It is March and the lovely EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "quarter".
Oh no! The USA clown President Trump (egged on by his buffoonish adviser Elon Musk) have canceled science grants to study mice because they think the scientists are trying to make mice transgender. This is, of course, stupid nonsense. How could they believe it?
One theory: They don't know the difference between the words transgender and transgenic. It would be nice to think that the people pointlessly wrecking so much did so because they were just ¼ wrong. (Does -der/ic count as three letters or two? If we split the difference and say 2½ letters, that's about a quarter of the word.)
(The Snopes fact-checkers pointed out a hole in this "transgenic" theory. They think Trump believed a remarkably-wrong investigation that "found" university experiments turning mice transgender. The investigation was stupid; it would only convince the most gullible… Oh no! Anyhow, let's stick with the "transgenic" theory for now because I can make a puzzle out of it.)
So now I see we must explain the differences between words, because those words are mostly the same. But in each pair of words, one has IC, and the other has 1-3 other letters. E.g.: here we see that Voice and Volume are mostly the same (looking like Vo_e), but VoⓁⓊⓂe has a few different letters, which we circle:
| 🗣️: | v o🄸🄲e | v oⓁⓊⓂe | 🔊 |
| Fashion ____: | 🄸🄲_ _ | ◯◯◯_ _ | Robber _____ |
| Indifferent a la Zeno: | _ _ _🄸🄲 | _ _ _◯ | 🛑 |
| Lies in literature: | _🄸🄲_ _ _ _ | _◯◯◯_ _ _ _ | Form follows _____ |
| Nice, as in view: | _ _ _ _🄸🄲 | _ _ _ _◯ | Aroma, as in p-u |
| Rigid: | _ _ _🄸🄲_ | _ _ _◯_ | Swagger |
| It must flow: | _ _🄸🄲_ | _ _◯◯_ | Rampage, but for shopping |
Ic-words, transposal'd: Cceins, Ceiov, Ceips, Cfiinot, Cino, Ciost, Cirstt
These are the IC-words, each a transposal
(that's old-timey wordplay jargon for "anagramming").
We crossed out Ceiov, because we already figured out Voice.
When you're done, the circled letters should spell out a science-y way Congress might try to find a spine.
Some hints, rot-13'd:
- Uvfgbevnaf zvtug pbzcner gbqnl'f byvtnepuf gb lrfgreqnlf eboore onebaf
- Gung jrveq sybj pyhr vf n Qhar ersrerapr
- Yvrf va vairfgvtngvba ner yvrf, ohg va yvgrengher jr whfg chg gurz va gur svpgvba frpgvba
Puzzle solution, rot-13'd:
ibVPr / ibYHZr / 🗣️ / 🔊 VPba / ONEba / Snfuvba ____ / Eboore _____ fgbVP / fgbC / Vaqvssreragn yn Mrab / 🛑 sVPgvba / sHAPgvba / Yvrf va yvgrengher / Sbez sbyybjf _____ fpraVP / fpraG / Avpr, nf va ivrj / Nebzn, nf va c-h fgeVPg / fgeHg / Evtvq / Fjnttre fcVPr / fcERr / Vg zhfg sybj / Enzcntr, ohg sbe fubccvat
