Identify these IKEA items from the catalogue. Then, use the Swedish diacritics as Morse code (where the overring Å is a dot, and the umlaut Ä is a dash).
Objects
Diacritics
Morse Code
Letter
MÅLERÅS + SKÄRLÅNGA
o o .. o
..-.
F
EFTERFRÅGAD + PIGGÅL
o o
..
I
VATTENTÄT + HUVUDTÅG
.. o
-.
N
SMÅÄTA + MÅTTLIG + SMÅBIT
o .. o o
.-..
L
TRÅDTICKA + SOCKERÄRT
o ..
.-
A
ÄDELSTEN + LÅNESPELARE
.. o
-.
N
ÄNGSBLÅVINGE + MÅNTAGG
.. o o
-..
D
This gives FINLAND, which is ?close enough to Sweden.
Author's notes
Author: Dan
The idea behind this puzzle actually came to me when I was watching an episode of Gruen on ABC. During their analysis of an IKEA advertisement, one of the panellists mentioned how iconic IKEA was and how close to every household in Australia would likely have something from IKEA. I thought this was such a lovely sentiment and wanted to dedicate this puzzle to the universal adoration that we seem to have for IKEA.
One of the challenges with this puzzle’s mechanism was clearly establishing the link between the two types of a’s with diacritics and Morse code. In some Swedish handwriting, a macron (ā) may sometimes be used in place of an umlaut (ä), which offers some legitimacy to having “ä” represent a dash and “å” represent a dot. However, I imagine that not a lot of solvers would be experienced with handwritten Swedish, so we resolved to include a somewhat subtle hint in the flavour text and a somewhat more explicit hint 24 hours later.
One of the other challenges with this puzzle was limiting the number of objects used — surprisingly, there were not many items from IKEA that contained two a’s with diacritics and I was forced to include a third object in row 4 without repeating previously-used items.
I also thought it was funny that I managed to include a kettle in VATTENTÄT in this puzzle.