RANSOM: Word Cut Puzzle

You've been given a note to deliver. The letters have to come from the words on the page — cut them out, one at a time, in the order the note needs them. But every word you cut a letter from has to still read as a word afterwards. Take the H out of CHART and you get CART. Take the C and you get HART. Take the A and you get a mess. That's the whole rule. It sounds simple. It is not. RANSOM is a paper-and-scissors word puzzle with one uncompromising constraint: what stays on the strip has to still be a word. Some cuts look perfectly legal until you follow them through and find the note can never be finished. Those dead ends are handed straight back to you at no cost, because a dead end is a planning problem, not a mistake. Only cutting a word into nonsense costs you a strike. Three strikes and the note is ruined. FIVE DIFFICULTY TIERS Lookout is forgiving. Boss is not. A NEW DAILY NOTE…