The Flare Path: Swings The Lead
Off duty in The Duchy
Sorry. The county of Cornwall has spirited away this week's column. Searches of sea-sluiced caves and Bucca-infested tin mine shafts have turned up nothing. My animal scouts – grey seals, peregrine falcons, and beadlet anemones – have probed and quartered and frisked fruitlessly. The only thing I can offer you today is bafflement. Beyond yonder html horizon lurks not one, not three, but two foxers. Assuming you aren't too busy plotting the demise of fish-fixated Italian soldiery (the last seven days/minutes of communal Combat Mission have gone well though the commenter-controlled Kiwis are now fighting without Crecy, their lionhearted Crusader) I invite you to spend an hour or two reinstating vowels and decrypting collage components.
My Chief Foxer Setter has a lot in common with last week's aristocratic collagee. Like Lord Byron, Roman walks with a limp, has a deep affection for Greece, and is happy to rhyme 'knickers' with 'vicars' in an emergency.
Last week's theme: Lord Byron (defoxed by AFKAMC)
a. Manfred or baron (AFKAMC)
b. Hercules (mrpier, AFKAMC)
c. Boatswain (Arglebarf, mrpier)
d. The Corsair (Llewyn)
e. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (foop)
f. Ada, Countess of Lovelace (unsolved)
g. Elegy for a Dead World (unsolved)
h. The Hellespont (Matchstick, Cooper)
i. Vampire (AFKAMC)
j. Lord (All is Well)
k. Lady Caroline Lamb (AFKAMC)
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Below is a list of ’25 Things You Might Find On A Beach’ (‘Things’ and ‘Might’ are used here in their broadest possible senses). For purposes of obfuscation, the ‘things’ have been stripped of vowels and had spaces repositioned. For example, if ‘sand castle’ was present, it might appear as…
SNDC STL
The last five entries in the list – those marked with asterisks – are especially fiendish. Not only are they vowel-less, they have also been anagrammed.
BS TFL CK!
1. NTRST
2. LN DYCHT
3. NRDL
4. DKKH NMK
5. BLT CMBR
6. BT HNGMCHN
7. HNYRY DR
8. PMRNK
9. MRM DSPRS
10. SW SHZN
11. BNG LRTRPD
12. CR DL
13. TWNT TR
14. FLT BCKST RTL
15. MR YNNNG
16. GRTPN JNDRM
17. RZRS HLL
18. TMH NKS
19. MR RMGRSS
20. JQNSR LL
21. NKB*
22. ZGGCC DHHH*
23. YLLLLBV*
24. PTNTFR*
25. NRGY*
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