This is the walkthrough/answer guide for my quiz, "Another Alphabetical Country Logic Quiz."
Step 1) A1 = Ethiopia. Upon hitting play, the first answer and the first clue are automatically given.
Clue A1 says, "The first letter of every answer in this row spells out the name of a country."
Step 2) C1 = Yemen. Clue A1 tells us that the first letter of each answer in Row 1 spells out the name of a country. Row 1 has five cells, and the first answer is "Ethiopia," which means we are looking for a five-letter country that begins with E. The only country that fits that description is Egypt. Therefore, we know that B1 must start with a G, C1 must start with a Y, D1 must start with a P, and E1 must start with a T. Because there is only one country in the world that starts with a Y - Yemen - we can deduce the answer to C1 is Yemen. This results in the following clue.
Clue C1 says, "The first letter of every answer in Column B spells out the name of another country."
Step 3) B4 = Oman. Clue C1 is similar to Clue A1 in that it challenges us to find a five-letter country. Even though we haven't found the correct answers for any of the cells in Column B yet, we know from Clue A1 that the answer in Column B must begin with a G, which means that the country that is spelled out with the first letter of every answer in Column B also begins with a G. In this case, there are two five-letter countries that meet this criterion: Gabon and Ghana. However, Ghana cannot be the correct answer because it contains two a's, which means that two answers on the quiz would begin with A if Ghana were the answer (B3 and B5). This is not possible because the "How to Play" section explains that every answer on this quiz begins with a different letter of the alphabet, which leaves Gabon as the only option. This means that B2 must start with an A, B3 must start with a B, B4 must start with an O, and B5 must start with an N. Because there is only one country in the world that starts with an O - Oman - we can deduce the answer to B4 is Oman.
Clue B4 says, "Every island country that shares a border with exactly one country is on this quiz."
Steps 4-6) D1 = Papua New Guinea / E1 = Timor Leste / B3 = Brunei. There are seven countries that share a border with exatly one country: Brunei, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and the United Kingdom. We don't know which cells contain all of these countries yet, but we do know that they will be all be on the quiz. Because each answer on this quiz begins with a different letter of the alphabet, we know that the only B country on the quiz is Brunei, the only D country is the Dominican Republic, the only H country is Haiti, etc. In Clue A1, we learned that the P country is in D1 and the T country is in E1, which means that they must be Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, respectively. In Clue C1, we learned that the B country is in B3, and now we know that this country must be Brunei. This results in the following three clues:
Clue D1 says, "Every African country on this quiz, except Zambia, is a part of a row or column that contains the name of another African country spelled out through the first letters of adjacent boxes."
Clue E1 says, "All of the enclave countries are on this quiz and are adjacent to each other."
Clue B3 says, "Madagascar is in A2"
Step 7) A2 = Madagascar. Clue B3 tells us that this is the correct answer.
Steps 8-9) C2 = Lesotho / D2 = Ireland. Clue D1 says that every African country (except Zambia) must contribute to the first-letter spelling out other African countries. So far, we have only come across two African countries - Ethiopia and Madagascar - and Ethiopia is already a part of the EGYPT string in Row 1. This means that Madagascar must be part of still another African country that is either in Column 1 or Row 2. The only African country that can still be spelled out within these parameters is MALI, which must be spelled out with M in A2, A in B2 (which we already knew from Clue C1), L in C2, and I in D2. We already knew from Clue B4 that Ireland had to be one of the answers on this quiz, which means that D2 must be Ireland.
Clue E1 informs us that the three enclave countries - Lesotho, San Marino, and Vatican City - are all on this quiz. Since we know that C2 starts with an L, then it must be Lesotho.
Clue A2 says, "Row 3 is arranged by total (land) area from the largest country to the smallest."
Clue D2 says, "Besides Oman and Yemen, every country on this quiz that borders another country on this quiz is adjacent to that country."
Clue C2 says, "Three columns have three consecutive answers that begin with sequential letters in the alphabet."
Steps 10-11) C4 = San Marino / C5 = Vatican City. Clue E1 also told us that all of the enclave countries are adjacent to at least one other enclave country, which means that Lesotho must be adjacent to either San Marino or Vatican City or both. Six of the eight cells that are adjacent to Lesotho have already been assigned letters other than S or V, which means at least one of those two countries has to be in C3 or D3.
