CISRA Puzzle Competition 2007 - Solutions

This is the archive of the 2007 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.

A.2 Cut Verse

Intuitive Leap: The missing words can be recursively grouped in pairs - the second word in each pair can be anagrammed to mean the same thing as the first word.

The puzzle has eight missing words, and the first step is to fill them in. Searching the Internet is how most solvers will do this. The lines are all from well-known poems:

Her brain ALLOWS one half-formed thought to pass  (T. S. Eliot)
LEST she should drown herself therein             (William Wordsworth)
For she guides him smooth or GRIM                 (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
The TERNS and sea-gulls tremble at your death     (Robert Lowell)
Spaces of fire, and all the YAWN of hell          (John Keats)
But makes antiquity for aye his PAGE              (William Shakespeare)
For his Union reports that he paid his DUES       (W. H. Auden)
The last lone ASTER is gone                       (Robert Frost)

But where to from here? One thing to notice is that many of the missing words can be anagrammed:

ALLOWS - sallow
LEST - lets
GRIM - ?
TERNS - rents, stern
YAWN - ?
PAGE - gape
DUES - used
ASTER - rates, tears, tares, stare

A pattern is emerging - for each pair of words going down the list, the second word has an anagram which means the same thing as the first word!

Mix LEST to mean ALLOWS => LETS
Mix TERNS to mean GRIM  => STERN
Mix PAGE to mean YAWN   => GAPE
Mix ASTER to mean DUES  => RATES

At this point you might also notice that the puzzle title, "Cut Verse", follows the same pattern (Mix VERSE to mean CUT => SEVER) - which confirms we are on the right track! We now have a set of four words, and the next step is to repeat the same process again.

Mix STERN to mean LETS  => RENTS
Mix RATES to mean GAPE  => STARE

And one more time:

Mix STARE to mean RENTS => TEARS

Which gives the solution - TEARS.