Ryan Young

Won the Made In cookware set
by cracking the code to get into Word Salad

Ryan (right) and his girlfriend Courtney

How did you hear about the game?

We love food, and have been trying to go to Alinea for quite a bit of time now (it’s far away from California). My girlfriend Courtney follows Alinea on Instagram, and she saw when the first puzzles came out; ever since then we’ve been tackling them together during our shelter-in-place.

How many of the puzzles have you solved? 

All of them since Space Bar! Though some were way more difficult than others for us.

Walk me through your experience with solving the Word Salad puzzle.

At first we were very confused (as with all of the other puzzles) as to where to start. After just reading through the different books again and again, I noticed there was a bit of a pattern in the pages; each sentence had 10 words, and there were 10 sentences. Looking back at the cover, there were 10 words on it as well. Knowing that we’d have to group the words in some way, we thought through what categories each of the title words could be hinting towards, and starting putting each word under a category labelled by the title word. However, some of the words didn’t fit, so we put them apart from the other ones. Once we were done with all 3 books, we realized the odd words out had first letters that spelled a clue to find the triplets and put them in cover order. We then took the odd words and put them all together, looking for groups of 3 we could make. We found 10 categories that related to each of the triplets, but honestly couldn’t figure out what the cover order meant until we had just mixed all of the category names around enough that readytoeat showed itself!

What other kinds of puzzles or games do you play?

I mostly play video games, which include a lot of puzzles and strategy. My girlfriend does more of word puzzles.

Do you cook much? How will these Made In tools get put to use?

We do cook basically every day, 3 meals a day! Courtney especially likes to try new recipes and make her own, and I know that the Made In tools will definitely be used often if not daily.

Have dined at Alinea or our other restaurants? 

We haven’t (yet), but are definitely planning on going hopefully in the near future! It’s very high up on our world’s-best restaurant list. We originally planned to go to Chicago in April and make a special stop at Alinea. However, we had to postpone our plans after COVID-19 hit and the Bay Area instituted a shelter-in-place order.

How do you spend your days?

I personally enjoy playing music, working out, playing games (like these!), and eating! We definitely consider ourselves foodies, and make it a point that everywhere we go we sample local cuisine and, if possible, hit some of the restaurants on our list (our last one was Virgilio Martinez’s Central in Lima, Peru).

How are you keeping healthy and sane during quarantine? 

Exercising a bunch, trying new recipes and foods, and keeping each other company! It helps when you’re living with your best friend.

Anything else you want to add?

We’re excited to have won the Word Salad puzzle, and look forward to still competing in the future Pilcrow Bar posts!