Daily puzzles/problems.

[billl]

That is correct, sir.

[prendrelemick]

Bill had done the same as my previous encryption, only his grid was twisted (hence the clue) and spiraled to the centre.

abcde
pqrsf
oxytg
nwvuh
mlkji

Now, remembering this is supposed to be the daily puzzle thread, here is something quick from Jamaica.

Mr Parrott sittin' in de tree
some pigeons am flyin pas'
"Mornin' Mr Parrot" dem say
"Mornin' Mr Hundred" say Mr Parrott.
Pigeon say. "We not Mr Hundred,
want twice as much, half as much,
quarter as much an' you Mr Parrott
to make a hundred."

How many pigeons were there.

[MarkBastable]

Nine.

[billl]

Thirty-Six!

(with an assist to Mark)

[MarkBastable]

Thirty-Six!

(with an assist to Mark)

Oh, crap. Having started with the quarter as x, I forgot to multiply by four at the end.

This is what happens when you do maths while cleaning your teeth, looking for socks and listening for the toaster to ping.

[billl]

Well, I was struggling with the accent, definitely needed the head-start.

Here:

Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, yet they are not twins. How is that possible?

[MarkBastable]

Well, I was struggling with the accent, definitely needed the head-start.

Here:

Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, yet they are not twins. How is that possible?

They are two-thirds of triplets.

On the tangential basis of which, here's an extract from a novel that's about to ricochet around London's publishers, looking for a place to settle...


--------------

We all trooped back to Auntie May’s Victorian terrace with its bilious staircarpet and apple-and-pear motif on the wall-tiles in the kitchen. The women passed around anaemic sausage rolls that flaked like a skin condition, while the men opened cans of lager which – in deference to the solemnity of the occasion – they attempted to decant into petrol-station glasses, before discovering that they were too small and swigging the rest from the can.

“Waste not want not, eh, Tom?” my Uncle Bob said, tossing an empty into the swing-top. “Here’s to Alan, the old bastard. Two down, two to go.” He took a long slug and smacked his lips. “Just me and Trevor left now. And Trev’s not been well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, glancing at Uncle Trevor who was standing in the hall trying to balance a plate on his arm whilst holding a beer and lighting a cigarette. “He looks all right.”

Bob leaned forward. “Cancer,” he said, in a carrying whisper. “It's his bowel. Nothing they can do for him. The ciggies can't hurt him now.” There was a yolky stain on Bob's black tie. I imagine he had taken it off and tossed it drunkenly into the wardrobe after the last family funeral.

“Still in the will-writing business?” he asked. “Must get that sorted. Can't take it with you, can you?”

“We’re working on it."

An hour or so later – and five crates of beer more relaxed – the inconsolable mourners put some music on and had a party. They would have referred to it, I suspect, as a knees-up. I exchanged glances with my mother, who was rigid with smiling embarrassment on the sofa. I tipped my head towards the door.

“Did you see them, Tomàs?” she hissed in the car. “Mother of God – they have no class! No class at all!”

“So where did Dad come by any class?” I asked her.

“In some people it is natural. Like painting.” She opened her handbag and extracted a compact. “I can see it the first time I meet him. Peasant bones, but good class.”

“Which makes me a peasant too.”

“No! You have your father’s good class, and noble Catalan blood. Anyone can see that. An idiot can see it.”

This, incidentally, is another of my mother’s recurring themes. She’s not Spanish – she’s Catalonian. It explains the blonde hair and her sense of beleaguered superiority. I’m sure there are Catalans who till the soil and herd pigs, but in the view of Isabel Maria Vivas Lyne every one of them, however humble, is part of a natural aristocracy.

“All of you – Pablo, Jacinta – all of you have good blood.”

“Speaking of whom, was Pablo invited today?”

My mother put her make-up back in her bag and tutted.

“I don’t know where he is. He’s not call since my birthday. Where is he?”

“I have no idea. I’m surprised he remembered your birthday.”

“Remember my birthday? No – it was coincidence. ‘Pablo – how nice you call me on my birthday,’ I tell him. He says, ‘Oh – it’s your birthday?’ He is not right in his head.”

“He’ll turn up when he needs some money,” I told her.

“You find him and make sure he’s okay, Tomàs.”

