The GCHQ Puzzle Book: Perfect for anyone who likes a good headscratcher

Product Information

Mike. Each word is the Nato phonetic alphabet word for the Roman numeral equivalent to the number. Mike is the word for M, which is the Roman numeral for 1000. STUNNER/LULU. The others are associated with words/phrases of the form ?A?A or ?O?O: ARTFORM/DADA, AVERAGE/SOSO, BIRD/DODO, CLOWN/COCO, DITCH/HAHA, DOG/TOTO, EXECUTIONER/KOKO, FATHER/PAPA, FORBIDDANCE/NONO, GOODBYE/TATA, GRANDMOTHER/NANA, MOTHER/MAMA, SENILE/GAGA, STUNNER, TOY/YOYO a) DOT, or any word that remains a word with 2 I’s inserted: FaUNa, bABbLE, OccUR, BIddER, BeReAVE, COffIN, gRUDgE, ShEATh, iDiOT

Two solutions depending on whether the element/planet at 4 down is chosen to be Mercury or Krypton (the home planet of Superman). The sum of 1 down is 40 + 8 = 48. b) OR. The lengths of the words are decreasing uniformly, and the first/last letters (alternately) form sequencesa) The numbers are the minimum number of moves a knight (starting in the normal starting square in the bottom left) would take to reach that square:

Reading across the matrices one letter at a time starting top left then middle row left etc. gives: JUST CO MPLETE T HE FINAL MATRIX W ITH THE M ISSING L ETTERS F ROM THIS SENTENC E. c) Synonyms ending in EW: GUSTED/BLEW, MASTICATE/CHEW, EIGHT/CREW, AWARE/KNEW, MODERN/NEW, STITCH/SEW, RAGOUT/STEW, HURLED/THREW Can be prefixed by a word to form a NATO nation: CANADA, DENMARK, GERMANY, HUNGARY, ICELAND, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, SPAIN c) Monopoly squares: Go, Old Kent Road, Community Chest, Whitechapel Road, Income Tax, King’s Cross station, The Angel Islington, Chance, Euston Road, Pentonville Road, In Jail/Just Visiting, Pall Mall, Electric Company, Whitehall, Northumberland Avenue, Marylebone station, Bow Street, Community Chest, Marlborough Street, Vine Street, Free Parking, Strand, Chance, Fleet Street, Trafalgar Square, Fenchurch Street station, Leicester Square, Coventry Street, Water Works, Piccadilly, Go To Jail, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Community Chest, Bond Street, Liverpool Street station, Chance, Park Lane, Super Tax, Mayfair Can be preceded by a US President’s surname: ARTHUR MILLER, BUSH FIRE, FORD FOCUS, HARRISON FORD, LINCOLN GREEN, POLKA, TRUMAN SHOW, WASHINGTON POST

QUADRATS. The words are anagrams of SUNDAY, MONDAY, …, FRIDAY and SATURDAY with the Y changed to another letter.

EIGHTY ONE has 9 letters, 9 2=81, ONE HUNDRED has 10 letters 10 2=100, FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX has 24 letters, 24 2=576. b) DIM (or any other 3-letter word formed from the letters of SODIUM): DRY/HYDROGEN, LIE/HELIUM, HIT/LITHIUM, RYE/BERYLLIUM, ROB/BORON, BAR/CARBON, GET/NITROGEN, YEN/OXYGEN, NIL/FLUORINE, ONE/NEON, DIM/SODIUMf) Anagrams of European countries: AIL+VAT=LATVIA, ANY+ROW=NORWAY, CAR+FEN=FRANCE, CUR+SPY=CYPRUS, END+SEW=SWEDEN, KEY+RUT=TURKEY, OLD+PAN=POLAND Losing by 7 or less to Apocrifal. Not possible as Apocrifal could only have scored a maximum of 27 against them, which means Dewbius must have scored at least 51-27=24, in which case Dewbius must have beaten Beaugas. j) First 3 letters of US States, reversed: BEN/NEBRASKA, LAC/CALIFORNIA, LED/DELAWARE, NET/TENNESSEE, NEP/PENNSYLVANIA, NIM/MINNESOTA RAM/MARYLAND, REV/VERMONT, SAW/WASHINGTON, SEW/WEST VIRGINIA words containing TEN, all at different offsets within the word: TENNIS, STENCH, BUTENE, LISTEN, BRITTEN, LIECHTENSTEIN, FORGOTTEN, SUPERINTENDENT, MOUNTBATTEN, OMNICOMPETENCE d) What will your daddy do when he sees your mamma kissing Santa Claus (Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade)

a) 14 (XIV) and 4050 (MMMML). The numbers have, when expressed in Roman numerals, Scrabble scores 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, … From (b) the cipher alphabet is: STAERCOGNIDHUBFJKLMPQVWXYZ. A word of length n is enciphered by replacing each letter by the letter n to its right in the cipher alphabet. Thus ‘IN ECCLESIASTICAL USAGE THE TERM ESTABLISHMENT IS APPLIED TO’ enciphers to the text in the question. As it is of length 26, ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANS enciphers to itself. These spell ANSWER IS FRENCH WORD, and they appear in the grid in a pattern that can be interpreted as Morse Code (a single letter is a dot, a pair of letters is a dash). The pattern is: b) All words can be spelled using only the top row of a UK typewriter: FLASH uses only the second row.Countaphyt must have lost both their losing games 0-8 (to Apocrifal and Beaugas), as they gained no bonus points for losing by 7 or less. Hence they beat Dewbius 9-0.