Additionally, Clue A2 tells us that the countries in Row 3 are arranged from largest to smallest. The remaining two enclave countries - San Marino and Vatican City - are two of the smallest countries in the world. Vatican City is actually the smallest country and San Marino is the fifth smallest country. Because Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, it cannot be in either C3 or D3 because Clue A2 demands that it would be followed by an even smaller country, and there isn't one. So San Marino must be in C3 or D3. San Marino does not actually fare much better. The four countries smaller than San Marino are Vatican City, Monaco, Nauru, and Tuvalu, which means that any one of these countries could be in E3 if San Marino was in D3 or two of them could be in D3 and E3 if San Marino was in C3. However, Monaco cannot be an answer on this quiz since we already have an M country in A2, Nauru cannot be an answer since we already have an unidentified N country in B5, and Tuvalu cannot be an answer since we already have Timor Leste in E1. That leaves Vatican City as the only country that can follow San Marino in Row 3, which means that San Marino must be in C4 and Vatican City must be in C5.
Clue C4 says, "Both A3 and D4 contain either a country that starts with F or one that starts with R."
Clue C5 says, "Type the two letters that cannot be found at the beginning of any country of the world in E4."
Step 12) E2 = United Kingdom. Clue D2 told us that every country on this quiz that borders another country on this quiz must be adjacent to it. We know from Clue B4 that both Ireland and the United Kingdom are answers on this quiz, and we know that Ireland is in D2. Having deduced C4 and C5, there is only one remaining adjacent cell that could be the United Kingdom, which is E2.
Clue E2 says, "There are 15 total island countries on this quiz, with a different number of island countries from each continent."
Step 13) E4 = WX or XW. Clue C5 instructs us to type the two letters that cannot be found at the beginning of any country in this cell, and there are no countries that begin with W or with X. (This is meant to pay homage to the original alphabetical country logic quiz.)
Steps 14) D5 = Qatar. Clue C2 tells us that three of the five columns have a set of three answers in a row that are next to each other in the alphabet. We know that Column E is one of those five columns because the T country is in E1, the U country is in E2, and the V country is in E3, creating a T-U-V alphabetical string. We also know that Column B is NOT one of the three columns with three alphabetically sequential cells, because B1 starts with G, B2 with A, B3 with B, B4 with O, and B5 with N, and although A & B are next to each other in the alphabet, there is no three-cell string in this Column. That means that out of Columns A, C, and D, two of them must also contain alphabetically sequential cells.
Clue C4 complicates this further by telling us that the cell A3 contains either F or R, and cell D4 contains whichever one A3 lacks. Whether A3 is an F or an R, there is no way to plug the unused letters (C, D, H, J, K, Q, and Z) into remaining cells in Column A (A4 & A5) to create such a string. Therefore, we know that Columns C and D must both contain three-cell strings. In Column D, the only way to create a three-letter string is for D4 to start with an R and D5 to start with a Q, resulting in a SRQ string from D3-D5. If the country in D5 must start with a Q, then we know that it is Qatar, because that is the only country in the world that starts with a Q. We can also deduce that C3 must contain a K and C4 must contain a J, to create the final string (LKJ) in Column 3.
Clue D5, "Every row has at least one multiple-word country."
Steps 15-17) B1 = Grenada, A3 = Fiji, and C3 = Kiribati. Clue E2 tells us that there are 15 total island countries. Of the cells we have solved thus far, 6 have contained island countries: Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Madagascar, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Brunei. There are 12 remaining cells that we have not solved, for the letters A, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, N, Q, R, and Z. Out of these 12 answers, 9 of them must be for island countries. There are no island countries that begin with the letters Q, R, or Z, which means that the countries that begin with A, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, and N must all be island countries. We can already deduce what many of these countries will be, even though we may not know where they are on the quiz yet. We already knew from Clue B4 that the D must be the Dominican Republic and the H must be Haiti. There is only one island country that starts with an F (Fiji), only one that starts with a G (Grenada), and only one that starts with a K (Kiribati), and we already know where the F, G, and K cells are: Fiji is in A3, Grenada is in B1, and Kiribati is in C3. (Note: A more difficult way to deduce Kiribati is to discover that it is the only remaining country that is smaller than Brunei but larger than San Marino and thus meets the requirement of Clue A2.)
Clue C3 says, "The answers in Column E are in alphabetical order."
Step 18) E5 = Zambia. According to Clue C3, the answers Column 5 is in alphabetical order, and the answers that we know so far are Timor Leste (A5), the United Kingdom (B5), Vatican City (C5), and WX (D5). Because the "Y" was already used in C1, we know that the answer in E5 must begin with a Z. Clue D1 told us that Zambia would be on this quiz, so we know that E5 is Zambia.
Clue E5 says, "The largest three countries on this quiz are in the same diagonal."
