Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Off-Day Puzzle #15: Solution

"Seek and ye shall find", a great pirate once said. The answer to yesterday's Dead Sailors puzzle is eleven.

Immediately after the first syllable in each line (or, in some cases, slightly less than a syllable, but never to begin a line), the numbers one through twelve are phonetically embedded, in reverse order:

No[12]rsed in the high seas,
The ____ sailors caught disease.
Rot[10] mutton made them ill,
Be[9] it looked but looks can kill.

They [8] and when their feast was through,
'twa[7] taking all but two;
Two [6]urvivors lost at sea,
If[5] seen worse, I lie to thee.

Will [4]tune save their aimless boat?
Bo[3]affirm their faith and hope;
Their [2]mbstones nonetheless will say,
"They [1] our hearts but lost their way."

The blank is therefore the missing number in the sequence - eleven.

Congratulations to a record 15 solvers: drewdez, keven c, mr customer, j steve, fanerman, berkowit28, josh s, bwrightson, erin, ubragg, danielle, jose, neeebs, llcooll, and rbnlaw. Special kudos to danielle for her first puzzle solve!

Updated puzzle rankings to be posted soon. Next Puzzle: 7am, Thursday, Sept 10, courtesy of PCS middle-third champ UBragg!

7 comments:

Josh S. said...

Yeah, rbnlaw got in! I was pulling for him all day.

QuadSevens said...

I always hate reading the solutions to puzzles I don't solve because it just makes me feel even dumber for not seeing the answer.

Matt said...

Wow, I was so far off I can't even think of a good metaphor for how far off I was.

berkowit28 said...

Yeah, Quad, that happened to me several times recently. Very, very annoying.

rbnlaw said...

Thanks Josh.
I came to the realization (thanks to EK) that I was overthinking the puzzle and overlooking the first obvious number reference. Had I not been stuck in meetings most of the day, I still would have sucked at it.

karina said...

@Quad "I always hate reading the solutions to puzzles I don't solve because it just makes me feel even dumber for not seeing the answer."

Try feeling that way with EVERY puzzle (but one).

I feel even dumber because i listened to that corny love song over and over and couldn't come up with anything decent.

QuadSevens said...

I find it quite funny that the Plain White T's gained widespread popularity with the songs "Hey There Delilah" and "1, 2, 3, 4" when their single before these two was called "Hate (I Really Don't Like You)."