THE ICE-CREAM MAN COMETH

A parlor game in numerous scenes
by
Joshua "Peppermint Stick" Kosman
Ann "Dulce de Leche" Daniels

This puzzle was first presented at the 31st Equinox party, a gathering of word puzzle aficionados held semi-annually in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1984.

The next Equinox party, the 37th, will be held in Berkeley on Saturday September 20, 2003. The theme for this event will be all things Shakespeare, since he wrote 37 plays.  All puzzles and games are written by the attendees, most (but not all) of whom are members of the National Puzzlers League.

Note that the clues in part one are very cryptic, and involve some serious word play. If you are not familiar with cryptic crossword clues, they may seem intimidating and inpenetrable.  If nobody solves the Masters level puzzle in the first week after its release, we will provide some hints on this page.

My parents named me Carabeth-Melissa Eugenia O'Neill, but you can call me Caramel. I work for the security department of Baskin-Robbins. I guard the ice creams, and the formulas for making them. You probably think it's an easy gig-after all, B-R has 31 flavors, so how hard can it be? But 31 is just what they have in the stores-there are 950 altogether, including historical lulus like Gorbachocolate and timely flavors like Back to School Crunch. And yours truly keeps 'em all locked up tight.

This case happened last February, on a day cold enough to freeze the marrow in your bones (which may be the only flavor that Baskin-Robbins hasn't thought of yet). As usual on a Monday morning, I start by checking in with my boss, Gino Gelato, head of security. He tells me that Bananas Foster, the eccentric head of B-R R&D and our in-house computer expert, has been killed the night before, right there in his own lab.

Not only that, but Bananas' formula for a top-secret new flavor is missing. This was going to be a cyberflavor for the 21st century, the first ice cream flavor expressly designed for the digital information age. But someone got to Bananas before he could put his plan into operation.

"Back in Naples, where I come from," my boss says, "men are killed for honor, not ice cream!"

"Naples, huh?" I say. (I'm from Brooklyn, myself.) "Italian ices, right?"

"No. I don't like ice cream," he says brusquely, with a look that freezes the conversation right there.

I decide to can the small talk and pay attention to the case. My assignment is to find out what Bananas' new flavor was, who killed him, and who the killer planned to sell the secret to. My boss waves a file in my face marked "Our Competitors." It's got a list in it of all the other big-time ice cream manufacturers: Frusen Gladje, Dreyer's and Breyer's (the evil twins, we call them), Häagen-Dazs, Double Rainbow and Ben & Jerry's. He also gives me the names of some people who might know parts of the formula. I get right to work.

My first stop is Bananas' lab. The police and poor Bananas are still there. Bananas' mortal remains, that is-he's stiff, cold, a regular Foster Freeze. I feel awful. I mean, the guy was nuttier than toasted almond and maple walnut put together, but nobody deserves to end up looking like Rocky Roadkill. Then a bloody pattern on the wall catches my eye. I look closer. Can it be? Foster left a message in the form of a puzzle, written in his dying moments with his own blood!

The grid resembles a winding road, with a few rocks strewn along it, and there are two sets of cryptic clues. The answers to the first group of clues can be placed sequentially in the grid from top to bottom in clue order, while the answers to the second group occupy the same squares but in the reverse order. When I anagram the letters indicated by the rocks, I get a flavor of ice cream.