Last week’s puzzle as presented, with the answers in-line:
The word “facetious” is one of my favorite words. It contains all of the vowels, in alphabetic order. If you make it an adverb (“facetiously”) then you get the sometimes-vowel “y” to boot. I believe that only “abstemiously” and “adventitiously” meet these same criteria, and a puzzle strictly about these words would be easily solved with a quick Google search. Are there many words that have 4 of the vowels (including “y”) in alphabetic order, and can they be put together as clues? The answer is a resounding “yes.”
Below, please find clues that will lead you the answers to this week’s puzzle. Note that “adventitiously,” above, has duplicate “i”s, and for the purposes of this puzzle, a second or third instance of a vowel can be out of order, and other non-ordered vowels are acceptable. That is, words like “impiously”(iouy) and “gelatinously”(iouy) are valid.
Sample:
Mutinous royalty (eiou, iouy) – Rebellious viscountcy
- A go-getter of a redundant shortening of a word into letters. (iouy, eiou, aeio) – ambitiously tedious abbreviation
- An evil, beginning set of chord notes played in sequence. (eiou, iouy, aeio) – devious introductory arpeggio
- A loving, tasty literary endnote. (aeio, eiou, eiou) – affectionate, delicious epilogue
- A somber, spiritual man with a puppet on his knee. (eiou, eiou, eiou) – serious religious ventriloquist
- No more paracetamol. (aeio, aeio) – acetaminophen cancellation
- To bring back tasty hostility. (eiou, eiou, aeio) – reintroduce delicious aggression
- Flogging some taraxacum (aeio, aeio) – dandelion flagellation
- A mirrored cylinder displaying diodes and transistors (eiou, aeio) – Semiconductor kaleidoscope
Congratulations to Arina Igumenshcheva, one of the correct solutions sent in this week. She is the proud winner of this week’s $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate. If you didn’t win but are still interested in some ThinkGeek merchandise (and who isn’t!), please use GEEKDAD93SF to save $10 off a purchase of $50 or more.