As it happened, it wouldn’t be necessary to find him because a few days later he’d be all over the ten o’clock news. But, as ever, my mother expected me to be the responsible one, the protective one, the dutiful one. Pablo was considered too delicate and unworldly to take care of himself. He was always the favourite. As a kid, I couldn’t understand it – how can you choose a favourite from twins, for God’s sake? But the Condesa coddled Pablo and babied him from the moment she laid eyes on him – and I was nine or ten years old before I found out why.

When Pablo was born, in an American military hospital in Samoa, he was hustled away from my mother before she could see him. My father, remember, was still stranded on the typhoon-tossed Solomon Islands, clinging to a palm tree with Jacinta strapped to his chest. Mother was alone, disorientated and hardly compos mentis. In the previous twenty-four hours, she’d undergone a lengthy labour delivering me, she’d been flown through a tropical storm in a USAF aircraft and she’d suffered a second labour to give birth to Pablo.

This was in the days before ultrasound, of course – she hadn’t even been aware that she was carrying more than one baby. What’s more, she barely spoke English at all – she and my father always conversed in Spanish, right up until they moved to Surrey. So when a midwife whisked the newborn away the Condesa became forgivably agitated. They knocked her out with a syringeful of something, if only to give her the chance to sleep.

When she awoke I was in a crib beside her. She assumed, understandably, that I was the infant she had most recently given birth to, and that somehow she had mislaid the one she had brought with her from the Solomon Islands. She tried to explain this to a nurse using a combination of mime and fractured English. She was holding me in the crook of one elbow, but she stretched out the other arm like an aeroplane wing, and then made baby-rocking motions. “Where baby? Two baby! Where baby?”

The gesture with the stiff, extended arm was unfortunate, because it led the nurse to believe that my mother had been told about Pablo. She brought him from the nursery and handed him over. Unlike me, he was not snugly dressed in a hospital all-in-one sleepsuit. He was loosely wrapped in a woollen blanket. My mother put me in the crib so that she could swaddle Pablo more cosily. She pulled the blanket off him – and screamed. She screamed as only an emotionally-exhausted Iberian mother can scream.

Protruding from the baby’s back, slightly to the left of the spine, was an underdeveloped but perfectly recognisable arm complete with tiny hand and tinier fingers. The rest of the foetus, it turned out, was enclosed within the newborn’s body – a separate being, but undeniably part of Pablo. One child consumed by the other within the womb.

So, strictly speaking, Pablo and I are not twins. We are surviving triplets.

[prendrelemick]

Good stuff. These will be the twins who are triplets who were born in different years.

[billl]

The thread has become pretty discombobulating, which is the point after all. Mark certainly got the latest puzzle right, and then the extract leaves some mystery about the larger story (advertising it well). And then I read Mick's comment.

[MarkBastable]

The thread has become pretty discombobulating, which is the point after all. Mark certainly got the latest puzzle right, and then the extract leaves some mystery about the larger story (advertising it well). And then I read Mick's comment.

Thank you.

Mick was referring to this....

[billl]

Oh, that's right, I remember giving up right away on that one.

[MarkBastable]

Details from the covers of eight albums. The initial letters of the (first word of the) album titles can be arranged to form a word or words or phrase.



The name of the file, incidentally, is nothing to do with anything. It's a screw-up in Photobucket.

[billl]

Don't recognize images 3 and 8 (l to r, top to bottom).

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Don't recognize images 3 and 8 (l to r, top to bottom).

billl,,
I can identify the third one using your orientation, but that's all at the moment.
There is something vaguely familiar with the gal in the number two box.
Based on your comment, it sounds like you have the others pegged.

[billl]

For number 3, I know it can't be this, but I've been straining to get a better look at this dude's shoulder, with the blonde locks spilling down:



After David Gilmour's leather jacketed solo album cover, that's all I've come up with.

Number 8 also reminds me of an album that is probably not the right one, but I can't even place which wrong one I'm thinking of in that case.

There is something vaguely familiar with the gal in the number two box.

Interesting you say that, because I was surprised to learn recently that she's much better known for something else. (Well, that's what "the experts" say. The "something else" woman herself claims to be unsure if that's her in the pic, since it was the 70's then, anything's possible, etc.)