Solvers are given a list of metro station names, and a quick glance reveals that they must be from different cities around the world (a reasonable conclusion given the existence of Arabic and Chinese characters). Solvers go to town finding possible world cities that these stations could be located in, and some are, by design, ambiguous (e.g., the Phoenix station should ultimately be placed in Singapore!). Eventually, solvers find that there is only one way to place every station on the map such that the station’s line color and unique markings (e.g., there is an Amtrak connection at Boston’s Back Bay and an R-line connection between Madrid’s Príncipe Pío and Ópera) match that in real life and such that each city is spatially contiguous on the map.

That map is presented here: The map (solution)

Solvers then use the number of stations a city has on each line to index into the city's name for a letter (e.g., Singapore gives both a blue N and a gray E). Chaining letters together by line, traveling in the direction of the “spatial incontiguity” arrows, yields a word. Reading the words by line in resistor color order results in the phrase “HE MADE THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME SURNAME.” That mythical man is the answer to the puzzle, MUSSOLINI.