In Pi Day Town’s Memorial Circle, they commemorate things that were commemorating sailors.

I was killed in WWII during the bombing of Cebu City. And I’d just received the Navy Cross for risking my life to recover classified documents during the bombings of Cavite! (??? ?????)

I was the first naval officer to land on the first American aircraft carrier! I also commanded the naval air station at Dunkirk, but died at 33 from injuries suffered in a Virginia plane crash after the war. I hear they named a Medford theater after me. (??? ?????????)

After enlisting in the US military in 1941, I joined an airborne squadron during World War II. I died during the Battle of Midway in 1942 when I heroically attacked a Japanese carrier amidst heavy fire, giving me my posthumous Navy Cross. Unlike the other people like me, I was the youngest at the time of my death, and I was born in Smithtown, New York. (??? ?????? ? ??????)

After graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1938, I joined an airborne squadron during World War II. I died during the Battle of Midway in 1942 when I heroically attacked a Japanese fleet amidst heavy fire, giving me my posthumous Navy Cross. Unlike the other people like me, I was the oldest at the time of my death, and I was born in Pocatello, Idaho. (??? ????????)

After graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1926, I served around the world, including in China and the Caribbean. I led a force of dive bombers in an attack on the Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū but my plane caught fire on final approach. I received a posthumous Navy Cross. (??? ?????????)

I served in the Pacific as a pharmacist’s mate. A case of mistaken identity led the Japanese to all-out attack my oiler as if it were an aircraft carrier. My captain ordered the crew to prepare to abandon ship, but in the confusion many of my mates believed the abandon-ship order had already been given and jumped off the ship prematurely. Ignoring my own safety I swam around treating burned and wounded soldiers, helping them to life rafts, while refusing a place on these rafts myself. I received a posthumous Navy Cross. (??? ????? ? ??????)

I joined an airborne squadron during World War II. I died during the Battle of Midway in 1942 when I heroically attacked a Japanese fleet amidst heavy fire, giving me my posthumous Navy Cross. Unlike the other people like me, my death was declared one day later, and I was born in Jackson, Mississippi. (??? ??????)

Back when I was a WWII naval commander, three torpedoes hit my ship. The crew began to evacuate the sinking vessel. But then I spied a kitchen mess boy without a functioning life jacket. I gave him my life jacket instead and, without any protection, I calmly met my end in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. (??? ????? ? ????)

Before I became a rear admiral and won my Navy Cross, I was the first naval flag officer from California. I also learned Portuguese in just six weeks after President Harding sent me to Brazil to promote friendly relations between our two countries. (??? ???????????)

I was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts and joined the navy in 1941. I was killed in the Battle of the Solomon Islands, and posthumously received a purple heart. My mother Eleanor was instrumental in having me honored after my death. (??? ??????)

First

  • Divide the string in two equal halves, and switch their order.
  • Drop all instances of the vowel that appears six times.
  • Find the three-letter abbreviation for a Scandinavian currency, and drop the last two letters of it.
  • Replace an acronym for an Asian airline with the IATA code for Kiunga Airport.
  • Replace the final word from many old movies with the postal abbreviation for Rhode Island.
  • Replace the first name of a filmmaking auteur who has has been nominated for three screenplay Oscars with the first name of a US Senator who is the son of a former Congressman from another state.
  • Replace the name of an ill-fated US car company from the late 1940s with the word for a raised platform.
  • Replace the word for a type of fish with the name of one of the five free cities located in the Chondath region of the Vilhon Reach.
  • Replace the word for bird in a European language with the name of Guatemala’s currency.
  • Turn a five-letter adjective describing comparative age into a five-letter adjective describing reliable support. Then, prepend the letter P.

Second

  • Add a word for a harbor boat before an abbreviation for a baseball scoring play.
  • Append a word for a fortune-telling deck; the string will now contain the name of a famous conference. Then, prepend a modern three-letter slang term for a boyfriend or girlfriend.
  • Change the second occurrence of the top-level domain for Spain into the top-level domain for India.
  • Find a Greek letter name, and replace the first letter in that name with its last letter.
  • Of the two sets of double letters, replace the double letter closer to the end of the alphabet with the two-letter country code for Brazzaville’s country.
  • One letter appears twice in a row. Replace this double letter with one instance of the letter preceding it in the alphabet.
  • Replace a word for a child with the capital of Italy.
  • Replace a word for a female bird with a two-letter nickname for a parent.
  • Replace a word meaning to pester with a word meaning place of worship.
  • The first two and last two letters together spell a word; remove them.

Third

  • Append the word for Hugo Ball’s art movement to the full string.
  • Find the name of a boot-wearing fairytale character. Then, replace the last two letters of the name with the first two initials of a Cambridge poet who avoids capitals.
  • Remove a concluding preposition.
  • Replace a word that precedes “after” in a common phrase with one that can follow “Enola”.
  • Replace all Rs with double Rs, then remove the last three letters. The string will now contain the same number of Rs it had before doubling.
  • Replace the double consonant that follows a double vowel with a word for a floor covering.
  • Replace the only occurrence of a symbol for a New York subway line you can take to Canarsie with the Polish word for “beech”.
  • Replace the past tense of a word meaning “produce sounds with musical intonation” with a word for an article of clothing.
  • Replace the three-letter word at the end with its opposite.
  • Reverse the order of any side-by-side vowels that occur in alphabetical order.

Fourth

  • One vowel occurs three times in a four-letter substring. Insert a fourth copy of that vowel before the last letter of the full string.
  • Prepend a common expression that likely emerged as an abbreviation of a humorous spelling of the phrase ‘all correct’. The string will now contain an abbreviation for the complex that launched the Apollo rockets.
  • Remove the fourth and fifth letters, which should be the last two letters of a word meaning a container for coffee. Sandwich the second C between the abbreviation for a film studio co-founded by Charlie Chaplin.
  • Remove the last letter in a four-letter string that is comprised of two repeated two-letter strings.
  • Remove the leftmost appearance of a metallic element symbol.
  • Remove the letters that are a brand of home appliance.
  • Replace a chatroom response to “ty” with a word describing a paramecium’s propellers.
  • Replace a long-running TV series with a symbol for a unit of volume.
  • Replace an Iowa college town with the French name for an Aidi, Akita, or Airedale.
  • Replace the first name of a UN Secretary General (in front of a pair of vowels) with a term for a doctor in training.

Fifth

  • Add a copy of the second to last letter to the beginning of the string.
  • Change an R in one of the first two positions of the string into a three-letter word for a body part. Then, add an L to the end of your string.
  • Change the first two letters so that the string’s first five letters are an anagram for what an NFL player perhaps does on fourth down, and the second through fifth letters are an anagram for a Streisand movie.
  • Convert the letter five places from the end of the string to its opposite. Then, remove the letter immediately following a double vowel.
  • Remove the abbreviation for a Cold War country.
  • Remove two of the three letters at the beginning of the string, without removing two of the same letter. Then, change one letter in a 1998 top 20 song to make a language spoken in Rourkela.
  • Replace a multi-letter pronoun with the word for a legendary bird of prey.
  • The last letter of the string is the first letter of a three-letter word for a body of water. Replace it with the other two letters in that word.
  • The sixth and seventh letters are the second half of a word for a player on a particular NBA team; replace the string’s first two letters with the first half of that word.
  • The string contains a four letter word which is often followed by another four-letter word in legal parlance. Prepend the third letter of that other word to the full string.