Don’the give the answer yet. I have half of Appalachian State University working on it!
I volunteer to give an assessment. 
Are grasshoppers involved?
Edit: my preferred way of solving hard puzzles is to be able to ask leading questions and get straight answers. I know not everyone works that way, though.
Latin roots that may be helpful:
Yellow=flavus, croceus, luteus, crocinus
Strange=hospes, barbaricus, alienus, exter, rarus, novus, monstrosus, insolitus, inusitus, prodigialis
Wooden=ligneus, duratus, silvestris, arborius, caudecus
Dry=siccum, torreo, coco, duro, asso, aridus, ardens, passus, ligneus (!)
Swordlike (I had to do “bladed”)=laminarum, duarum
Does any of this get us closer?
OK, I’ve spoiled glee.
My sister may have found, shall we say,
An EXCELLENT answer!
BUT she always was good with crosswords!
Has she got it,** Chronos**?
[spoiler] It’s the complete set of ancient Greek prefixes that start with “X”
xantho, xena, xero, (xiph), xylon[/spoiler]
And by the way, a challenging and very fair riddle. For a while there I thought we might have to wait for **Cecil ** to give us an answer.
Whew, finally!
EDIT: So, is Isamu Biotop’s sister?
Would be a shock to me!
What will we end up with if we go with Trump’s plan to sculpt a pointy row of Prickly-ash along the desert border with Mexico in order to keep those pesky furriners out?
Xiphoid *Xanthoxylum *along a xenophobic xeriscape.
Not currently – but there’s still time for me to get a sex-change and marry into the family!
Thanks for the riddle Chronos! It was good and satisfying. I tried to guess it yesterday but failed, and this mornig I had an hour or so to kill so I was determined to get it figured out today.
Here’s what I did.
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I started with the obvious, i.e., looking for groups/sets of things that consisted of each one of those sub-types, i.e. dry, yellow, wooden or strange. I looked at subatomic particles, fungus, plants, art movements, historic periods, etc. Nothing fit, but when I had time I was still looking for the answer in this same way until Chronos gave the further clue by putting them in alphabetic order. That was a pretty strong clue that it was language based, so then I moved to…
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the idea that it wasn’t a set of “things” that are named after, or display qualities, of those first clues (dry, yellow, wooden or strange), but a set of things that are those first clues but in another language. I found a set that almost worked in Japanese, so I thought maybe it was Chinese (which I don’t know). And then Chronos gave the further clue of their being one more element to the set - “sword-like”. That’s when I…
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Saw the pattern of things that come from ancient languages that English borrowed from. Left Hand of Dorkness missed it by a hair by looking at Latin, but it was Greek. Sorry Lefty!
I didn’t get anywhere near the answer, but when I saw the solution I could see how to get there, so definitely a fair riddle IMHO. I was 99% certain Chronos wouldn’t have trolled us like mittu (certainly not intentionally) and I was glad to see I was right!
I spent a good bit of time 2 days ago thinking about the xiphoid process - that little hanging down bit at the bottom of the sternum. I knew “xiph” was from the Greek for “sword” but I couldn’t get any further than that. If I’d only mentioned it here, I’m sure Chronos would have said something.
I’m not very bright.
SO CLOSE!!!
:mad::mad::mad:
I see in some of the proposed solutions that people are using math functions on the numbers, rather than just between the numbers.
What I mean is f(a) is a function that operates just on a. a*b is an operation that operates on both, and is what I’d think of as a function ‘between’ the numbers.
If you can use “any math function” on the numbers as well as between, a one-size-fits-all solution is a cinch:
Let f be the constant function f(x) = 2 for all x. f(x) + f(x) + f(x) = 6 for any x.
Please simplify this polynomial:
(x-a) * (x-b) * (x-c) * … * (x-z)
In a word, nope.