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I have been working hard all year. You know what that means, it's time for a summer vacation! This puzzle will tell you where I am heading!

There are three puzzle sets, with 9 clues each. Each set has a pattern that is revealed through the answers(first letters). You will need to complete the pattern by filling in the 3 missing clues. These three clues will reveal where I am going on vacation.

Homophones pairs

  1. Bob had to put up the umbrella to protect himself from the sun's bright beams.
  2. Have you met the guy that delivers our letters and packages?
  3. While my sedan was in the shop I had to borrow a dealership car, because I don’t have any friends to carpool with.
  4. I do not know if it will be sunny or if it will be cloudy.
  5. When you mix dough, don’t use your patella like Alice did.
  6. I had to walk slowly in the water because I was getting heavily waterlogged.
  7. I have a strange feeling about a North American lake.
  8. Bankers verify the validity of every paper transaction a drawer makes.
  9. ???
  10. Bob pedaled his bike on the street.

What is the Right Word™?
What is the right word™?

Right Words™, Wrong Words™
EIGHT,TWELVE
SANDY,DIRTY
FLOAT,DESCEND
GONE,STAY
HELLO,GOODBYE
RANKING,CATEGORIZE
VOWEL,CONSONANT
FORGE,ESTABLISH
NOTION,CONCEPT
???, ???

Anagram Pairs

  1. Bob couldn’t understand how the _____ was able to _____ out of its cage.
  2. There is an Irish ______ that lives on my ______.
  3. Some Native Americans would call a(n) _____ their modest _____.

Find the set of objects referenced in these sentences and the one that is missing.


  1. Bob: Oh Alice, are you Canadian?
    Alice: Why do you ask?
    Bob: I just heard you say “Eh”!
  2. May Veronica eat my jicama slaw now?
  3. We still don’t want to leave a stone unturned, nor that rock.

Here are 4 sets of 4 words. Each set of words fit a certain criteria. Each set will give 2-3 letters that create the combining word.
Combining Word: Rearranged Marine Animals

  1. Beg, Germ, Me, Slog
  2. Inn, Medic, Temper, Valid
  3. Mode, Real, War, Who
  4. ???, ???, ???, ???

So, where am I spending my summer vacation?

Hint #1

The patterns may be a little more difficult than I thought, but think about more site related thing. Also, for the "Right" word, the opposite of right is indeed left.

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4 Answers 4

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You are spending your holiday

Here on PSE!!

The first letters of the title say

META - this is important when finding the patterns

Homophone pairs:

1. RAISE (put up) and RAYS (sunlight)
2. MALE (the guy) and MAIL (letters and packages)
3. LOAN (rent) and LONE (friendless)
4. WHETHER (if/or) and WEATHER (sunny/cloudy)
5. KNEAD (mix dough) and KNEED (patella)
6. WADE (walk in water) and WEIGHED (waterlogged)
7. EERIE (strange) and ERIE (Lake Erie)
8. CHECK (verify) and CHEQUE (paper transaction)
10. RODE (pedalled) and ROAD (street)

The pattern:

The first letters represent the top tags on the site:

Riddle, mathematics, logical-deduction, word, knowledge, wordplay, enigmatic-puzzle, cipher, PATTERN, rhyme

So word for nine is

PATTERN (P)

Right word

Right words form a new word when the first letter is replaced with the letter to the right of it on a qwerty keyboard (well done @user70451 for finding the qwerty rule!)

Eight -> Right
Sandy -> Dandy
Float -> Gloat
Gone -> Hone
Hello -> Jello
Ranking -> Tanking
Vowel -> Bowel
Forge -> Gorge
Notion -> Motion

These first letters of the new words

Are the first letter of the top users on the site (as of now):

Rand al'Thor, Deuosvi, Gareth M, hexonimo, jafe, Tom, Bass, Gamow, M Oehm, Stiv (S)

Wordplay

user70451 found 1 and 3, I found 4 and 5 and oAlt found 2, 6-9.

Go check out their answers for explanations and consider leaving an upvote! I won't be explaining the solutions here, just including the answer so all the answers are in one place. Hopefully this will make it easier to find the patterns.

Anagram pairs:

1: SNAKE, SNEAK (S) 2: SETTER, STREET (S) 3: ADOBE, ABODE (A)

Missing objects:

4: These mention all the vowels (Oh, you, why, I, Eh) except for ‘E’
5: This is a mnemonic for the planets in order from the sun, and URANUS (U) is missing
6: SOUTH (S)

Combining word:

7: AN
8: ATE
9: M
10: ES (MANATEES)

The pattern for the third is

The sites with the most traffic

So the word is

Stack overflow, Super user, Ask ubuntu, English Lang, Unix and Linux, Server fault, Arqade, Ask different, Mathematics, English lang learners (E)

Therefore, the overall answer is

P, S, E which is here!

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    $\begingroup$ @QuantumTwinkie ah ok, I wasn’t sure how that would be said :P $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 0:41
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    $\begingroup$ @QuantumTwinkie found pattern one $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 8:21
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    $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil Aha -- and a similar logic yields the third pattern, too $\endgroup$
    – user70451
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 9:20
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    $\begingroup$ @QuantumTwinkie solved it all. I'm not sure as to why those particular words are chosen for set 2, but I worked out the pattern before working out the answer. $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 9:33
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    $\begingroup$ @user70451 I have a feeling we don't need to find an actual word pair, just what the letter the next word pair would start with. Pattern itself isn't a homophone so $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 9:38
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The first part of the third set also includes:

1. Bob couldn’t understand how the snake was able to sneak out of its cage.
3. Some Native Americans would call a(n) adobe their modest abode.

