This puzzle riffs on the one "Less Than, Approximately, Greater Than" episode Reply All made as a fake podcast for a real episode of Super Tech Support, in which only imprecise measurements are used. In our puzzle, we're using those approximate measurements to describe a recipe, sometimes a national dish, strongly associated with a single country.
To solve this puzzle, you'll need to determine:
- what the recipe is, which enables you to identify its country of origin;
- the recording order for the podcast episodes, which is different from the numeric order on the podcast page/the order the podcast episodes were released; and
- what to use to index into the country names to get the solution phrase.
The recipes and countries
Many of the recipes contain pop culture references to help point the way to the country, e.g., references to Colombian singer Shakira and Romancing the Stone (which takes place in Colombia) in the caldo de costilla recipe.
In podcast order, the recipes and countries are:
- Caldo de costilla, Colombia
- Haggis, Scotland
- Hjónabandssaela, Iceland
- Koshari, Egypt
- Mango lassi, India
- Poutine, Canada
- Quiche Lorraine, France
- Rolex, Uganda
- Rupjmaizes Kartoujums, Latvia
- Tom Yum, Thailand
- Tortilla, Spain
- Tteok-bokki, South Korea
- Ukoy, Philippines
- Yakisoba, Japan
Dishes appear in alphabetical order to both confirm solvers are on the right track and suggest that this is not the final ordering. (Also, we've included links to the recipes above. The recipes we used for Rupjmaizes Kartoujums and yakisoba, which originated in cookbooks, appear at the end of this solution.)
The recording order
Most of the podcasts contain clues to help solvers determine the correct order. (The Iceland recipe does not, but its order can be inferred via other clues.) For ease of mathematics, a month is treated as four weeks.
The clues:
Country | Podcast order | Recording order | Clue |
---|---|---|---|
Colombia | 1 | 13 | "We actually recorded this earlier but *someone* lost the file, so we had to swap in a different breakfast food instead." (refers to rolex) |
Scotland | 2 | 11 | "A month and a half ago, we brought you a dish that makes the best of your favorite jammy fruit. This week, we're doing something a little less healthy." (refers to hjónabandssaela) |
Iceland | 3 | 5 | No text |
Egypt | 4 | 6 | "Next week: you have to fly almost a quarter of the way around the globe (in kilometers, anyway) to get to our next country" (refers to South Korea) |
India | 5 | 12 | "It's been almost a couple of months since we made a dish this fruit-centric" (refers to hjónabandssaela) |
Canada | 6 | 9 | "The last time we brought you something this starchy was nearly a month ago – about a week less than that" (refers to koshari) |
France | 7 | 8 | "A little more than halfway through our season" |
Uganda | 8 | 10 | "Next time: a dish that's technically banned in the US, but we're making a legal (and delicious) version anyway." (refers to haggis) |
Latvia | 9 | 1 | "Welcome to our inaugural episode" |
Thailand | 10 | 4 | "Sorry, meant to release this before our snacks, but instead it's showing up afterwards, because ... well, reasons, that's why." (refers to the last of the two recipes explicitly marked as a snack, ukoy) |
Spain | 11 | 2 | "We're trading off who's teaching who" |
South Korea | 12 | 7 | "With this, we close out the first half of our season" |
Philippines | 13 | 3 | "Continuing with our snack theme ..." |
Japan | 14 | 4 | "Closing out our season ..." |
Indexing and extracting the final phrase
At no point do you need to map our approximations to actual units of measurement. But you do need to notice that while every recipe is littered with those approximations, there is one and only one precise number called for in each recipe, which is the index. (This may be easier for solvers to identify via the podcast transcripts, where the index is the only item that is ever written out as a numeral.)
- Latvia (3 tablespoons of sugar)
- Spain (3 fun-sized bags of potato chips)
- Philippines ("a whole bunch of ingredients – 11")
- Thailand (1 stalk of lemongrass)
- Iceland (3 stalks of rhubarb)
- Egypt (5 large onions)
- South Korea (letting rice cakes soak for 5 minutes)
- France (6 pieces of bacon)
- Canada (soak potatoes for 3 hours)
- Uganda (3 eggs)
- Scotland ("Burns Night perfection in around 4 hours")
- India (4 cardamom pods)
- Colombia (2 chopped carrots)
- Japan ("you can have this on the table in 5 minutes flat")
Once you've found the single number in each item, index it into the country names in recording order to get the answer phrase TASTE THE NATION.