Attempting to solve Luskin's "High-Speed Telescopic Evidence"

I figure "If red ran thy troubled waters?" is a cryptic clue of sorts and whatever it was would end up being a book of the Bible and would work in conjunction with "5:10" to give a chapter and verse.

But I'm horrible at cryptics. "If red ran" = pink? Troubled "waters" = rawest? Although raw meat is kind of pink, probably not. Maybe "If red ran thy" troubled = fire hydrant? A fire hyrant uses a hose to "water" fires... "a hose" = Hosea? Hosea 5:10 (RS) reads:

The princes of Judah have become
like those who remove the landmark;
upon them I will pour out
my wrath like water.

Interesting, since I'm probably looking for a landmark and it does have the water connection. But then what? Is there a landmark at the corner of Prince and Judah? A fountain, maybe?

Fencing the Square

Jonathan and I talked today about IBM's July "Ponder This" puzzle, which basically asks what's minimum amount of walls you would need to prevent people on different sides of a square from seeing each other. He says he has a solution, but the problem is he's pretty sure that there's a better answer, based only on the fact that his solution is pretty easy to arrive at. Amusingly enough, the creator of the puzzle isn't sure the answer he has is the definitive answer, so who's to say Jonathan's answer isn't correct?

Subconscious Influence?

I was reading through my Match Wits with MENSA book this morning and came across the following puzzle:

The name of a country is hidden in each of the sentences below. Find the countries.

• The doorbell sign said, "Don't touch. In a real emergency, pull the cord."


• They got married secretly, but no one is wed entirely alone, so there were witnesses.


• We needed to visit a health resort, so we went to a spa in another country.

The odd thing is that the first sentence completely describes the "plot" to our No More Secrets application video. Coincidence? Or just one of those times where information was filed in the brain and then brought out as a new idea?

(A bit of trivia: Our NMS application video was supposed to include an assassination attempt. The retired assassin answered the door, took the "TOP SECRET" package, opened it to find a gun and instructions, and then shot the delivery person. However, our filming schedule ran long and the only part that stayed in was the delivery of the package.)