Puzzle #25 — 2026-08-13
The answer was Jordan. The scene was built from Irbid. Difficulty: hard.
The clues, in the order they were revealed
- A rolling dry limestone upland of olive groves on stony red-brown soil.
- Every building is faced in pale cut stone with a flat roof.
- Black water tanks stand on every roof, and reinforcing bar is left standing on the top floor.
- The script is cursive and written right to left, beside Latin.
- The country is almost landlocked, with one short stretch of coast on a narrow gulf.
What the scene was built from
The location is chosen first, from a hand-curated whitelist, and the image is generated to match the description below. That order is what makes the answer checkable: the scene is built for the place, not guessed from the picture.
| vegetation | olive groves on stony red-brown soil, wheat stubble between them, few trees otherwise |
|---|---|
| terrain | a rolling limestone upland, dry and open, no forest anywhere |
| architecture | flat-roofed buildings faced in pale cut stone, black water tanks on every roof, reinforcing bar left standing on the top floor |
| roadside | right-hand traffic, patched asphalt, a concrete block wall along the plot edge |
| signage | a cursive script written right to left, beside Latin (never rendered legibly) |
| light | bright dry eastern-Mediterranean light |
Where this actually is
Irbid, Jordan sits at 32.56, 35.85 — see Irbid, Jordan on OpenStreetMap. The clue ladder and the table above were both written from that place before any picture existed.
This day was not in the image-quality sample — its answer key was checked, its picture was not second-guessed. How the pictures are made, and why none of them is a photograph.