So, a *LOT* has happened since my last post, including the complete betrayal and heartbreaking of me by my former puzzling partner, the one who I had thought, had hoped was going to be my puzzling partner for life. Very much not. It hurt more than I thought anything could, and I haven’t been in the mood for puzzles for a very long time. But my therapist - yes, it was bad enough that I finally started therapy - has encouraged me to try to take baby steps into the things I used to love so much, and puzzles and conundrums are definitely at the top of that list. I’m also looking at some long distance hikes for my next vacation. Baby steps, though, so I took myself to a local cafe, ordered two massive pots of tea and some amazingly delicious avocado eggs benedict, and tried the first individual issue of the Hincks Gazette.
Hincks Gazette is a one page newspaper of puzzles. It’s not like the Curios and Conundrums multi page, multi volume, onion like puzzle experience, but for someone easing her way back into it, it’s a great place to start. Issue 2 is actually the first separate one, as Issue 1 was shipped as part of the more well known Hincks puzzle - the Hincks Elevator. When I entered the answer for Issue 2 on the website, it does seem as there’s a completely different Issue 1 that is now for sale separately, but I’ll just start with Issue 2, where mean plants have taken over Hincksville. Little shop of horrors-esque, and it turns out that the plants, which were supposed to be nice, were accidentally set to “Psycho-Plant” and are insulting everyone. Oh no! We simply must find the password to make them nice again :)
That info is all in the first paragraph/article of the gazette, above the fold, and the rest of the issue is puzzles. Below the article is a cartoon with fish speaking nonsense, and then on the back, an unpoetic poem, a set of cryptic clues for a word search, the word search itself, and worryingly, an explainer of morse code… My initial fear is that I’m going to need to decode the dashes and dots of the fishes’ water tank, but that, thankfully, turns out not to be the case.
I start with the word search, and the cryptic clues above it. They’re fun - phonetic. For example, spoilers: shout, not high, wags when happy == yell, low, tail == Yellowtail. Got that one easily enough, but some of the others - 12 in total - were much harder. A couple I solved in reverse, I admit. The hardest, not being an east coaster, was Confused sound, in PA, after seven. That I just had to make the word search show me. Beneath the word search is the ultimate clue though - It’s not what you find, but what you don’t, that brings the light. The message is pretty clear, helping me find affiliate (Philly = in PA. Ugh) and sending me to the next part of the puzzle. Hello puzzler proceed by collecting the first insult letters next lop off the first of each poetic last then mix and Mach and you’ll be on your way chum.
So, the insults are Atrocious, Deplorable, Asinine, Fraidycat, Obtuse, Dense, and Vapid. The last words of the poem are Wish, Towels, Ire, Lots, Ill, Ether, and Rashes. Mix and matching gets us: Fish Vowels Are Dots, All Other Dashes. So, to the fish!
Translating the fish gobbledygook speech appropriately gets us Surname Poet Anagram. And, dear reader, this is when I had to go to the internet. I am TERRIBLE at anagrams. Scrabble is *not* my game. The surname is CHAPSTONY, and I couldn’t get past Cosy pant. That is where my brain is these days. That I put on real clothes to come to this cafe on a weekend when I could legitimately just hang around the house with the cats in my cozy pants is a big step. So, with many thanks to the internet for its anagram unscrambling talents, I was able to come up with SYCOPHANT, which makes a lot more sense for a password to make the talking robot(?) plants be nice to you. Plugged that into the website and voila! Entered into the long! (It’s been out since at least 2020) line of people waiting for customer service on our Compli-plants. I hope the hold music is good.
Thanks for listening to my ramble, if anyone other than me reads this :)
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