Old West Revue
by John Owens
Answer: JOSH COOKE
This puzzle has 11 handwritten phrases in non-Western scripts. The scripts are in alphabetical order by their Unicode name:
Arabic
Bengali
Cyrillic
Devanagari
Greek
Hangul
Hebrew
Hiragana
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Each phrase is nonsensical to a native speaker of the predominant language that uses that script, but each phrase can be read aloud by a native speaker of that language to produce English-sounding words. (Testsolvers found a combination of Google Lens and Google Translate was effective in transliterating these phrases.) Each phrase is a movie quote missing one syllable:
| Script | Syl. | Quote |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | HE | I'm gonna make him an offer (he) can't refuse. |
| Bengali | PLAY | Play it, Sam. (Play) 'As Time Goes By.' |
| Cyrillic | D | I'm the king of the whirl (d)! |
| Devangari | LEE | Sure(ly) you can't be serious. I am serious...and don't call me Shirley |
| Greek | O | Tote(o), I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. |
| Hangul | CAR | (Car)Pe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary. |
| Hebrew | PEN | I have always de(pen)ded on the kindness of strangers |
| Hiragana | TER | Greed, for lack of a bet(ter) word, is good |
| Tamil | IN | I love the smell of napalm (in) the morning. |
| Telugu | DOLL | My name is Joel Goodsen. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over eight thousand (doll)ars in one night. Time of your life, huh kid?" |
| Thai | HOUSE | This is my (house) I have to defend it. |
The missing syllables spell "He played Leo Carpenter in Dollhouse", cluing the answer, JOSH COOKE.
Thanks to an army of talented transliterators: Seetha Annamraju, Dahlia Carr, Elan Carr, Prem Devanbu, Roma Devanbu, Tatiana Kashina, Sarah Kistler, Yong Jae Lee, Rachel Manber, Shelly Manber, Anjul Patney, Mangpo Phothilimthana, Shubho Sengupta, Mark Silberstein, Ilias Tagkopoulos, Ian Tullis, and Praneeth Yerrapragada.