Lin:

Plans for the New York tour are firming up. Can you get back to me with thoughts on this poster draft? We’re still trying to figure out the route. Between one thing and another we’ve got some scheduling constraints:

• Genre-bending cred. We’ve got to secure sequential dates in the two towns whose names can be anagrammed together to form the name of a popular anime character.
• Crossover appeal. We need to be able to swap the last part of one town’s name with the first part of the name of the next town visited to form two new English words meaning “do” and “hate.”
• Superstition. The cast is insisting that we travel between towns with different numbers of letters in their names in exactly four out of the eleven legs of the tour.
• Classical grounding. We should visit one of the towns named for a Greek towards each end of the tour—let’s say either first and penultimate or second and last.
• Snob defense. We’re stuck visiting two towns whose names are foods. We need to fit exactly three other towns in between them so we don’t look like dinner theater.
• Fuel economy. We need to hit the two southernmost towns in succession. To keep everyone focused on reducing our footprint, the last letters of four sequential stops on the tour should spell out the name of an oil and gas company.
• Producer whim. Can’t say I see why, but all the towns on the tour with the longest names are going to have to be scheduled in reverse alphabetic order.
• Uxoriousness. We all think it’s sweet that we’re visiting one town whose name, minus its first and last letters, is your wife’s alma mater, and another whose first and last letters give her alma mater’s location. But let’s not lay it on too thick. We should separate those towns by, say, seven intervening stops.
• Educational outreach. We need to be able to produce a two-word phrase for a kind of early educational institution by changing an L to an R in one town’s name and anagramming it along with the next town on the tour.
• Doing Hamilton proud. We should start off by visiting four towns that contain the letters NEW YORK between them (though not in order).
• Doing Hercules Mulligan proud. We need to be able to slip a synonym of “spy” in between two adjacent towns on the tour to make familiar two-word phrases with both town names.

Also, re: publicity. We’re visiting some quaint little spots—what about going out and finding a unique intersection in each town to put on a musical number? I've pulled together some suggestions on this cassette—please take a listen.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,

E. Hunt