And the correct answer to the Fowl Play puzzle was…
EIGHT AM! This breakfast/brunch restaurant offers frittatas named after San Francisco neighborhoods, crepes named after times of day, avocado toast, and more.
In this puzzle, you first needed to deduce which bird laid each of the 26 eggs:
| A – Goose | B – Quail | C – Quail | ||
| D – Quail | E – Emu | F – Quail | G – Goose | H – Emu |
| I – Goose | J – Chicken | K – Quail | L – Emu | M – Chicken |
| N – Chicken | O – Emu | P – Emu | Q – Chicken | R – Ostrich |
| S – Quail | T – Ostrich | U – Chicken | V – Ostrich | W – Ostrich |
| X – Emu | Y – Ostrich | Z – Ostrich |
Picking out the second-to-last emu egg, first ostrich egg, fourth emu egg, fourth quail egg, last goose egg, and second ostrich egg spells out the word “PROFIT.” If you type that into the answer box and click “Go To Next Step,” you’ll reach the second page of the puzzle.
On this page you will see a Google calendar with various events from Sept. 1st, 2017, through Apr. 30th, 2018, and you are asked to calculate what sequence of actions Angela and Betty should take to maximize their total egg counts at the end of that time period. There are two missing pieces of information, the number of eggs laid by each chicken and goose each month. You can determine this based on the first half of the puzzle: a chicken lays five eggs per month and a goose lays three.
Using all of this, you can determine that the optimal series of actions for Angela is: Association, Farmer, Farmer, Farmer, Chicken, Association, Farm. And the optimal series of actions for Betty is: Association, Farmer, Chicken, Farm, Association, Goose, Farm. The corresponding seven squares in the yellow grid spell out the final answer: EIGHT AM.
This week’s Fastest Solver was DavidSteinAndFriends, followed closely by second-place team The Stanford Turtle Curlers and third-place team Carly. Congratulations on all impressive solve times! Coincidentally, the The Stanford Turtle Curlers were also the lucky T-shirt winners this week. Hooray! The leaderboard has been updated with the new standings.
And with that….this week’s puzzle Woodland Wordplay is now live! Good luck and happy solving!
Note: Eight AM is not affiliated with Mission Street Puzzles in any way.