Talk:2032: Word Puzzles

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Is it a real word puzzle?

Who wants to labouriously check if he's double-bluffed and used an actual word puzzle for this comic? :D 162.158.154.181 17:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

"Jeopardy" is misspelled in the description. Can someone who is logged in please fix? Many of the "clue" words can also be rearranged, anagram-wise, to form new words, e.g., parts ≈ strap. 162.158.74.243 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Most words have 2, 3, 4 or 5 characters. I do not believe, it is a simple crossword puzzle, otherwise he would not fool people. Sebastian --172.68.110.4 18:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Some thoughts
  • Cueball is messing with Megan and not presenting an answer what the "reminiscent of Jeopardy answers" would imply.
  • Lance Ito is a judge well known for the O. J. Simpson murder case.
  • Brian Eno is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. Read the Wiki article to learn more.
  • No idea what "Ohio's AirAsia Arena" could imply.

--Dgbrt (talk) 18:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Almost all the words in the alt-text / title-text are open to multiple pronunciations from a phonetic standpoint. Often they're placed next to a word containing the same sound with a different spelling, or the same spelling with a different sound.
Once again Randall is creeping me out with this, as yesterday I complained about the spelling of "tear" with a comment including this line:
tire tier tear tear tare tar ... teer?
Randall so often does comics that feel intimately in touch with what I'm doing or saying the day before that it's almost spooky. If I weren't an outlier in so many scatter plots I might almost begin to feel "ordinary".
ProphetZarquon (talk) 22:35, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Moved from the explanation (discussion goes here)

The kind of puzzle that Megan thinks she is solving is called a "Cryptic", which has markedly different rules than ordinary crosswords. If Cueball's statement had been "Part of this aria is an Indian garment" the answer would have been "sari", because a part of the phrase "this aria" is the sequence "sari", which in turn is an Indian garment. Cueball's actual statement contains quite a few familiar cryptic puzzle triggers. The word "composed" can be a hint of a preceding or following anagram, in this case of "this aria" or of "by Brian" or of even longer adjacent strings. Although "opera star" could be a famous singer, say "Caruso", it might also be the name of an opera followed by the name of an astronomical star. "Au pair" could be any of its ordinary meanings, say "nanny", but might also be "earrings" (because AU is the chemical symbol for gold, and a gold pair could be earrings). The word "start" is often a hint to take just the beginning of a word, so "the start" would be "t", or "start of his" would be "h" or "hi". The New York Times runs a cryptic crossword as its "second Sunday puzzle" every other month or so, and there are other regular cryptic crossword venues. In case you are interested, there are various guides on the web for solving cryptics, such as this one at The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/puzzclue.htm. (-- John?)

This sounds like the most correct explanation to me so far, much moreso than the strictly crossword-based interpretation. I think this should be in the explanation.
ProphetZarquon (talk) 22:44, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Although Randall says he is messing with us, the fact that he is so much cleverer than any of the rest of us means that Cueball's statement might even be a legitimate cryptic clue. --John 108.162.219.214 18:40, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

If anyone has an account on https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/, that community might be able to figure out if it's a legit puzzle. 162.158.142.64 20:59, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I just asked at puzzling.stackexchange: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/69502/is-this-a-puzzle-if-so-what-is-the-solution. 141.101.96.209 02:03, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Two words: Nerd Sniping Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:21, 14 August 2018 (UTC)