by Charles Steinhardt and Robyn Speer
The clue answers are:
TOSHIBA Square Taken in by Macintosh I bagged another computer
SPECIFIC Square Having distinguishing quality: second largest ocean, reportedly
CREDIT Square Co-author heartlessly cut acknowledgement
CIGARETTE Square Having taken drug, tragic to return to the odd rollie
EXTRA Square Out at the start (or, the middle) of the next race
SANDMAN Square Legendary Yankee elf
COPYRIGHT Square Type correct IP
QUARTER Square Portion of game - piece of buck
AIRFIELD Square Headless president, I interjected, found a landing strip
ENFORCEMENT Square Mixing con with freemen, Peg? Sounds like a job for the police
NUMBER Square Digit with fewer nerve endings?
SUMMERTIME Square To some, January, when the living is easy
STRETCH Square Prison time for Armstrong?
HURRICANE Square Overheard: "Get a move on, Herman, it's windy!"
CONFERENCE Square Meeting criminal concerning imprisonment in enclosure
AEROSPACE Triangle Career evenly at very large speed - this is the place to do it
BEAK Triangle No right to break nose
BIGGER Triangle Huge bust held by stand, even more huge
BUCKET Triangle Gamble without luck, losing 50 to pot
CASTLE Triangle Make mold of the Parisian château
CHAIRMAN Triangle Mariachi band loses a bid to become number 1
CHESSMEN Triangle Gambit-makers hatching new schemes
CHIC Triangle In Zurich, ice cool
CARD Triangle Starts to consider another raise, drawing high one of these?
CONFRERE Triangle Fellow professional musician's with loud notes
COTTON Triangle Increase kid silky fibers
COURAGE Triangle Canada's capital, at our age, is bravery
CRISP Triangle High-definition Chrome Internet service provider
DEAN Triangle Involved in alumna education, going back!
DEMON Triangle Cardinal follows exhibition example created by Maxwell
DUMBEST Triangle Bottom of the class finds honour in Ashes
DUNK Triangle Dip stick in basket
ELEMENT Triangle A shirt last sounded like the middle of the alphabet ingredient
ENIGMA Triangle Cracked German encryptor, finally overcome by intelligence!
FIGURE Triangle Shape cipher
FORK Triangle Choice between two temperature units could go either way?
GILLETTE Triangle Revolution's home sounds like a spewer of bullshit
GOODYEAR Triangle Tire company's classic vintage
GOURD Triangle Bottle arises from the middle of fury, with god around
GRIMACE Triangle Glowering one's expression!
GULF Triangle Disconnect from Guam, connect 100 kilohertz
GUMBO Triangle Glue smell accompanying soup
HAND Triangle One is employed by farmer to measure horse?
HERD Triangle Bunch of cows heard on the radio
INERT Triangle When nitre is mixed, the result is chemically inactive
INFERNAL Triangle Nan fire-cooked with sambal ultimately diabolical
INFERTILE Triangle Unproductive to deduce part of Scrabble rack?
JESSICA Triangle A short strap, I see, a Simpson
JUST Triangle It's only fair
MARTYR Triangle To mutilate a Norse god is cause to suffer on account of religion
MASSACRE Triangle Defeat heavily and accumulate quantity of land
MENTAL Triangle In one's mind, books in dinner for example
MINUTES Triangle They are written in record time
MISLED Triangle Smiled crookedly but gave the wrong idea
MISSISSAUGA Triangle Situated in Southern Ontario, young woman is solver, it is said, in Norse story
MISTER Triangle 1001 Eritria Street: prior address
MISTS Triangle Fail to see, taking time - these restrict visibility
MYSTIC Triangle Nostradamus, for example, among alchemy stickers
NIPPLE Triangle Cored pineapple got mixed up in bottlecap
OREGON Triangle State gold gone, having prioritized economy first
PECAN Triangle Cape Canaveral's harboring a nut
RESINIFER Triangle Bearer of sticky substance rarely transported in ferries
SCHOOL Triangle Educate a bunch of mullets
SEMINAR Triangle Course for Marines at sea
SERF Triangle Slave on board at sea, we hear
SHTICK Triangle Henry featured in Rod's contrived performance
SIGN Triangle E-mail ending with hint of negative omen
SIMILAR Triangle Interchangeable junk mail delivered to baronet
SIMON Triangle Zealot heard to breathe deeply, mon
SLIM Triangle Amarillo tycoon, in Mexico
SQUARE Triangle Straight equals bent when switching sides
STILL Triangle Even so, it's a speakeasy requirement
TERM Triangle Sentence requirement
UNLESS Triangle Except if lacking weapon, beheaded
WURST Triangle Minced meat is the most defective, I hear
The dividing line in the puzzle is made of the same 24 hieroglyphs. These are
the hieroglyphs used in the puzzle for their phonetic values. Each glyph
stands for one, two, or three consonants. Most vowels are omitted, but we
follow Egyptologists in supposing that Y can also represent "ee" sounds (/i:/)
and W can represent "oo" sounds (/u:/).
We start with these _uniliteral_ characters, representing individual phonemes.
They appear in a reasonable order you could use to transliterate them.
B leg
CH rope
D hand
F horned viper
G jar
H reed shelter (spirally square)
J snake
K basket with handle
M owl
N water (zigzag)
P stool (small rectangle)
R mouth; used for /r/, /l/, and /ɚ/
S folded cloth (vertical bent thing)
SH pool (wide rectangle)
T loaf (semicircle)
W quail chick; used for /w/ and /u:/
Y Double feather, which could be /i:/ or /j/.
The puzzle also uses 7 biliteral symbols and 1 triliteral, which stand for
sequences of phonemes. Their phonetic values would be represented as MN, MR,
MS, SP, WR, YR, and NFR.
With these symbols:
- You can spell the triangle clue answers with three glyphs each.
- You can spell the square clue answers with four glyphs each.
- You can combine each square with four triangles, in arbitrary orientations,
to make a pyramid where the glyphs align at the corners.
K + T SH Y B TOSHIBA, shtick, chic, beak, bucket
R + SP S F K SPECIFIC, aerospace, serf, fork, crisp
MS + K R D T CREDIT, massacre, misled, dumbest, mystic
MS + S G R T CIGARETTE, Missisauga, grimace, mister, mists
J + K S T R EXTRA, Jessica, just, Gilette, courage
Y + S N D MN SANDMAN, sign, dean, demon, Simon
N + K P R T COPYRIGHT, pecan, nipple, inert, cotton
S + K WR T R QUARTER, school, worst, still, square
G + R F YR D AIRFIELD, gulf, figure, goodyear, gourd
R + NFR S MN T ENFORCEMENT, resinifer, seminar, element, infertile
G + N M B R NUMBER, enigma, gumbo, bigger, Oregon
R + S MR T M SUMMERTIME, similar, martyr, term, slim
MN + S T R CH STRETCH, minutes, mental, chairman, chessmen
D + H R K N HURRICANE, herd, card, dunk, hand
R + K NFR N S CONFERENCE, confrere, infernal, unless, castle
If you read the tops of the pyramids in the phonetic system you used to solve
the puzzle, you get three phonetic clues:
K R MS MS chromosomes
J Y N S genes
(G R G R MN D R) Gregor Mendel (in a cartouche, indicating a proper name)
You have a pentagon marked "N S R", indicating that the answer can be expressed
in five hieroglyphs. The appropriate answer clued by those words is GENETICS.
