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I've placed one letter for you.

What's the answer I'm looking for?


enter image description here

Hint 1

What's the product of the green things (they're not apples or limes if that's what you thought) on the top? And what does the grid look like? (colors significant)

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  • $\begingroup$ Ignore the white dots/stars inside the squares. Unintentional. $\endgroup$ Sep 8, 2022 at 8:59

1 Answer 1

6
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I think I've just cracked this. The answer should be...

Étienne Gueffier's Spanish Steps.

My solution path was as follows:

1. The red and yellow stripes bear a similarity to the flag of Spain:

Spanish flag

2. We are, therefore, likely looking for something to do with Spain which satisfies the title in that it sounds Spanish but actually isn't. Calling on my pub quiz trivia immediately makes me think of the Spanish Steps, a landmark in Rome, Italy (not Spain).

3. The diagram has 12 white boxes ascending along the diagonal... looking a lot like steps, in fact. Moreover, if we enter the letters SPANISHSTEPS into these 12 boxes they not only fit exactly but the already-given 'H' falls into precisely the right box. This is confirmation we are on the right track.

4. But what is the image at the top about? Well, noting that 1x2x9 is eighteen I scanned the Spanish Steps Wikipedia page for references with relevance to the number '18' but turned up nothing. However, I then noticed that the Spanish Steps were built using funds from the French diplomat Étienne Gueffier, and 'Étienne' sounds a bit like 'eighteen'... So perhaps these fruits may be something that sounds like 'Gueffier'. This led me to conclude that what we are looking at here are eighteen guavas.

5. Putting this all together gives us Étienne Gueffier's ("eighteen guavas") Spanish Steps, and I believe we have our solution!

EDIT: (post-solve) It seems that my interpretation of the top part of the puzzle was not at all what the OP intended, but a pleasant unintended coincidence! The OP's intent was instead...

...that these green objects are actually peas, not guavas (something I had in fact been using as my working hypothesis for a long time, but couldn't make work).

If we interpret the numbered peas as suggesting 'p1', 'p2' and 'p9', where 'p' means prime and the number besides it (say, n) represents the nth prime number, then this gives us a multiplication of 2 x 3 x 23 (the second, third and ninth primes), which has a value of 138 - and this is the number of steps in the Spanish Steps. And not a guava in sight...!

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  • $\begingroup$ Ah, yes, I had some idea about this but couldn't make sense of the first image, well done! $\endgroup$
    – hexomino
    Sep 21, 2022 at 21:01
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    $\begingroup$ @hexomino Thanks :) That was exactly my problem too. For a long time I thought they were peas, then mangos... This option only struck me when trying to back-solve from the info I found on the Wiki page - I'm not sure I've ever even seen one of these fruits before! $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Sep 21, 2022 at 21:03
  • $\begingroup$ Nice job! Your initial thought was right, they are indeed rot13(crnf) :) I was planning to say this in the second hint, but haven't thought about this puzzle for a while. Rot13(Fb lbh tbg crn1, crn2, crn9 be nf vagraqrq c1kc2kc9... Vg jnf whfg n erohf gb znxr fher lbh jrer ba gur evtug genpx. Vgf fbzrguvat nobhg gur cebqhpg bs gubfr snpgbef. $\endgroup$ Sep 22, 2022 at 4:26
  • $\begingroup$ Rot13(cevzr1*cevzr2*cevzr9 rdhnyf 138 juvpu vf gur gbgny ahzore bs fgrcf) $\endgroup$ Sep 22, 2022 at 8:03

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