Meta-puzzle for Round 6
by Tanis O'Connor and Marc Moskowitz
Sunday the boss went to the library. "I do recall him," says one librarian. "He was looking for a copy of David Copperfield. 'Dickens?' I said, and he said, 'No, Edmund Wells,' and we went through most of the rest of the Monty Python routine. We were both pretty amused."
He chuckles softly, apparently remembering the exchange, and then says, "Anyway, I sent him to the right shelf, and he read for a while, and then left it on the table when he finished. When I went to put it back on the shelf, I found these papers in it..."
This metapuzzle runs as follows:
- GROTESQUE
- ORISON
- 3
- DRIVE
- PAPER HEARTS
- SCARY MONSTERS
- CONDUIT
- MIND'S EYE
- ALONE
Each of these is the title of an episode of X-Files, from each of the
show's 9 seasons. If you alphabetize the titles (since that's how
librarians sort titles) and line up the season numbers, you get:
- 8 ALONE
- 1 CONDUIT
- 6 DRIVE
- 3 GROTESQUE
- 5 MIND'S EYE
- 7 ORISON
- 4 PAPER HEARTS
- 9 SCARY MONSTERS
- 2 3
which, in a 3x3 matrix, is
8 1 6
3 5 7
4 9 2
and the answer is MAGIC SQUARE.