These are all items sold by IKEA. Write down the name of each item, including all accents. You'll notice that all the As have accents and that all the accented letters are As. Also, there are only two kinds of accents: umlauts and rings. Convert the accents to morse code by treating the Äs as dashes and the Ås as dots. Each row is a letter. The answer is VOLKSWAGEN, a trendy European import that beat IKEA's entry into the American yuppie market segment by decades =)
| RÅÅN, DEPÅ, DOMÄN | ···— | V |
| FÄLTVÄDD, PÄLLBO | ——— | O |
| PILÅS, KRYP GRÄS, PÅTÅR | ·—·· | L |
| BÄNKÅS, KÄNDIS | —·— | K |
| RÅNEÅ, PLÅTIS | ··· | S |
| NÅGON, FJÄLLNÄS | ·—— | W |
| NYGÅRD, VÄRDE | ·— | A |
| FÄRNÄS, GIDEÅ | ——· | G |
| GÅDE | · | E |
| JÄLL, FÅGELBO | —· | N |
Note: For all the pedants and Swedes out there (as well as any pedantic Swedes), the authors know that Ä and Å are not actually accented As, but rather full letters in their own right. Regardless of their linguistic status, the presence of such characters should arouse suspicion when encountered in an otherwise English-language puzzle hunt =)
2006 MIT Mystery Hunt