2. The Bard – Solution
On the board are several four-line rhyming stanzas with the last word missing.
The goal is to fill in the missing word in each stanza. Heroes can figure out what the missing word is by finding a rhyming word that fits the clues from the rest of the stanza.
The stanzas and their missing words are as follows:
| # | Stanza | Missing Word |
| 1 | To write songs I use this feather And an inkpot I shant spill. One knows that all your swords are weaker than my _______ | QUILL |
| 2 | To win the war that’s upcoming Keep faith in your crew, you must. You don’t possess three lives, you see, So in others you should _______ | TRUST |
| 3 | It’s really too bad that I must partake In a battle to save this whole nation, I was asked to join a party at six, but I declined the _______ | INVITATION |
| 4 | Use this in a game of dungeons, a numbered rock with faces plenty. I roll for my fate with this, With etched sides one through _______ | TWENTY |
| 5 | Sir Luffy is on a quest For business and for his pleasure To find a piece that’s not of two With pirates, he seeks a ________ | TREASURE |
| 6 | On these you may find kings and queens, In games that can be quite hard, And when Sakura needs to fight some fiends, Two times she might pull a ________ | CARD |
| 7 | This word has many meanings, And it can describe these three things: It can be a dance or a type of music, Find it on a playground: it’s a _____. | SWING |
| 8 | When my cousin was a knight, From his sleep he was awoken, He fell jumping out of bed, In six places his arm was _______ | BROKEN |
| 9 | A long pole with a sharp point, Equip one to instill fear This is a weapon that you can throw, Aim it true, a mighty _______ | SPEAR |
Heroes should then figure out that each of the lyrics contains a number. We’ve highlighted the numbers in the lyrics below:
| # | Stanza | Missing Word |
| 1 | To write songs I use this feather And an inkpot I shant spill. One knows that all your swords are weaker than my _______ | QUILL |
| 2 | To win the war that’s upcoming Keep faith in your crew, you must. You don’t possess three lives, you see, So in others you should _______ | TRUST |
| 3 | It’s really too bad that I must partake In a battle to save this whole nation, I was asked to join a party at six, but I declined the _______ | INVITATION |
| 4 | Use this in a game of dungeons, a numbered rock with faces plenty. I roll for my fate with this, With etched sides one through _______ | TWENTY |
| 5 | Sir Luffy is on a quest For business and for his pleasure To find a piece that’s not of two With pirates, he seeks a ________ | TREASURE |
| 6 | On these you may find kings and queens, In games that can be quite hard, And when Sakura needs to fight some fiends, Two times she might pull a ________ | CARD |
| 7 | This word has many meanings, And it can describe these three things: It can be a dance or a type of music, Find it on a playground: it’s a _____. | SWING |
| 8 | When my cousin was a knight, From his sleep he was awoken, He fell jumping out of bed, In six places his arm was _______ | BROKEN |
| 9 | A long pole with a sharp point, Equip one to instill fear This is a weapon that you can throw, Aim it true, a mighty _______ | SPEAR |
Using these numbers, Heroes need to extract a letter from the missing word based on the letter in the position of the number in the lyrics. For example, if the lyric’s number is “one”, Heroes need to extract the first letter from the missing word, if “two”, the second letter, and so on. Therefore, the letters needed to be extracted are:
| Missing Word | Number | Letter |
| QUILL | 1 | Q |
| TRUST | 3 | U |
| INVITATION | 6 | A |
| TWENTY | 1 | T |
| TREASURE | 2 | R |
| CARD | 2 | A |
| SWING | 3 | I |
| BROKEN | 6 | N |
| SPEAR | 1 | S |
The other way to solve the puzzle is to realize that the lyrics are of four lines in an A-B-A-B rhyming sequence, which is exactly the structure of the namesake of the solution: QUATRAINS.
We also accepted QUATRAIN as a solution, though we were much happier when the solutions handed in were pluralized.