The GCHQ Puzzle Book: Perfect for anyone who likes a good headscratcher

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Take the central three letters from each word, so: unWILls, foLIAte, guMSHoe, weAKEst, reSPEct, scAREdy gives William Shakespeare.

Vegetables: Bean BAG, Cabbage WHITE, Cauliflower EAR, Marrow BONE, Mushroom CLOUD, Onion RINGS, Pea SHOOTER, Pepper MINT Can be preceded by a weapon: BAYONET-FITTING, LANCE CORPORAL, RIFLE RANGE, SABRE-TOOTH, SHOTGUN WEDDING, SPEARMINT, SWORDFISHOFten × EAten - FReight × SLeight) / (CRone + ALone + SHone + OZone) = (10 × 10 - 8 × 8) / (1 + 1 + 1 + 1) = 9 = CAnine = CA Some Like It Hot: HANDsome, LONEsome, TWOsome, WHOLEsome; LADYlike, LIFElike, SUCHlike, WORKMANlike; BANDit, DIGit, ORBit, PULPit; EARShot, GUNShot, MUGShot, SNAPShot. h) First 3 letters of a vegetable: ARTICHOKE, ASPARAGUS, BEETROOT, CABBAGE, CARROT, LEEK, LETTUCE, MARROW, PARSNIP, POTATO b) Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear b) WISCONSIN. There are only 6 US states that can be spelled using the symbols of the elements and WISCONSIN is the only one that can be thus spelled in more than one way.

From (b) the cipher alphabet is: STAERCOGNIDHUBFJKLMPQVWXYZ. A word of length n is enciphered by replacing each letter by the letter n to its right in the cipher alphabet. Thus ‘IN ECCLESIASTICAL USAGE THE TERM ESTABLISHMENT IS APPLIED TO’ enciphers to the text in the question. As it is of length 26, ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANS enciphers to itself.

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Eliminating those words whose 2 nd letter is a consonant (ALGAE, FJORD, KNIFE, ORGAN, UPSET) leaves: Entries in the crossword grid are from the periodic table of elements (mostly the chemical symbol, sometimes the element name, and sometimes both). People are challenged to colour in a fruit bowl using only four colours, so that the pear is green, the orange is orange, the apple is red and the banana is yellow. In English, there aren’t any pairs. The property is that of consecutive pairs of integers having no letters in common. In French: (DEUX, TROIS), (NEUF, DIX), (DIX, ONZE). In German: (VIER, FUNF), (FUNF, SECHS), (SIEBEN, ACHT), (ACHT, NEUN).