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You see, I am that what makes you able.
What I am is an element stable.
Without me a name for oneself's lacking.
I'm in fish, Thai, Shiraz and unpacking.

You can try and guess what with mouth could rhyme.
Sixty times me is still quite a short time.
Plural's made with me for almost all nouns.
Sparkling white wine can contain my compounds.

Blood type I am, or with clock, dear or kay.
Not found am I in Higuey or Niamey.
Once done gambling, accounts might look like me.
More than cash, I'm essential for life, see?

Letter counts on the names of Minsk and Schaan,
calculate out the product and add one.
It should line up with what you would get by
C times I minus LXX plus I.

A beast am I, or two-thirds of those signs.
Two and three and eleven are my primes.
Two of four, year a city turned cinder.
Twelve times five plus the letters in Zinder.

Half of nine minus half of eleven,
or that what comes from six minus seven.
The same am I with my own cube compared.
I am i squared times i squared times i squared.

The final answer is a compound noun.

Hint:

Playing cards have numbers.

For those who have gotten to the final part...

I realize now that one of the clues turned out a bit misleading. I described the answer as a sum of four numbers, but apparently the intended term is only used when it's the sum of two numbers, not four. The resulting number is correct, though.

Jafe
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3 Answers3

19

Well, first of all,

the stanzas lead to answers I, S, O, THIRTY-ONE, SIXTY-SIX, MINUS ONE and standard ISO 3166-1 defines country codes.

Some explanations of the less obvious bits:

S is south, S, second, sulphur. Third and fourth lines for O are zero and oxygen. 666 is the "number of the beast". (Or, according to some, 616, but conveniently 66 is 2/3 of those digits too.) The city is London in 1666 (thanks to Weather Vane for pointing this out in comments.) I think everything else is self-explanatory.

Historical note: I originally thought this was the whole puzzle, leading to an obvious two-word noun phrase as answer. I mention this because otherwise some of the comments on this answer don't make sense. Anyway, it turns out that there's more.

Now

if we take places listed in the verse and translate them to country codes we get TH IR DO NE BY LI NE, or THIRD ONE BY LINE. There are a few different things this could mean; it turns out that taking the third word of each line yields I AM A FISH TRY ME WITH WINE I AM GAMBLING CASH ON THE LINE I AM THREE FOUR FIVE NINE WHAT AM I. (Thanks to Weather Vane, who seems to be good at spotting things I miss, for pointing out in comments that I had accidentally omitted one stanza.)

I was entirely stuck on this until (weeks after it was posted; sorry about that) I noticed that the OP has kindly provided a hint :-).

3+4+5+9 = 21, the card total one aims at in blackjack; and there is an edible fish called the black jack. I don't know whether the "wine" is significant, though there are wineries with "Blackjack" in their name.

