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Palimpsest

Kevin Wald

The grid contains some letters from the Phoenician alphabet, and some runes from the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. In both writing systems, each character has a name that is (generally) a common word starting with that character (in the appropriate language). Each of the clues has an answer that (ignoring "the") consists of a color plus one of these names; the solver must strike out the one or two characters with that name and color in the grid. The answers are:

Anne Archer caper picture: GREEN ICE
April 14, in Korea: BLACK DAY
Australian WWI observation: VIOLET DAY
Babe, say: BLUE OX
Bay Ridge, formerly: YELLOW HOOK
Betula alleghaniensis: YELLOW BIRCH
Burden bearer, for Kipling: WHITE MAN
Caine/Young spy flick: BLUE ICE
Cheong Wa Dae: BLUE HOUSE
Cleveland domicile, twice: WHITE HOUSE
Coolio/Swanson thriller: RED WATER
Emilia in Olivier's Othello: REDMAN
Enclosure for flora: GREENHOUSE
Feature of Mycteroperca interstitialis: YELLOW MOUTH
Feature of personified envy: GREEN EYE
Feature of the Southern Cur: BLACK MOUTH
Film version of Meet a Body: GREEN MAN
Firefly corporation: BLUE SUN
Flower-scented perfume: VIOLET WATER
Gil Major's group: BLUE HAIL
Group in The Simpsons Movie: GREEN DAY
Institute built by Galileo Galilei: WHITEHEAD
Invisible wintertime danger: BLACK ICE
Jack Daniels, Dr. Pepper, and Coke: BLACK TOOTH
King/Straub novel: BLACK HOUSE
Late flight: REDEYE
Laurie Freelove song: WHITE HAIL
March 14, in Japan: WHITE DAY
Mifune/Andress western: RED SUN
Mouse: BLACK EYE
Moxostoma member: REDHORSE
Object in front of Marilyn Chambers: GREEN DOOR
Open comedo: BLACKHEAD
Position sought by Tobias Funke: BLUE MAN
Protestant Ulsterite: ORANGEMAN
Pseudomugil member: BLUE EYE
Rapids: WHITEWATER
Restaurant next to Tommy Doyle's (the other one): RED HOUSE
Rigg predecessor: BLACKMAN
Rob Merrifield's district: YELLOWHEAD
Sect founded by Kirin Tor: VIOLET EYE
Setting of A View from the Bridge: RED HOOK
Source of Superman's power: YELLOW SUN
Source of bark for canoe-making: WHITE BIRCH
Suitable for open-sea naval action: BLUE-WATER
Town near Alexander Bay: ORANGE MOUTH
Unwed Sailor disk: WHITE OX
Wi-Fi alternative: BLUETOOTH
Yukon's capital: WHITEHORSE
Zosteropidae member: WHITE-EYE

When all of the eliminations have been, the resulting "semi-obscured" diagram is as follows:

palimpsest image

Almost all of the remaining characters are runes, with only two Phoenician letters. Reading the runes as English, one gets:

  [Red Phoenician resh = HEAD] I ST O H O L M E S S L EA G U EA S
  [Yellow Phoenician ayin = EYE] I ST O

That is, "[red resh] is to Holmes's League as [yellow ayin] is to . . . ." Holmes is Sherlock Holmes (who did in fact once read a palimpsest, in "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"). There is a Sherlock Holmes story titled "The Red-Headed League"; a red resh is to RED-HEADED as a yellow ayin is to the answer: YELLOW-EYED.