And-Uh The Answer to Yesterday's Puzzler

(Blog title = another Car Talk reference, for those who don't know. I always feel the need to explain these things so you don't think I'm totally nuts.)

In yesterday's post, I gave you a lexical puzzle for the ages.

Recap: Complete the following series...
bugles, unrest, grotto, letter, esteem, _______.

The first thing I noticed (and truth be told, only thing I noticed before the guys at Car Talk explained it on their show), was that each word is six letters long. So the next one has to be six letters, right? Not necessarily, as it turns out, and it's far deeper than just word length.

The pattern: The letters in the first word correspond to the first letter in each of the words. Bugles begins with "b", unrest with "u", grotto with "g", letter with "l", esteem with "e". Which itself spells "bugle". Likewise, letters in the second word correspond to the second letter in each word. Letter #2 in bugles is "u", unrest is "n", grotto is "r", etc. And so on and so on. So to complete this pattern, the sixth word has to consist of the last letter in each word: bugleS, unresT, grottO, letteR, esteeM. So the first five letters of the answer are STORM.

"STORM" by itself works, technically, but I think it makes more sense if the final word has six letters, too. "STORMY" and "STORMS" both work.

If you're having trouble following, it's easier to see the answer if you arrange them in a grid like so:

B U G L E S
U N R E S T
G R O T T O
L E T T E R
E S T E E M
S T O R M Y

Each word reads left to right, and up and down. Cool, huh?

I wonder if there's any other case where this works. I think it's worth a little research...if I ever find one, I'll let ya'll know.

Kudos to Benzo. Check's in the mail. Although I dated it July 29, 2174, so you won't be getting that cool million for a while. Too bad.