Steps 19-20) B2 = Australia, D4 = Russia. So far, the largest three countries on this quiz are Ethiopia (26th in the world), Madagascar (46th in the world), and Yemen (49th int he world). None of these are in the same diagonal. In order for a diagonal to fulfill Clue E5, it would either have to contain three countries larger than Ethiopia or it would have contain two countries larger than Madagascar and that diagonal must also contain Ethiopia. All of the unsolved cells except one - the R cell - contain island countries, and there is only one island country that is larger than Madagascar: Australia. Fortunately, the A and the R are in the same diagonal with Ethiopia (A1-B2-C3-D4-E5), and so Clue E5 can be fulfilled if the B2 = Australia and the R country in D4 is larger than Madagascar. The only R country that is larger than Madagascar is Russia. Therefore D4 = Russia.
Steps 21-22) A4 = Dominican Republic, A5 = Haiti. Way back in Clue B4, we learned that the Dominican Republic and Haiti must both be on the quiz. We haven't had any clues that indicate where the D-answers and R-answers are yet, but there are only three cells left, two of which must begin with D and R. They are A4, A5, and C5. In order for Clue D2 to be fulfilled, the Dominican Republic and Haiti must be in either A4 or A5, because they border each other in the world and therefore must be adjacent to each other on this quiz.
Clue D5 told us that each row has at least one multiple-word country as an answer, but neither Row 4 nor Row 5 have any. In Row 4, we know that B4 is Oman, D4 is Russia, and E4 is WX, none of which are multiple-word countries. We don't know what C4 is yet, but we know that it starts with a J, and none of the J countries contain multiple words. Therefore, A4 must be a multiple word country, which means that the Dominican Republic must be in A4, while Haiti must be in A5.
Step 23) B5 = New Zealand. To solve B5, we have to consider Clue E2 which says, "There are 15 total island countries on this quiz, with a different number of island countries from each continent." For this to work mathematically, one continent must contribute 5 island countries to this quiz, a second must contribute 4 island countries, a third must contribute 3 island countries, a fourth must contribute 2 island countries, a fifth must contribute 1 island country, and a sixth must contribute 0 island countries. The six continents are Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. South America doesn't have any island countries, which means that it must be the one contributing 0. Of the remaining continents, this is how many island countries each of them has "contributed" to this quiz so far:
Africa: 1 island country (Madagascar)
Asia: 2 island countries (Brunei and Timor-Leste)
Europe: 2 island countries (Ireland and the United Kingdom)
North America: 3 island countries (Grenada, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic)
Oceania: 4 island countries (Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, and Papua New Guinea)
The three remaining unsolved answers must begin with C, J, and N, and they all must be island countries. The remaining island countries that start with these letters are Cabo Verde, Comoros, Cuba, Cyprus, Jamaica, Japan, Nauru and New Zealand. Out of these, we can eliminate Cabo Verde and Comoros because both are from Africa, and Africa can only contribute one island country to this quiz - Madagascar - in order to fullfill Clue B5. This leaves New Zealand as the only remaining multiple-word country that could be an answer on this quiz. We already know from clue C1 that the N country is in B5, so B5 = New Zealand.
Clue B5 says, "There is at least one row in which no two countries are from the same continent."
Steps 24-25) C4 is Jamaica, C5 = Cyprus. At this point, there are only 2 cells left, and we know that Cell C4 must start with a J, which means that Cell C5 must start with the only letter we haven't used in this quiz, the letter "C." C4 could be either Jamaica or Japan, and C5 could be either Cyprus or Cuba. Unfortunately, Clue E2 doesn't quite give us enough information to solve the puzzle. Now we know that South America is contributing 0 island countries, Africa is contributing 1 island country, and Oceania is contributing 5 island countries. If the J is Jamaica, then North America would be maxed out at 4 island countries and the C must be Cyprus (as opposed to Cuba). If the J is Japan, then both Asia and Europe would be contributing three island countries, and the C would have to be Cuba to get North America up to its 4-country quota. So the answers must be either Jamaica & Cyprus or Japan & Cuba.
The final clue, B5, indicates that there is at least one row in which no two countries are from the same continent. Row 1 does not meet this requirement because Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste are both from Oceania. Row 2 does not meet this requirement because Irealand and the United Kingdom are both from Europe. Row 3 does not meet this requirement because of both Fiji and Kiribati are from Oceania and both San Marino and Vatican City are from Europe. Row 4 cannot meet these requirements because if C4 were Jamaica, it would be in the same row as A4, which contains the Dominican Republic, but if C4 were Japan, it would be in the same row as B4, which is Oman. Therefore, in order to fulfill Clue B5, C5 has to be a country that does not match any other country in that Row.
If C5 were Cuba, then Row 5 would contain both Haiti and Cuba, which would violate B5. If it were Cyprus on the other hand, then B5 would be fulfilled, since Haiti (A5) is from North America, New Zealand (B5) is from Oceania, Cyprus (C5) is from Europe, Qatar (D5) is from Asia, and Zambia (E5) is from Africa. So C5 must be Cyprus, which means that C4 must be Jamaica. And that solves the puzzle!
