Half an awful haiku

Question

Attempt to find the last word:

Cheryl nowhere errs
She ebbs one or nag envy
Aha flap green gel

Purely abjurer reef
Fur roof bar be ant rail
Nun sync terra ???

For the second verse, do you want 'reef' to start the second line to maintain the 5-7-5 structure? Or is it in the first line, on purpose? — hexomino, Apr 05 '16 at 10:58
I didn't preserve the Haiku structure in the second 'verse'. It would be a more nicely written puzzle moving it as you suggest - I didn't think of the possibility. It's more straightforward to solve with reef as the end of the second line so maybe I can leave as written. — Tom, Apr 05 '16 at 11:07

Paul Evans · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-05T11:19:03.593

17

It's:

try

Because:

The two "awful haiku"s are simply rot13s of each other that, not so simply, use only real words.

edited Apr 05 '16 at 11:19

answered Apr 05 '16 at 11:05

Paul Evans

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score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 05 '16 at 20:47

try

Beacuse:

first and third letters of penultimate word + second letter of antepenultimate word (following structure of first verse). All the words in the second and third lines of each verse are made up of letters in words in the previous line (except errs/ebbs and reef/roof, which are word pairs beginning and ending with the same letters with different double-letters in between). The positions of the letters in the second verse words follow the same positions in the first verse. Note both verses contain words with the same number of letters.

Half an awful haiku

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