GeekDad Puzzle of the Week Solution: Contiguous Consonants

Here's last week's puzzle as presented: Over the past few weeks, my wife Allison and I have done our annual summer trip up north with the kids to visit family in northernmost New York and southern Ontario, Canada. During the Canadian segment, I went for a drive with my father-in-law so that he could speak at a local college. On the way, we passed signs for Arnprior, Ontario — an unusual town, I commented, because its name had four consonants in a row. That got me thinking… are there a lot of reasonably common words with four or more consonants in a row?

Here is this week's puzzle, as presented:

Having an almost 20-hour road trip back gave me a lot of time to work out several phrases that incorporated words with multiple adjacent non-vowels or "contiguous consonants." For purposes of this puzzle, please consider the letter "y" strictly as a consonant. In parentheses, after each phrase is the number of words, and each word's count of contiguous consonants.

  • Ice-free, super tall buildings in Scranton (3w/6c)
  • Encoding long words in a fixed orbit (3w/6c)
  • Crazy fish-studier's two wheeled transport (3w/5c)
  • Melodic equivalents to the "Queen of Diamonds" (Condon)(3w/6c)
  • Sufficiently valuable magic during the America's Cup (3w/5c)
  • Where playing Beethoven on your iPhone was invented (3w/5c)
  • Artificial disk-flip game (2w/5c)
  • Rotational energy "battery," 10-10 meters across (2w/5c)

Congratulations to Andy Arzipe, who presented one of the very few complete correct solutions. He is this week's winner of the $50 ThinkGeekgift certificate, and his solution appears below.

  • Ice-free, super tall buildings in Scranton (3w/6c) - uNCRYSTallized peNNSYLVania SKYSCRapers
  • Encoding long words in a fixed orbit (3w/6c) - geoSYNCHRonous poLYSYLLabic eNCRYPTion
  • Crazy fish-studier's two wheeled transport (3w/5c) - PSYCHotic iCHTHYologist's motoRCYCLe
  • Melodic equivalents to the "Queen of Diamonds" (Condon)(3w/6c) - RHYTHMic poSTHYPNotic GLYPHS (or caTCHPHRase)
  • Sufficiently valuable magic during the America's Cup (3w/5c) - woRTHWHile yaCHTSMan's (or yaCHTSWoman's) wiTCHCRaft
  • Where playing Beethoven on your iPhone was invented (3w/5c) - touCHSCReen SYMPHony biRTHPLace
  • Artificial disk-flip game (2w/5c) - SYNTHetic tiDDLYWinks
  • Rotational energy "battery," 10-10 meters across (2w/5c) - aNGSTRom FLYWHeel

If you are shopping while working on Garth's puzzle this week, please use GEEKDAD81AD to get $10 off a ThinkGeekpurchase of $50 or more.