hey, remember the secret meta contest i ran here a year ago that nobody ever solved? well, it's been solved. i can't imagine anybody is still working on it (but then, i guess somebody was, since it was just solved), but i'll put the solution in spoiler-text below.
anyway, congratulations to steve o'neill, who successfully figured out the meta and sent me the answer on twitter. the solution was:
enigma variations, by edward elgar. how did he solve it? here are my answer words from september 9 to october 11 of last year:
- mussel
- earmark
- tassel
- arbiter
- accrue
- normative
- sasquatch
- whelp
- elephantine
- ribald
- incandescent
- shackle
- eyelash
- laurel
- graphite
- ameliorate
- ricochet
- shofar
- unitary
- nonplussed
- spritz
- outward
- lavish
- vituperate
- estival
- dividend
- muffler
- yearn
- sacrament
- thurible
- elegy
- ridiculous
- yuan
reading off the first letters, we get the message: META ANSWER IS ELGAR'S UNSOLVED MYSTERY, a clue phrase that leads to the final answer. it was an unintentionally apt choice on my part, since after a few weeks had passed since i announced the meta and nobody seemed at all close to solving it, i was sure that, like the enigma variations, this puzzle would remain unsolved forever, despite what i thought was the most straightforward extraction mechanism possible. i don't know what's more surprising to me, the fact that it wasn't solved within hours of my announcing it or the fact that it was solved at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment