Just the One Solution

by Christopher Cotton

Each of the people has a rule about what they like and what they don't like. Start by finding the rule for each person. Their name is also a clue for the rule.

Person	Likes	Like Rule	Dislikes	Dislike Rule
1. Alice	Beachhead, Magical	Only uses the first half of the alphabet	Provost, Topsy-Turvy	Only uses the second half of the alphabet
2. Bob	Breadcrumb, Classic	Starts and ends with the same letter	Mealtime, Thousandth	Repeated bigram at the beginning and end
3. Briella	Cheerleader, Summer	Double letters	Cockerel, Photometer	3 letter palindromic substring
4. Buzz	Clink, Gurgle	Onomatopoeias	Eureka, Hurray	Interjections
5. Langston	Schmidt, Twelfth	6 consonants	Kauai, Queue	4 vowels
6. London	Criticism, Western	One repeated vowel	Dialogue, Euphoria	Supervocalic
7. Margot	Debt, Salmon	Silent letter	Evident, Vivid	All letters are pronounced
8. Ronda	Deal, Noir	Anagram of a chemical element	Heart, Rife	Anagram of a classical element
9. Samara	Capricorn, Decoy	Contains the first three letters of a month	Beryl, Frills	Contains the last three letters of a month
10. Stuart	Hijinks, Wurst	3 consecutive letters in the alphabet in order	Coupons, Fedora	3 consecutive letters in the alphabet backwards

Each of the words from the top of the circle fits into one or more of the 10 rules. There is only one way to assign one word to one person such that every word fits in that person's rule.

Person	Rule	SMASH	RINGTONE	UNSTUFF	TALENT	CALMNESS	ALABAMA	KNIGHTS	SCISSORS	MOONBEAMS	LAUGHTER
1. Alice	Only uses the first half of the alphabet						X
2. Bob	Starts and ends with the same letter				X		X		X
3. Briella	Double letters			X		X			X	X
4. Buzz	Onomatopoeias	X
5. Langston	6 consonants					X		X	X
6. London	One repeated vowel	X		X			X
7. Margot	Silent letter							X	X		X
8. Ronda	Anagram of a chemical element		X
9. Samara	Contains the first three letters of a month										X
10. Stuart	3 consecutive letters in the alphabet in order			X		X

Now that each name is associated with one word from the circle, draw lines between each pair on the big circle.

The uncrossed letters spell READ XS UP. Reading all the places where two lines cross over a letter from the bottom up gives the phrase LOOSE LEAF BINDER