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Here are three short 'property' puzzles I wrote.

In each puzzle the words to the left of the colon all have a (non-trivial) property that the word to the right of the colon does not have. What is that property? Note that it is a different property in each puzzle, and that they are ordered roughly in increasing difficulty.

  1. DANGLE, HEIGHT, LEASE, RANGE, SELECTION, TRAP, TRUSTIES : EARTH
  2. CARBON, COPPER, IRON, NEON, SILICON, TIN, XENON : GOLD
  3. ADJUST, ALHAMBRA, CALAIS, DRAMA, MAYOR, SMOKES, PANIC : ADVISE

An answer containing the solution to all three will be accepted.

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome on Puzzling.SE. Since you have created three puzzles, you might consider to create three different topics to present each of them. $\endgroup$
    – Evargalo
    Aug 5, 2019 at 14:33
  • $\begingroup$ @Evargalo Due to how short they are (and their similar puzzle structure) I thought it would be better to post them as one puzzle. Are there any guidelines on this? $\endgroup$
    – J Marza
    Aug 5, 2019 at 15:11
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    $\begingroup$ I think it's fine that they're together! I agree that posting them separately would probably be a bit too "spread-out". (It would be nice if there was something linking them together to justify having them in the same question, but that does seem a bit hard to do for this type of puzzle.) $\endgroup$
    – Deusovi ♦
    Aug 5, 2019 at 15:42
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    $\begingroup$ I would just like to note that, while people enjoy these types of puzzles, they oft seem to me to be at risk of being too arbitrary. In general, for a puzzle such as this, one can find many number of differences between the properties of the word on the right and words on the left, therefore, there are frequently several possible answers. And in my (short) experience here, the OPs usually don't care about that and insist that the right answer is only the one they imagined, which doesn't leave a very good feeling. Eg, 1st puzzle: words on left start with a consonant, word on the right not. $\endgroup$
    – Gnudiff
    Aug 6, 2019 at 14:38

1 Answer 1

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First puzzle

New words can be formed by placing the first letter at the end. (e.g. DANGLE → ANGLED).

EARTH has the reverse property: it becomes a new word by placing the final letter in front (HEART)

Full list:
DANGLE → ANGLED
HEIGHT → EIGHTH
LEASE → EASEL
RANGE → ANGER
SELECTION → ELECTIONS
TRAP → RAPT
TRUSTIES → RUSTIEST

Second puzzle

Words can be formed using element symbols (e.g. C-Ar-B-O-N).

GOLD does not have this property, since neither G nor Go is an existing element symbol.

Full list:
CARBON → C-Ar-B-O-N
COPPER → C-O-P-P-Er
IRON → Ir-O-N
NEON → Ne-O-N
SILICON → Si-Li-C-O-N
TIN → Ti-N
XENON → Xe-N-O-N

Third puzzle

Biblical names can be formed form the words after removing one letter (e.g.: ADJUST - T = JUDAS)

ADVISE does not have this property.

Full list:
ADJUST - T = JUDAS
ALHAMBRA - L = ABRAHAM
CALAIS - L = ISAAC
DRAMA - R = ADAM
MAYOR - O = MARY
SMOKES - K = MOSES
PANIC - P = CAIN

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  • $\begingroup$ Great! This was my first puzzle posted, do you have any feedback/comments on it? $\endgroup$
    – J Marza
    Aug 6, 2019 at 8:30
  • $\begingroup$ Gur vqrn jnf gung 'nqivfr' jnf pybfr ohg abg pybfr rabhtu gb pbagnva 'qnivq'. ohg znlor hfvat 'nqivfrq' vafgrnq, sbezvat 'qnivq' jvgu gjb yrggref fcner, jbhyq unir orra orggre. $\endgroup$
    – J Marza
    Aug 6, 2019 at 8:45
  • $\begingroup$ @JMarza Nice first puzzle, I liked it! Keep them coming ;) $\endgroup$
    – Levieux
    Aug 6, 2019 at 9:17
  • $\begingroup$ I like that there's a twist on the 1st and 3rd ones, but why not the 2nd? Or did we miss something? $\endgroup$
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Aug 6, 2019 at 13:25
  • $\begingroup$ @DarrelHoffman I thought GOLD was fitting "bire bgure ryrzragf orpnhfr uvfgbevpnyyl nypurzvfgf unir gevrq gb znxr tbyq sebz bgure ryrzragf ohg snvyrq". But it's more flavour than a twist. Something I will work on for next time. $\endgroup$
    – J Marza
    Aug 6, 2019 at 13:37

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