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.4 Third World
Intuitive leap: Each word in the final line of the puzzle is associated with a country.
The sequence:
Q: So what made them sick? wax: cigarpieoven crawl connectiondelightgivercheeseburnsaladroulette.
Strongly suggests that "wax" corresponds to "A" (since Q: for Question should be followed by A: for Answer). This also suggests that each other word in the bottom line corresponds to a single letter.
But how do we get "A" out of "wax"? The correct approach takes into account hints such as "people from all over the globe", and the word "World" in the puzzle title. Each word can be paired with a country, to result in a familiar term.
Brazilian wax Cuban cigar American pie Dutch oven Australian crawl French connection Turkish delight Indian giver Swiss cheese Chinese burn Greek salad Russian roulette
Now we have a list of countries. Remember that "Brazilian" somehow gives "A", and consider the other clues: "winning bronze" is a reference to coming third, and the word "Third" is in the puzzle title. Maybe we need to take the third letter of each country.
This gives:
Brazillian wax Brazil A Cuban cigar Cuba B American pie America E Dutch oven Netherlands T Australian crawl Australia S French connection France A Turkish delight Turkey R Indian giver India D Swiss cheese Switzerland I Chinese burn China I Greek salad Greece E Russian Russia S
This isn't quite right. We're missing a step. The puzzle states that all this is happening at the Olympic Games. At the Olympics, each country is assigned a three-letter IOC country code*. Maybe we need the third letter from each country code?
Brazillian wax Brazil BRA Cuban cigar Cuba CUB American pie United States USA Dutch oven Netherlands NED Australian crawl Australia AUS French connection France FRA Turkish delight Turkey TUR Indian giver India IND Swiss cheese Switzerland SUI Chinese burn China CHN Greek salad Greece GRE Russian Russia RUS
This looks better. Taking the third letter of each country code gives us the decoded bottom line:
A: bad sardines
And the answer is BAD SARDINES.
* Note that some of these these are different to the more generally used ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes, which will obscure the solution a little if used.