Gareth McCaughan
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  • rot13(pbhagel pbqrf) isn't a compound noun, it is two words. – Astralbee Oct 25 '18 at 12:32
  • @Astralbee If jafe takes the same view then clearly my answer is not the intended one. We'll see. (The only obvious alternative is to take "minus" to mean "minus" rather than "dash", which was actually my first thought, but that leads to a strictly less plausible answer and not to anything at all compound-noun-like.) – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 12:35
  • Maybe the answer is rot13(YBAQBA) then? Although that isn't a compound noun either. – Astralbee Oct 25 '18 at 12:37
  • @Astralbee For what it's worth, Wikipedia -- which is far from infallible but is a good guide to current usage -- says that compound nouns can be joined up (housewife), hyphenated (house-builder), or multiple words (distance learning). If jafe takes the same view then I'm OK. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 12:39
  • @Astralbee I edited your comment to rot13-ize my answer, for obvious spoiler reasons. Let me know if that bothers you and I'll undo it if so. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 12:41
  • Well you're getting a lot more out of this puzzle than I saw so it looks like you're on the right track. – Astralbee Oct 25 '18 at 12:57
  • I had solved all the stanzas but you are well ahead of me now, justing waiting for your solution. – Weather Vane Oct 25 '18 at 13:11
  • Well, right now I'm feeling rather stuck. But perhaps enlightenment will dawn... – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 13:12
  • @GarethMcCaughan Try taking those 4 numbers and translating to letters. You might anagram something commonly found in a casino. You could find a game using it that matches with the phrase "on the line" and possibly find a fish. – David Starkey Oct 25 '18 at 13:51
  • Interesting suggestion. The first part surely works out. Still thinking about specific games and fish... – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 13:58
  • A possibility... ROT13: Gurer ner n ahzore bs BAYVAR pnfvabf jvgu "svfu" va gur anzr, fhpu nf OVT SVFU naq n pbhcyr bs nccf pnyyrq TBYQSVFU. Pbhyq "ba gur yvar" zrna bayvar? – Astralbee Oct 25 '18 at 14:22
  • @Astralbee It's possible but the presence of the word "cash" makes that seem a bit unlikely, and it's not clear how to make sense of the numbers in that case. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 14:27
  • 'Tnzoyvat pnfu ba gur yvar' pbhyq or NAGR be ORG be FGNXR - yvgrenyyl gur nzbhag bs zbarl gung vf 'ba gur yvar'. Be boyvdhryl n ersrerapr gb jura va ebhyrggr lbh pna cynpr orgf ba gur yvar orgjrra gjb obkrf vaqvpngvat lbh'er orggvat ba obgu. – Paul Smith Oct 25 '18 at 14:30
  • @GarethMcCaughan I was thinking that game leads to this fish, which could fit as an answer. – David Starkey Oct 25 '18 at 15:25
  • @DavidStarkey Hmm. Doesn't seem like a compound noun as the rubric states. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 15:53
  • @GarethMcCaughan Perhaps my definition of "compound noun" is off, but that is a 4-letter word combined with a 3-letter word. The result doesn't have much to do with either of them, but I don't think that's a requirement. – David Starkey Oct 25 '18 at 16:00
  • I'm sorry to say that I think your definition of "compound noun" is off. So e.g. "keyboard" is a compound noun because it's actually built from key+board, but "garden" isn't even though "gar" and "den" coincidentally happen to be words. – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 16:14
  • Strangely ref other answers, vfb guerr sbhe svir avar vf nobhg wbvagf va cynfgvp cvcrf. – Weather Vane Oct 25 '18 at 17:19
  • That's amusing! (But probably not relevant.) – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 17:55
  • Vf gur gvgyr nyfb n pyhr? Svfu vf abeznyyl rngra jvgu juvgr jvar, ohg Fuvenm vf n erq. Bar svfu cnverq jvgu erq jvar vf FJBEQSVFU - n pbzcbhaq jbeq, ohg V pna'g yvax gung gb tnzoyvat / qvpr. – Astralbee Oct 25 '18 at 20:31
  • @Astralbee The title may well be a clue, but it might also just be a reference to the end of the first stanza. I like your idea but I don't see any more than you do how to link it to gambling (beyond the fact that there are plenty of casinos with that name). – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 21:51
  • (Nor to the numbers.) – Gareth McCaughan Oct 25 '18 at 21:51
  • The hint says that the numbers are cards. If so, the sum of their values suggests a card game. The first line fits, too and there is a dot-org website of the same name which might fit the second line. – M Oehm Nov 02 '18 at 07:39
  • Oh, there's a hint. I completely missed that. That makes things pretty clear: will edit. – Gareth McCaughan Nov 08 '18 at 11:12
  • All correct! Took me a while to notice the problem with one of the final clues... sorry about that! – Jafe Nov 08 '18 at 11:30
  • That's OK. My problem wasn't that I was confused by the minor inaccuracy in the clue, it was that I had forgotten about the question and hadn't noticed the clue was there at all :-). – Gareth McCaughan Nov 08 '18 at 11:42
6

I think the answer is:

PLASTIC

The answers to the first three verses are:

I - the chemical symbol for iodine (a stable element)
S - the symbol for seconds (60 are a short time) and also the chemical symbol for sulfur (found in wine)
O - a blood type that goes with O'Clock, Okay etc

And then the following three verses are:

12 - letter counts on the names of Minsk (5) and Schaan (6) and "add one"
66 - two-thirds of the number of the beast (666)
-1 - six minus seven.

Put them together and you get:

ISO 1265 (1266 minus 1) which is the ISO number for PLASTICS. You said the answer would be a "compound noun" and plastic is a compound!

Astralbee
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1

I think the answer is:

Fiber Reinforced Plastics.
I aggree to astralbees answer, but i think that the -1 should be appended, producing ISO 1266-1, wich is hard to find and about Fiber Reinforced Plastics.

KGM
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