I correctly identified the significance of the words on the list within about 15 seconds, though I would have been a little more casual in my description than Monstre was.
Not that it matters, since I was not at my computer when you posted the puzzle.
I meandered down the unbeaten path, past a rudderless hockey game, unburdened by the freight and refuse of the past, which often begets and ushers in unfair expectations, planting them in the minds of the fakirs, which has also injured me in the past, and often acts like a sort of chlorine, bleaching out my memories and converting them into a kind of armrest where I may pause a while before a rooster crows in the back of my brain and I again notice the poplars and bbqs* of the neighborhood, a portion from which I must be restrained, lest I go native* and eat my fill, leaving the owners in mourning over their loss (insert your own invective here), upon which I shall be forced to hire a lawyer and endure hours of boxing in the legal arena even the Cayuse* would be hard pressed to endure, and not because they are too lazy but because they just wouldn’t typically put up with this kind of crap.
Whew, I think I blew out a participle in there somewhere. Somewhere else, off in the distance, an English teachers crys out in pain and is lost.
*I think these are all a bit of a stretch on the lovely Twix’s part. They’re all a stretch on my part.
FTR: Cayuse is also a horse, thus not a proper noun.
And, yeah, Q was the starting point – the only other possibilities I could find both had the added letter in the first position (far less interesting), and involved proper nouns and brand names – Atari and Tip.
And I don’t usually do the umlaut in naive, so I can live with myself there also.
And Eureka and Scarlett may have found it revoltingly easy – but I just sold it to my old pals at Games, so nyah nyah nyah.
Well, I wouldn’t say revoltingly easy, just easy enough to make your gloating about how long it took to solve your challenge irritating. In general, I find word puzzles like that either revoltingly easy, tedious, or exasperatingly difficult. My ability to find puzzles with just the right amount of challenge to appeal to me is limited.
It’s like the lady I called yesterday who was so flattered that I had called to tell her I got a job offer. Um, look, it’s nice that I called you and all, but you do realize it wasn’t my idea? She was still flattered after she realized that I called at my mother’s prompting.
Still, good for you, creating and selling your puzzle.