34

So speaks Mr. Montague, missing no beat,
reverberating stutters in tropical heat:
"Each river mouth's built up, we've got naans to eat;
then, lodgings we have; a café would be neat!"

They're terribly moved by this repeated sound;
excited, loud yakking leaves Montague drowned.
Like Montague arrived at a truth too profound;
entire subcontinents his words astound.

Long since then, a cold month; bazaars clear away.
Boys watch some chess club game with cups of latte.
Up high in the mountains, an alluring café,
of gold award quality, looms clear as day.

"Drink! Savvy old Mr. M achieved his dream!"
Earnestly Montague earned his esteem.
Excited New Yorkers are hurrying to gleam
some secrets from this man's espresso machine.

Can you guess the name of Mr. Montague's upscale coffee house?

Jafe
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2 Answers2

22

If we

Look at the double letters in the story, they spell out STARK ROAST LOVERS,

Which is a fantastically punny name for a café!!

Edit:

My initial interpretation of @Gareth McCaughan’s comment was that

The initials of Mr. Montague are MM, which given @jafe’s talent for puzzle creation is surely not a coincidence (rather, more likely a hint that I initially missed)! (It is also worth mentioning that he shares a first name with one of Rowan Atkinson’s most famous characters!)

What @Gareth McCaughan actually meant was that

Mr. Montague refers to Romeo Montague, one of the star-crossed lovers from the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet.

El-Guest
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    If only they served some seafood, too ... – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 12:42
  • @MOehm boo! hiss! terrible joke! ;p (sorry for also being terribly punny) – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 12:44
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    Yes, I know. I just thought it would be a waste to let parts of this fine puzzle go unnoticed. – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 12:51
  • I'm entirely failing to understand @MOehm's pun. I hope it hasn't escaped attention that Mr Montague's name is not coincidental, though. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 13:45
  • @GarethMcCaughan if you look at how I found my answer, some of the words he used share the same property, (and I believed) it was intentional....(I suppose it’s not so much a pun as it is clever wordplay, but I think I said terribly punny because they share said property whereas clever and wordplay do not haha!) – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 13:47
  • oh, so the only point was that he used a word with a xxxx of xxxxxx xxxxxxx? Fair enough. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 13:52
  • @GarethMcCaughan indeed, the little things amuse me greatly. I’m a simple fellow in that regard! – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 13:54
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    @GarethMcCaughan: That's because I'm bad at puns. And that, when I looked at this, it wasn't the actual solution that stood out to me, but Mr Montague and river mouths and subcontinents and cold months and stuff. And there is more. No wonder this puzzle gets lauded for the secrets it hides while still having elegant rhymes. – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 13:54
  • (And the xxxxxx xxxxxxx were just coincidence. Assuming that I'm interpreting what the x's mean correctly.) – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 13:56
  • Ah, finally figured out what MOehm's comment is about. Duh. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 13:59
  • @MOehm now I’m lost on your comment! – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 14:01
  • @El-Guest You are misunderstanding my remark about Mr Montague's name, and (I regret to inform you) also MOehm's comments. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 14:01
  • @GarethMcCaughan my reading between the lines is apparently poor today, it seems... – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 14:03
  • Perhaps it will help if I direct you to a play by Shakespeare whose prologue contains the phrase being punned on here, and urge you to consider where else you have seen the title characters' names. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 14:03
  • You're good, @El-Guest. You just missed the red herring here and maybe a hint towards the actual solution. – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 14:05
  • That went right over my head the first time... :O and @MOehm isn’t making a movie reference, are you? – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 14:06
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    @MOehm Perhaps you should post an answer explaining the other thing you found. You deserve a few Meaningless Internet Points for spotting it, and despite OP's apologetic tone it deserves highlighting. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 14:07
  • @El-Guest I think the nearest thing to a movie reference is in line 12. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 14:07
  • @El-Guest: Maybe, but I wasn't aware of it at that time. – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 14:09
  • I’ll be giving you some MIPs for sure, @MOehm! – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 14:10
  • @El-Guest Yup, your newer edit correctly identifies what I was referring to. (Unfortunately, your answer still implies that I said something I didn't. It was only the "It might also be the case that" that I had in mind.) – Gareth McCaughan Oct 01 '18 at 14:23
  • @GarethMcCaughan good catch! Fixed now to highlight slowness of original answerer on a Monday morning. – El-Guest Oct 01 '18 at 14:27
  • I'm leaving the office now. It won't be until tonight that I can post my findings. But perhaps someone else can trawl the puzzle for bycatch in the meantime. – M Oehm Oct 01 '18 at 14:40
  • Tried to lead youto the wrong direction first, but you went straight for the jugular :P Nice work. – Jafe Oct 02 '18 at 04:49
  • @jafe it was a really nice puzzle — I really enjoyed the complexity of everything in there once Gareth McCaughan and M Oehm found everything — but you must not have counted on the fact that I’m too stupid to even notice it! It really was a wonderful puzzle!! – El-Guest Oct 02 '18 at 10:22
17

I think El-Guest has the correct name for Mr Montague's coffee shop. I've left a punny comment on that answer that has sparked a long and oblique conversation whose significance is not quite clear to many, I'm afraid. I'll explain.

When I saw this puzzle, I didn't find the actual answer, but something else. Mr Montague is, of course, Romeo from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Romeo is also the letter R in the Nato alphabet. Then I saw the river mouth. Then the cold month. And it clicked: Each line except the last one describes a code word of the Nato alphabet:

Romeo: So speaks Mr. Montague, missing no beat,
Echo: reverberating stutters in tropical heat:
Delta: "Each river mouth's built up, we've got naans to eat;
Hotel: then, lodgings we have; a café would be neat!"

Echo: They're terribly moved by this repeated sound;
Romeo: excited, loud yakking leaves Montague drowned.
Romeo: Like Montague arrived at a truth too profound;
India: entire subcontinents his words astound.

November: Long since then, a cold month; bazaars clear away.
Golf: Boys watch some chess club game with cups of latte.
Sierra: Up high in the mountains, an alluring café,
Oscar: of gold award quality, looms clear as day.

Romeo: "Drink! Savvy old Mr. M achieved his dream!"
Romeo: Earnestly Montague earned his esteem.
Yankee: Excited New Yorkers are hurrying to gleam
some secrets from this man's espresso machine.

This spells out: Red herring. Sorry. And that's what my comment was about: The "seafood" referred to the red herring, that's all. The fact that seafood has a double letter was coincidence.

But there's more:

I don't know how El-Guest found out about the solution. Certainly the double-a words naan and bazaar stand out, so that may have made El-Guest to look for double letters. But the first letters of each line form a reverse acrostic. (I'm sure the "upscale" is meant as a hint to read them from the bottom up.) That acrostic reads: See double letters.

And that's the long route to the café's name.

M Oehm
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