EDIT 1: And a stab in the dark (ignoring, for example, the sequences of letters derived from each set of clues):

Each part has an unknown clue. The third part's final clue could be (as a random example) Fir, Gang, Pip, and Ton -- which is then solved with ES giving the letter E. The ninth clue of the first set could use (PAIRS,PEARS), (PAIL,PALE), (PRINTS,PRINCE [a stretch]) etc as solutions, yielding the letter P. Then the second set's missing clue presumably solves to the letter S.

Whence we find the place where you are spending your vacation:

PSE -- or right here!

EDIT 2:
It seems we've found the answer but not the solution. Following mohirl's investigation into Right Words:

If we replace the first letter of each Right Word with the first consonant alphabetically to the 'right' of that letter we get:
EIGHT -> FIGHT
SANDY -> TANDY (?)
FLOAT -> GLOAT
GONE -> HONE
HELLO -> JELLO
RANKING -> ??
VOWEL -> ??
FORGE -> GORGE
NOTION -> POTION
which yields the letter sequence: F,T?,G,H,J,?,?,G,P,?

Or, alternatively unsatisfactory, we get a partial answer by noting:

One of the letters of the word RIGHT can be used to replace the first letter of each word to create a new word:
EIGHT -> RIGHT/TIGHT
SANDY -> HANDY/RANDY
FLOAT -> GLOAT
GONE -> GONE/HONE/TONE (allowing for self replacement)
HELLO -> HELLO (see above)
RANKING -> RANKING (...)
VOWEL -> TOWEL
FORGE -> GORGE
NOTION -> ??
This leads to the letter sequence only consisting of letters in the word RIGHT.

I have not got any traction on the letter sequences, although the third one is:

an anagram of 'AA MASSEUSE' -- presumably not as good as the AAA version.

EDIT 3:
The answer to the third pattern is

English (as in English Language Learners, the 10th most popular SE site) -- the top nine are Stack Overflow, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, English Language & Usage, Unix & Linux, Server Fault, Arqade, Ask Different, and Mathematics (SSAEUSAAM)

EDIT 4: A Right Word is a word that

forms another English word when you replace the first letter with the letter to the right of it on a standard QWERTY keyboard,

which have already been enumerated in Beastly Gerbil's answer.

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    $\begingroup$ Correct! Also, welcome to Puzzling Stack Exchange :) $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 13:54
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    $\begingroup$ Wow, Correct edit regarding my destination! At that is left to solve is the final logic for part 2 and why I used these patterns! $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 19:44
  • $\begingroup$ I have added a hint regarding the pattern :) $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 2:14
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    $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil Awww, you guys...! (blushes) $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 9:34
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    $\begingroup$ @Stiv on the rare occasion you don't solve the puzzle, you're the solution instead :P $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 9:34
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For the last set,

2. There is an Irish setter that lives on my street.

6. (WE ST)ill don’t want to leav(E A ST)one unturned, (NOR TH)at rock. Of course, SOUTH is missing.

7-9. Each set of four words has a similar trick: adding the same suffix to the words in a set will yield words that are still valid English words.

AN: began, German, mean, slogan
ATE: innate, medicate, temperate, validate
M: modem, realm, warm, whom

And I have a feeling that the marine animals we are looking for are manatees, with the addition of ES to the letters we already have.

About the yet unsolved, I have completely no idea.

(For the first set I took the letters common between each pair of homophones, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it.)

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    $\begingroup$ I am thoroughly enjoying the idea that #1 in the last set might be BAKER and BREAK - which from context it very obviously is not! Unless Bob is a psychopath... :) $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 13:34
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    $\begingroup$ I have added a hint regarding the pattern :) $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 2:14
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Possible starting point for the Right/Wrong words:

All the Right words can have their first letter changed to form another English word. I don't think any of the Wrong words can.

There are quite a number of possibilities for each though, except for

HELLO > JELLO

Given that the OPs comment below hints that this is special, perhaps it's that

It's really a brand name which should be capitalised? Although I can't make the others fit that.

Taking a stab at the others anyway:

EIGHT > RIGHT (other options, but the list is called Right words)
SANDY > TANDY (going with brand names) or CANDY / DANDY / HANDY / MANDY / RANDY
FLOAT > BLOAT/GLOAT
GONE > loads (BONE, CONE, DONE, FONE(?), HONE, LONE, NONE, TONE)
HELLO > JELLO (only possibility)
RANKING > BANKING/JANKING/TANKING. I'm choosing to omit one
VOWEL > BOWEL/TOWEL
FORGE > GORGE/JORGE (if we're allowing names, though unlikely)
NOTION > LOTION/MOTION
??? > ???

Giving us the letters:

R, ? , B/G, ?, J, B/J/T, B/T, G, L/M, ?

Which seems of no help whatsoever

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  • $\begingroup$ @Mohirl well, sorry to break it to you, but the first WRONG WORD would skip this logic. TWELVE>DWELVE. $\endgroup$
    – Physics Noob
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 17:32
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    $\begingroup$ I don't think DWELVE is a word? $\endgroup$
    – Mohirl
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 17:46
  • $\begingroup$ Those are great possible answers but which one is "right" (hint hint) :) $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 18:18
  • $\begingroup$ @Mohirl Well, I googled it, and "Urban Dictionary" did show it exists. But then, another resource says it isn't an English word at all. Infact, the meaning conveyed by the first resource is pretty close to "Delve", of which Dwelve is a mispelling. Green light I guess, my friend. $\endgroup$
    – Physics Noob
    Commented Jul 15, 2020 at 19:14
  • $\begingroup$ I have added a hint regarding the pattern :) $\endgroup$
    – Goose
    Commented Jul 17, 2020 at 2:14

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