Drip Quote - Solution

Written by Joanna Sands and Patrick Xia

Answer: FLOW DIAGRAMS

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This puzzle is like a dropquote, except there are a few rules that we need to figure out from the flavortext. There are 29 clouds and one gridded house.

  1. Each cloud is a block of letters, and each letter occupies one square in the grid (the house).
  2. The house fills up in a deterministic order: at each point in time, we know exactly where the next drop will go. This figure gives the exact order of all the spaces in the grid.
    193
    194
    195
    196
    192
    189
    190
    191
    186
    187
    188
    164
    179
    180
    181
    182
    183
    184
    185
    161
    162
    163
    175
    176
    177
    178
    154
    155
    156
    157
    158
    159
    160
    112
    113
    171
    172
    173
    174
    165
    166
    167
    147
    148
    149
    150
    151
    152
    153
    110
    111
    168
    169
    170
    140
    141
    142
    143
    144
    145
    146
    114
    115
    116
    117
    108
    109
    130
    131
    132
    133
    134
    135
    136
    137
    138
    139
    102
    103
    104
    105
    106
    107
    129
    122
    123
    124
    125
    126
    95
    96
    97
    98
    99
    100
    101
    64
    65
    66
    128
    118
    119
    120
    121
    89
    90
    91
    92
    93
    94
    59
    60
    61
    62
    63
    127
    82
    83
    84
    85
    86
    87
    88
    54
    55
    56
    57
    58
    51
    52
    53
    79
    80
    81
    67
    68
    69
    70
    71
    43
    44
    45
    46
    47
    48
    49
    50
    76
    77
    78
    35
    36
    37
    38
    39
    40
    41
    42
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    74
    75
    32
    33
    34
    26
    27
    28
    29
    30
    31
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    72
    73
    19
    20
    21
    22
    23
    24
    25
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
  3. Each cloud contains up to 8 letters. However, we are only given the number of unique letters.
  4. Each cloud may have extra letters that do not go into the grid.
  5. Words wrap around the house. This is not clued, but can be inferred from the differently colored bars (black vs. gray) and from the fact that several segments would have length 1 or 2 if they were not allowed to wrap around.

The first step, after figuring out the rules, is to notice that the first word is likely BASEMENT and the last word is likely ATTIC. This can be found by rearranging some letters in the lowest cloud (to get BASEMEN, and the T is in the next cloud) or rearranging some letters in the highest cloud (to get ATTIC). In addition, the flavor text suggests that “all the rooms” are under threat. These suggest that the words filling in the grid will be rooms of a house.

There are a couple resources we can use to find these rooms. This Wikipedia list and this website are helpful resources, along with an anagram or Scrabble word solver.

As mentioned in the rules (4.), some letters are not used. These letters are used for extraction. Reading in the order they would have “evaporated” (bottom-up), we get the answer FLOW DIAGRAMS.

The following is the completed grid. Hover over the table on the right to see the location of drops on the left.

29
A
29
T
29
T
29
I
29
C
28
T
28
H
29
R
28
O
28
N
28
E
25
B
27
I
27
L
27
L
27
I
27
A
27
R
28
D
24
U
24
T
25
I
26
L
26
I
26
T
27
Y
23
N
23
U
24
R
24
S
24
E
24
R
24
Y
17
S
17
T
26
U
26
D
26
I
26
O
25
G
25
Y
25
M
22
W
22
A
23
I
23
T
23
I
23
N
23
G
17
L
17
O
25
B
25
B
25
Y
21
K
21
I
22
T
22
C
22
H
22
E
22
N
17
G
17
A
18
M
18
E
17
C
17
O
20
N
20
S
20
E
20
R
21
V
21
A
21
T
21
O
21
R
21
Y
16
L
16
I
16
B
16
R
16
A
16
R
20
Y
19
P
19
A
19
N
19
I
19
C
15
R
15
E
15
A
15
D
15
I
16
N
16
G
10
T
10
O
10
O
19
L
18
L
18
O
18
F
19
T
14
O
14
F
14
F
14
I
14
C
15
E
9
F
9
A
10
M
10
I
10
L
19
Y
13
S
13
I
13
T
13
T
13
I
13
N
14
G
9
S
9
A
9
L
9
O
9
N
8
G
8
A
8
R
12
A
12
G
13
E
10
S
11
T
11
U
11
D
11
Y
6
O
7
B
7
S
7
E
7
R
7
V
8
A
8
T
12
O
12
R
12
Y
5
W
5
O
6
R
6
K
6
S
6
H
6
O
6
P
2
D
2
R
3
A
3
W
3
I
11
N
12
G
5
L
5
O
5
O
4
L
4
O
4
U
4
N
5
G
5
E
2
L
2
A
2
U
2
N
2
D
11
R
11
Y
3
F
3
U
3
R
3
N
3
A
4
C
4
E
1
B
1
A
1
S
1
E
1
M
1
E
1
N
2
T
ACIRT
DEHNOT
AILRY
DILOSTU
BGIMY
EMRSTUY
GINTU
ACEHNTW
AIKORTVY
AENRSY
ACILNPTY
EFLMOR
ACGLOST
ABGILNR
ADEGIR
ACFGIO
EINST
AGIORY
DNRTUY
DILMOST
AFLNOSW
AGORT
BERSV
HKLOPS
EGLORW
CEFLNOU
AFINRUW
ADLNRTU
ABEMNS
FLOWDIAGRAMS

Author's Notes

PX: This was the last puzzle written for this puzzlehunt, as another idea for this answer fell through. This idea came to me when I realized we did not have a word-grid style puzzle even though our team was quite obsessed with dropquotes back in April. As it was raining and we had to replace the answer with FLOW DIAGRAMS, I wondered if we could make a “dripquote”, where the letters don’t fall into a single line. After a couple iterations over this idea, we created this puzzle.