It is March and the lovely EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "joker", as in "clown."
Oh no! The USA clown President Trump (egged on by his buffoonish adviser Elon Musk) has decided to run the USA like a business. After all, all businessmen know that once you learn how to run one business, you can run anything, sort of like how you might use a Joker to form different poker hands depending on what other cards you have. Alas, Trump never even learned how to run one business, unless you count "ran it into the ground." (How many bankruptcies is he up to now?)
Here are clues to some word pairs. In each pair, the words differ by one letter; we got a 🃏 to stand in both places. Write the letters that 🃏 stands for in the two blanks off to the side. But what to write in the very left-hand blank? Look at the table down below. Using the two 🃏 letters, look up a single letter in the table. We filled in the first row already: hoUse and hoRse have the 🃏 letters U and R. We look up U and R in the table and get W. (Don't worry; if we swizzled the order and looked up R and U instead, we'd still get W; you can't get that wrong.) When you're done, the letters in that left-most column should spell out a word for "joker".
| W / | U R | Where reps attach riders: | H o🃏s e | Animal with a rider: | H o🃏s e |
| _ / | _ _ | They kill vampires: | _ _ _🃏_ _ | The S in USA: | _ _ _🃏_ _ |
| _ / | _ _ | _____ supremacists…: | _ _ _🃏_ | … _____ incessantly: | _ _ _🃏_ |
| _ / | _ _ | Country: | _🃏_ _ _ _ | Theory: | _🃏_ _ _ _ |
| _ / | _ _ | Supreme _____: | _ _ _🃏_ | Vote _____: | _ _ _🃏_ |
| _ / | _ _ | Exhausts: | _ _🃏_ _ | N.Y. _____ Pitchbot: | _ _🃏_ _ |
| _ / | _ _ | Change, e.g., by one letter: | _🃏_ _ _ | Post-: | _🃏_ _ _ |
| _ / | _ _ | Hobo: | _ _🃏_ _ | Lousy bum: | _ _🃏_ _ |
Here's the table where you can look up the letter for each pair of 🃏 letters. E.g., the U-R 🃏 in the Horse/House example gives a W. We circled that.
| A | F | K | L | M | N | O | R | T | U | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | K | H | A | L | I | L | D | H | A | D |
| F | D | N | O | R | T | B | E | E | N | C |
| K | H | A | R | G | E | D | W | I | I | T |
| L | H | R | A | N | Y | C | R | I | M | E |
| M | R | E | L | A | T | E | D | A | T | O |
| N | H | I | S | A | C | T | I | C | L | V |
| O | D | I | S | M | T | Y | P | I | C | A |
| R | L | L | Y | T | A | C | H | E | G | ⓦ |
| T | O | V | I | E | R | L | N | M | E | N |
| U | D | T | H | A | S | T | O | ⓦ | M | E |
Hints, rot-13'd:
- Gurl juvar vaprffnagyl
- Nabgure jbeq sbe ubob vf genzc.
- Cbfg- zrnaf nsgre
Solution, rot-13'd:
J / HE / ubHfr / ubEfr / Jurer ercf nggnpu evqref / Navzny jvgu n evqre V / XG / fgnXrf / fgnGrf / Gurl xvyy inzcverf / Gur F va HFN Y / GA / juvGr / juvAr / _____ fhcerznpvfgf… / … _____ vaprffnagyl Q / NB / aNgvba / aBgvba / Pbhagel / Gurbel P / EA / pbhEg / pbhAg / Fhcerzr _____ / Ibgr _____ N / EZ / gvErf / gvZrf / Rkunhfgf / A.L. _____ Cvgpuobg E / YS / nYgre / nSgre / Punatr, r.t., ol bar yrggre / Cbfg- Q / NH / geNzc / geHzc / Ubob / Ybhfl ohz
