Solution to McCormick Hall
Answers in this round:
ANIME BASIC FUNNEL PAISLEY WHY ME
Each of the answers can have one letter changed to make a spice or herb (which are notably sold by the McCormick company), as seen in this table:
| Answer | Spice/herb | Original letter | New letter | Position in word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANIME | ANISE | M | S | 4 |
| BASIC | BASIL | C | L | 5 |
| FUNNEL | FENNEL | U | E | 2 |
| PAISLEY | PARSLEY | I | R | 3 |
| WHY ME | THYME | W | T | 1 |
Each of the letter changes occurs in a distinct position of the word from 1–5, which provides an ordering. Using this order, we can then plug the original and new letters into the blanks given by the meta and shift them by the offsets in parentheses. The results are:
| W (−4) → T (−4) | SP |
| U (−12) → E (−2) | IC |
| I (−4) → R (+2) | ET |
| M (+10) → S (−10) | WI |
| C (+0) → L (−7) | CE |
The answer is SPICE TWICE.