And the correct answer to the Summer Reading List puzzle was…
BIRD & BECKETT! This friendly little bookstore in Glen Park regularly features jazz music, as well as other events such as poetry readings.
The dancing stick figures at the bottom of this puzzle provided the first clue, spelled out using Sherlock Holmes’s famous Dancing Men Cipher: “WHITEGETDOWNINH MEANS GONE WITH THE WIND INSPIRED THE CLUBB SISTERS.”
More specifically, “WHITEGETDOWNINH” is an anagram for “GONE WITH THE WIND“, and is found in the description for the fake book Partying for Peace–authored by Karen and Taryn Upda Clubb (carin’ and tearin’ up the club), naturally. The remarks about a “1939 film adaption” and “breezy banter” provided additional hints for Gone With The Wind. Similarly, all of the other fake titles can be paired with their corresponding silly author names, and contain the anagram for a famous real book:
- “Partying for Peace” – Taryn Upda Clubb
WHITEGETDOWNINH –> GONEWITHTHEWIND - “Trophy Wife, Trashy Husband” – Mary A. Dumslaub
EITHERCANORCANTNETCOMMONLAZYDAFTNEE –> ZENANDTHEARTOFMOTORCYCLEMAINTENANCE - “Death of the Cuddles” – Q. Tannimals
DEPICINJUREDREDPA –> PRIDEANDPREJUDICE - “Ode to My Darling” – Trudy Voe-Shen
YLADYGAINSI –> ASILAYDYING - “Progressive Candidate” – Don Keifer-Mayer
ETHERIGHTWINGSHU –> WUTHERINGHEIGHTS - “Why Everyone Should Travel” – Seymour Sytes
EPPERROLLTOUCH –> THECOLORPURPLE - “Jitterbug Joey” – Neil B. Bownsin
RFIDGETSALOTISR –> DIGITALFORTRESS - “The Ratio” – Ana Tomicsize
THEFATSHORTMENWEIGH –> THETAMINGOFTHESHREW - “Lou-‘Easy’-Ana: The ABCs of the L-shaped Land” – Marty Graw
GSTATETHEYBRAG –> THEGREATGATSBY - “She Looks Like Me, Only Prettier” – N. V. Ying-Hur
GHHOTTERSIB –> THEBIGSHORT - “The Poker Game” – Meg Emilia Nair
EARNSAPRIZESIGN –> ESPERANZARISING - “Half-Truths and Untruths” – Liza Lott
ETSTELLCARTERTHE –> THESCARLETLETTER - “Toothy Terror” – C. D. Vowering
DSHARKSFORTEENA –> HEARTOFDARKNESS - “A Celestial Voice” – Carrie Oakey-Starr
ONEFREEANGELSANGB –> ANNEOFGREENGABLES
Interestingly, the 9th of the stick figures in the Dancing Men message (letter D) has been specially boxed. This suggests that there is a way to extract a letter from each embedded book anagram. It turns out that the dates of the book events is the key to doing this. For example, since Karen and Taryn Upda Clubb were giving their talk Aug. 9th (with signings until the 15th), one would extract the 9th letter of the 15-letter phrase “WHITEGETDOWNINH,” which is D.
Putting all of these together, we get the phrase “DRENTEDITBACKB” which is an anagram of the final answer: BIRD AND BECKETT.
This week’s Fastest Solver was Never Leave the Mission 2.0! Congratulations! DavidSteinAndFriends came in second place, and David + Adriana grabbed third. Kudos to all of the teams that unscrambled the book titles correctly!
The lucky random winner for T-shirts was Team Fost. We were also very excited to send Jeff a set of next-level T-shirts, as the first team to reach five T-shirt wins! Amazing puzzle-solving! Many of the shirts on backorder were just shipped out recently, so please let us know if your team is expecting shirts but has not received any by the end of this week.
And with that….this week’s puzzle Fowl Play is now live! Good luck and happy solving!
Note: Bird & Beckett Books and Records is not affiliated with Mission Street Puzzles in any way.