Solution: Seashells
Answer: BAZAAR DILEMMA
Written by Jonathan
This puzzle consists of a series of graphs, some of which contain images in some circles. The images in the circles clue certain words that belong in the corresponding circles.
These diagrams look cursed and unsolvable until we notice that the last image has seashells in them, just like the title of this puzzle. We look at some of the other images, including wood and peppers and recall that all of these seem to belong to English tongue twisters! Now these diagrams look cursed and solvable.
We find that these are all graphs representing English tongue twisters, with each bubble representing a unique word and the numbers on the arrows representing how many times the arrow is used. Here are the completed diagrams.
- Betty Botter bought a bit of butter. But the bit of butter was bitter, so Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter to make the bit of bitter butter better.
- Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he?
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
- If one doctor doctors another doctor, does the doctor who doctors the doctor doctor the doctor the way the doctor he is doctoring doctors?
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
- She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells.
Next we notice that some of the cells contain the numbers 1 through 13, indicating that we should take those words, in the given order. Next at the bottom of the puzzle we have a sequence of numbers in parentheses, which indicate they are indices into the words.
Word number | Word | Index | Extracted letter |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Betty | 1 | B |
2 | a | 1 | A |
3 | Fuzzy | 3 | Z |
4 | a | 1 | A |
5 | seashore | 3 | A |
6 | doctors | 6 | R |
7 | doctoring | 1 | D |
8 | if | 1 | I |
9 | would | 4 | L |
10 | pickled | 6 | E |
11 | make | 1 | M |
12 | much | 1 | M |
13 | had | 2 | A |
Finally, extracting using the given indices to the labelled words, we obtain the answer, BAZAAR DILEMMA.