by Rebecca Vessenes and Greg Pliska
Answer: ACE
Problem: Pi Day Town/​Bloomsday Town

Each of the literary excerpts is a parody of a famous work by a well-known author. Each also includes a phrase with a standard three-letter acronym. Works are given in alphabetical order by title.

Author Work Three-letter Acronym
VONNEGUT (Kurt) Breakfast of Champions Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
CHAUCER (Geoffrey) The Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath’s Tale) Public display of affection (PDA)
AUDEN (W.H.) “Funeral Blues” Light-emitting diode(s) (LED)
FITZGERALD (F. Scott) The Great Gatsby Base Year Compensation (BYC)
ATWOOD (Margaret) The Handmaid’s Tale Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)
LLEWELLYN (Richard) How Green Was My Valley Groupes mobiles de réserve (GMR)
COLLINS (Suzanne) The Hunger Games Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
WALLACE (David Foster) Infinite Jest Massively Multiplayer Online (game) (MMO)
ALCOTT (Louisa May) Little Women Forsyth-Edwards notation (FEN)
NABOKOV (Vladimir) Lolita Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
ORWELL (George) 1984 Office of Homeland Security (OHS)
ZINDEL (Paul) The Pigman Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR)
CASTANEDA (Carlos) The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR)

These acronyms are also IATA airport codes, one for each time zone from UTC -9 to UTC +4, skipping UTC 0. (Note that the flavortext includes the phrase “Unable to choose”, or UTC.)

Solvers must order the author names according to their associated airports, from west to east, then index into those names according to the UTC offset (from the end for negative numbers, and from the beginning for positive ones). (All the airports do not observe DST, except one—CCR—whose literary excerpt includes a reference to winter, indicating that you should use the standard time offset.)

Code Airport Time Zone Offset Author Letter
GMR Totegegie Airport, French Polynesia -9 LLEWELLYN (Richard) L
CCR Buchanan Field Airport, California -8 CASTANEDA (Carlos) A
SAD Safford Regional Airport, Arizona -7 NABOKOV (Vladimir) N
PBR Puerto Barrios Airport, Guatemala -6 ZINDEL (Paul) Z
PDA César Gaviria Trujillo Airport, Colombia -5 CHAUCER (Geoffrey) A
BYC Yacuiba Airport, Bolivia -4 FITZGERALD (F. Scott) R
SLA Martín Miguel de Güemes International Airport, Argentina -3 ATWOOD (Margaret) O
FEN Gov. Carlos Wilson Airport (Fernando de Noronha), Brazil -2 ALCOTT (Louisa May) T
MMO Maio Airport, Cabo Verde -1 WALLACE (David Foster) E
CBT Catumbela Airport, Angola +1 COLLINS (Suzanne) C
MGH Margate Airport, South Africa +2 VONNEGUT (Kurt) O
LED Pulkovo Airport, Russia +3 AUDEN (W.H.) D
OHS Sohar International Airport, Oman +4 ORWELL (George) E

The extracted letters spell LANZAROTE CODE (with the word break at the missing UTC 0). The IATA code for Lanzarote Airport, in the Canary Islands, is ACE, which is the answer to this puzzle.