Solution: Meta 2: In Town
Answer: DETACHED BUILDING
Written by aki and Jonathan
There are 3 separate meta puzzles taken from the normal puzzle round. After solving the prepuzzle, we have found that Waldo went back to three scenes in his very first book. Subsequently, we visit 26 locations, each of which belongs to one of the three given scenes.
| Puzzle | Answer |
|---|---|
| Chess Shop | UNENDING STRUGGLE |
| Internet Café | VILLAGE OFFICER |
| Media Studio | PRODUCERS BROADCAST |
| Nokia Shop | EMERALD DIAMOND |
| Phone Booth | OBLIQUE REPLIES |
| Restaurant | GNAWING THROUGH |
| Sandwich Bar | TEA BIB |
| School | CASHLESS COACHING |
As clued by the flavor text, we should split the two words from each answer, and we notice that the two words in each answer are the same length. Furthermore, the second word from each answer consists of all unique letters, except for one pair of repeated letters.
| Repeated letter (from word 2) |
Word 1 | Word 2 | Letters extracted (from word 1) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | PRODUCERS | BROADCAST | DE |
| B | TEA | BIB | TA |
| C | CASHLESS | COACHING | CH |
| D | EMERALD | DIAMOND | ED |
| E | OBLIQUE | REPLIES | BU |
| F | VILLAGE | OFFICER | IL |
| G | UNENDING | STRUGGLE | DI |
| H | GNAWING | THROUGH | NG |
We further notice that the repeated letters range from A through H, which provides an ordering on the answers. Since the two words in each answer are of the same length, we extract the letter pair in the corresponding positions from the first word, which gives us the second location where Waldo can be found, the DETACHED BUILDING.