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You are presented with five groups of five words. All of the letters in each word share a common trait, except for one. The rule governing which letter is different is consistent within each group.

The unique letters in each group spell a word. Applying the group's rule to that word produces a single meta-letter. Use the five meta-letters to find the meta-word which answers the title question. 

asia
maui
scratch
eerie
auto


blacklight
foreshadow
dynasty
napalm
roleplaying


gasped
deadbeat
horticulturist
bagpipe
decoded


corrupt
snowplow
nervous
yawn
challengeable


perpetrator
without
falafel
equator
tidy

Bonus: What is the meta-meta-letter?

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2 Answers 2

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1. smart (only vowel/consonant) > a
2. loyal (double letter) > l
3. stoic (only letter with/without “hole” in it) > o
4. clean (only letter in its half of the alphabet) > n
5. ahead (only letter on its row on keyboard) > e
Putting it together: alone > l (only letter reaching top of line height, also, "l is the loneliest number")

Credit @deusovi for group 5 solution.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice work! Everything is correct except for the bonus. The case of the words was chosen purposefully. $\endgroup$
    – jamisans
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 1:09
  • $\begingroup$ How bout that? @jamisans $\endgroup$
    – tjs352
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 1:14
  • $\begingroup$ That's the one I was thinking of! $\endgroup$
    – jamisans
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 2:13
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asia, maui, scratch, eerie, auto

Each word has all letters consonants but one, or all letters vowels but one. The out-of-place letters spell SMART.

blacklight, foreshadow, dynasty, napalm, roleplaying

Each letter appears exactly once except one; the letters that appear twice spell LOYAL.

gasped, deadbeat, horticulturist, bagpipe, decoded

The word is STOIC, and the extra letter is O. I'm not sure what the property is here, but you can logically deduce that the alphabet is split in two here: one group has abdegop in it, and the other has chilrstu in it.

corrupt, snowplow, nervous, yawn, challengeable

???

perpetrator, without, falafel, equator, tidy

All letters come from the same row of a QWERTY keyboard but one; the out-of-place letters spell AHEAD.

Meta-letters

SMART's only vowel is A. LOYAL's only repeated letter is L. STOIC's only [???] is O. ????? AHEAD's only letter not on the middle row of a QWERTY keyboard is E.

The special letters are ALONE. Fitting for a puzzle about odd ones out!

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  • $\begingroup$ Not sure what protocol is for this, but I credited you for part 5 in my solution; I promise I came up with the rest 😅 $\endgroup$
    – tjs352
    Commented Aug 22, 2018 at 0:40

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