPER — Adder
ROUSE — Rile
SUCCEED — Inherit
SUPPLY SIDE — Surplus
And we find ourselves in the beautiful city of PARIS.
This is obviously the answer Eric alluded to in the puzzle description where he clearly states the moral of the tragic story of Paris: when asked to decide an argument, always be suspect of the gods!
Minor typo — hopefully Eric can correct. Supply Side should be 1, not 2. The zip 21121 is in France.
My first clue was the unusually large amount of letters from late in the alphabet — especially after we add the 6th word, SUPERVISE, in its proper place alphabetically.
Looking past all that noise, to just the first 9 letters of the alphabet, we get:
EVER: EE
PIT VIPER: IIE
ROUSE: E
SUCCEED: CCEED
SUPERVISE: EIE
SUPPLY SIDE: IDE
Hmm, a bunch of C D E I. Yup, we’re on the right track. Converting these into numbers, we get 5 5 9 9 5 5 3 3 5 5 4 5 9 5 9 4 5. Removing all those doubled digits, we get:
59 · 53 | 54 · 59 | 59 · 45
Plot these pairs on a telephone keypad — drawing lines from 5 to 9, then 5 to 3, then 5 to 4, etc. Duh, it’s semaphore! Which gives us:
X | S | S
Reading these 3 letters aloud gives us the answer: EXCESSES.
I don’t know what that Kid Beyond guy is smoking… the real answer is way simpler.
1. Add the sixth answer: the tiny word IT.
2. Read each word out loud. The EMphasis on the SYLLables gives you Morse Code!
EVer: — • N
it: • E
PIT viper: — • • D
ROUSE: — T
sucCEED: • — A
supPLY SIDE: • — — W
Anagram these letters to get the answer you WANTED.