h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Let's see how you get on with this one - I'm not yet sure whether it's going to be ridiculously easy or impossibly difficult...

1. Identify these 6-letter words, whose letters are in alphabetical order (e.g. ALMOST):

a) pants
b) medical test
c) French politician
d) Jewels, trinkets
e) zoo animals
f) fabric

2. And a couple in reverse alphabetical order:
g) marine invertebrate
h) tired

Icy

e. might be tigers or zebras. Chances are, with one more entry after it, zebras won't work. So I go with tigers.

f. tissue would work. it's also alphabetically after tigers

g. could be mussel

if g. had been plural, it could have been octopi

I read this as requiring the letters within each word to be in alphabetical order as they are in ALMOST.


A bcdefghijk L M n O pqr S T uvwxyz.

I took "in alphabetical order" to mean that the first letter of a. was alphabetically before the first letter in b., and so forth.

If you translate the English word politician into French, you get politicien. I see no other possibility online, though French researchers might be able to think of others. Let's solve Fermat's last theorem too while we're at it .

Hi Paul, Baron Grim's right. The letters in each word are in Alphabetical order, not the words themselves. Sorry this was confusing.

b) could be BIOPSY

b) Biopsy is correct!

Excellent! These are giving me brain freeze.

e) CHIMPS

a). Chinos

Both correct

I was thinking of the British "pants".

And I was thinking of mad dogs in the midday sun.

I don't want you to suffer too long with this one, so I'll start the hints early:

1
c) (French politician) - former president, sort of.
d) (jewels, trinkets) - doesn't end in S.
f) (fabric) - think upholstery

2 (reversed order)
g) (marine invertebrate) - commercially harvested.
h) (tired) - ends in ED.

What have we got so far

a) pants = Chinos
b) medical test = Biopsy
c) French politician = (CLUE: former president, sort of)
d) Jewels, trinkets = (CLUE: doesn't end in S)
e) zoo animals = CHIMPS
f) fabric = (CLUE: think upholstery)


2. And a couple in reverse alphabetical order:
g) marine invertebrate (CLUE: commercially harvested)
h) tired - (CLUE: ends in ED.)

And for reference:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba

Wrong time of year for brain freeze. More like vapor lock in my case

Sweaty smiley -->