Solution: Counterpoint

Answer: URBAN HEAT

Written by Amos Eshel

This puzzle starts as simply finding antonym pairs from a list of words, where the words have had an extra letter added (often to make more than one possible word). Once a pair has been identified, the letters in parentheses can be alternated to form a new word with an extra letter added (and another set of “random” letters still in parentheses). The alternation starts with the alphabetically first of the pair.

Now we do the same thing again, except that the antonym pairs have become once removed, e.g. DARK and HEAVY are paired because they are both antonyms of LIGHT. Alternating the letters still in parentheses provides another list of words with an extra letter added.

Make antonym pairs one more time, except these are twice removed, e.g. WRONG and STAYED are paired because their antonyms are RIGHT & LEFT respectively, which are themselves antonyms.

Once this final pairing occurs, there’s a pseudo-tournament bracket that involves eight level-1 words, four level-2 words, and two-level 3 words that can all be grouped together. Looking at the 14 extra letters that come from this, one can see that they are from a consecutive run of the alphabet (possibly looping from Z to A) but with one letter missing. Ordering these by where in the run the missing letter is causes the missing letters to spell out RURAL / COLD, the antonyms of which are URBAN HEAT.

An example of one of the pseudo-tournaments is below. The extra letters here when alphabetized are ABCDPQSTUVWXYZ which can be wrapped around to be nearly consecutive as PQ-STUVWXYZABCD with the R missing.

  JOY (B) ----\                                              /--- CRUEL (D)
                ADULT (X) -\                      /-- DARK (P)
  SORROW (Y) -/             \                    /           \---- KIND (S)
                            WRONG (T) - STAYED (Z)
  NARROW (V) -\             /                    \           /---- SICK (U)
                MAJOR (Q) -/                      \- HEAVY (C)
  WIDE (A) ---/                                              \- HEALTHY (W)
  

The other sequences look like this:

PQ-STUVWXYZABCD
RST-VWXYZABCDEF
NOPQ-STUVWXYZAB
VWXYZ-BCDEFGHIJ
FGHIJK-MNOPQRST
TUVWXYZAB-DEFGH
EFGHIJKLMN-PQRS
ABCDEFGHIJK-MNO
RSTUVWXYZABC-EF

Anything that looks like this below has nothing to do with actually solving the puzzle and is simply a little note from the author if you mouse over it.

Level 1 pairs

Level 2 pairs

Level 3 pairs