Solution: A Fork in the Road
Answer: ROBERT FROST
Written by Deusovi
First, answer the clues:
- DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE
- SELF SELECTION
- TURN TURTLE
- CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
- SIMPLE SIMON
- SHETLAND SHEEPDOG
- MONOPOLY MONEY
- CANDY CANE
- TALL TALE
- TWENTY TWELVE
Once you get enough of them, you might notice that each of them is a two-word phrase starting with the same three letters. This will let you place them in the “forks” on the left side of the puzzle. You can figure out which answer goes in which box based off of the length of the two words—additionally, the answers are alphabetized.
Now, you can transfer the letters in numbered boxes over to the right part of the puzzle:
There's no clue for these last three forks, but there's only one way to fill them in so they make words. The words are DECISION/DECLARER, DIFFERENCE/DIFFICULT, FOREST/FORWARD.
Finally, take the labelled words and fill them into the blanks at the bottom to get:
in FOREST, at DIFFICULT FORWARD DECISION: "all the DIFFERENCE" DECLARER
This is hinting at the poem “The Road Not Taken”. In that poem, the poet writes about a place where the path splits in two in a forest, and he had to choose which path to take. At the end, he says that his decision made “all the difference”.
That poet, the ‘declarer’ of that ‘difference’, is ROBERT FROST.