Phi Kappa Puzzle
by Andrew Moskalik
1. Solve crossword clues to get:
1 stoic/riding hood/pidgin
2 john ii/mitosis/Tonto
3 frolicking/prolific/Bigwig
4 tonic/idiot/Solomon
5 commission/mimic/solid
6 politics/dodo/ionic
7 tropic/tinfoil/polio
9 yogi/picnic/onionskin
9 position/wingdings/ringo
10 solicitor/pillbox/fossil
11 Solich/sirloin/bikini
12 oi/brillig/Coolio
More obscure clues:
"Noted magic dragon behavior" implies the song "Puff the Magic Dragon", where puff frolics in the autumn mist.
"Thlayli" is a character also know as "Bigwig" in Richard Adams’ "Watership Down"
"Myshkin" is the hero in Dostoevsky’s "The Idiot"
"One after David" implies King David's successor Solomon
Nethack, if haven’t seen it, is a text-based dungeon game that uses the character set to represent dungeon features and monsters.
"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap": Quote from Napoleon.
"First word of Miller’s tales": Henry Miller wrote "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn"
Stereotypically, not-so-sane people will wear tinfoil helmets to ward off thoughts beamed into their heads.
There are Saints John, Paul, and George, but no Saint Ringo.
Frank Solich is the football coach for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Bikini Atoll was the site of a massive A-bomb test.
"Brillig" is from "Jabberwocky"
2. Noting that the only vowels present are all Is and Os should suggest keying on these as the next step. Furthermore, noting that there are exactly eight Is and Os in each line (and since Sean is in the computer class) should suggest the change to 1s and 0s, giving the bytes:
1 0111 0011
2 0111 0100
3 0110 1111
4 0111 0000
5 0110 1101
6 0110 0101
7 0110 1010
8 0111 0101
9 0110 1110
10 0110 1001
11 0110 1111
12 0111 0010
3. These correspond to the ASCII codes for, in order "stopmejunior"
4. "stopmejunior" anagrams to "jupitersmoon", of which there are many, but the natural one to assume is:
5. Io, which is the answer.
