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Unlike normal s which have four groups of four, this one has five groups of four. The five groups may each be summarised by one word and those five words are in turn related.
JADE JAZZ JEDI JUBILEE
WATER WAVES SANDY TEAPOT
UNION MILE POINT MUTUAL
BERKSHIRE GRIND FULLER RUSH
TASSEL WERNER BEEHIVE MAG

What are the groups of four and what are the corresponding group words? Why is this puzzle a security risk?

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1 Answer 1

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The title refers to

the D-Day Daily Telegraph crossword affair

which of course also explains the "security risk" and identifies the commonality between the groups, which are

Juno: JADE JEDI MAG WAVES. These are all instruments on the NASA probe Juno, orbiting Jupiter.
Sword: FULLER GRIND POINT TASSEL. These are all parts of a sword (perhaps stretching it a bit for the last one).
Utah: BEEHIVE JAZZ TEAPOT SANDY. These are all things associated with Utah: it's known as "the Beehive state", it's home to a notable basketball team called the Utah Jazz, the Utah teapot is a standard shape in computer graphics. Besides "sandy" being a reasonable description of much of Utah, it is also the name of a city there.
Gold: JUBILEE MILE RUSH WATER. Golden jubilee, several Golden Miles, Gold rush, Barry Goldwater.
Omaha: BERKSHIRE MUTUAL UNION WERNER. Omaha is home to Berkshire Hathaway, Mutual of Omaha, the Union Omaha soccer team, and Werner Enterprises.

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  • $\begingroup$ I actually had Union Pacific and not Union Omaha, but it still fits. $\endgroup$
    – Parcly Taxel
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 17:05
  • $\begingroup$ Interesting. For what it's worth, rot13(GRNCBG) immediately made me think of rot13(Hgnu), and that plus the title made me pretty confident of what the theme would be very quickly. It took a while to figure out exactly what all the groups were, though. Especially as when I looked up the relevant list I didn't notice rot13(Whab) at first :-). $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 19:54
  • $\begingroup$ Though I'm curious about one possible red herring. Is the presence of both TEAPOT and FULLER a deliberate reference to the obvious-if-you-know-it novel by Charles Stross, or is that coincidence? $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 19:56
  • $\begingroup$ I have never read that novel (The Fuller Memorandum?) In fact the only major novel I have in my home library is Anna Karenina. $\endgroup$
    – Parcly Taxel
    Commented Jun 7, 2021 at 5:13
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, The Fuller Memorandum. Certainly not a "major novel" but fun if you happen to enjoy the particular kind of thing it is. I shall not elaborate on exactly why teapots are relevant because I don't think I can do so in a way that's any use but not spoilery. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Jun 7, 2021 at 10:47

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