C-UMS04 (Sep 7, 2022)
Puzzle
“It’s all a bunch of Maloney-Schmaloney: 20TFS-4, 26TBT-5.6, 26TOE-12, 20AGF-9, 28YC-4.5, 19TSOS-5”
Cipher | Western Trivia | 1 Word
Clue
Hover over the clues if you require!
Clue 1: 'Maloney', huh? Any actors (and/or directors) in 'Western' films by that name in the early 1900s?
Clue 2: TFS, huh? What movies did Leo D. Maloney act in 1920?
Clue 3: So the fourth letter of its name is...
Answer and Explanation
Answer: Flip-Flop
Explanation: Maloney is refering to Leo D. Maloney, who was an actor. He acted in The Fatal Sign in '20, The Blind Trail in '26, The Outlaw Express in '20, A Gamblin' Fool in '20, Yellow Contraband in '28, and The Spitfire Of Seville in '19. Indexing the letters gives the answer.
Summary of Receipt
Summary
Transcript
[BRANCH] LONG ISLAND
[SERVER] EMPLOYEE NO. 116
[DATE] 9/7/22
[INDEX ID] UMS04
[SECURITY] CAFE
Y'all gotta know, "UMS" is a mighty poor Case ID, ain't it? What with the… well, y'know. We label things from Diner to Cafe… Eh, forget it. Don't make no difference anyhow. What does matter is them Protodemons we've been workin' to chop down, with Rasputin's help and whatnot. Still a strange turn of events if'n you ask me, but I reckon beggars—and those stuck in a wakin' sleep for a month—can't be choosers. And truth be told, Rasputin's been right helpful far as I'm concerned.
We've been tryin' No. 62's flip-flop, weed killer/rot killer plan. Seems it works, to a point. Weed killer makes the nice ones explode into a big ol' puff of, well, rot, I reckon. Then they reform later into them twisted, nasty Protodemons. Nasty sons of guns, but the rot killer sets 'em straight—brings 'em back to bein' pleasant (more or less). Flip-flop. Problem is, Eve went and ran all these Protodemons through the Fountain of Youth, so we can't square any of their tabs for good.
Rasputin made a solid point, though. We gotta treat these "unclean magic beasts" like they're Elders or some such, 'cause, well, they more or less are—just with an extra chemical twist. And believe me, I've wrangled enough Elders in my day to know we just need to flush these critters right down the Black Tide.
...
'Course, that's if we still had access to the Black Tide. For Eden to come back, it had to shove the Tide out. Swapped places with it. So… we gotta untangle that mess first. But if we want to stop this current onslaught, we oughta figure out how to send these Protodemons back to Eden and keep 'em there for good. And wouldn't you know it, Rasputin's got one hell of an idea on how we might just do that.