This puzzle is a reference to Letter Boxed from NYT Games. Although the game is hinted at via the layout of the letters around the box, it is also possible to derive the rules without knowing the game.

In each square, the goal is to spell out a series of words, clued by the images in no particular order. After identifying the images, we notice that we are not allowed to use two letters on the same side consecutively (“swing from side to side” in the flavor text), and that the last letter of one word must be the starting letter for the next word. This last rule allows us to order the given words.

We then look at the unused letters in each box. We read the letters on each box clockwise, picking the starting point that continues spelling out the clue phrase. In some boxes with duplicate letters, the “swing from side to side” constraint specifies which letter to use. (There is one exception, where a T is ambiguous, but the resultant clue phrase is still the same.) The clue phrase that makes the most sense is USE FIVE STROKE MODEL INPUT AND ID RED OVERLAP.

Word list	Letter traced out	Leftover letters	Paths used
TRICEP	H	USE
PARK	A
KART	N
TOPIC	G
LOUD	T	FIV
DRUID	O
DADS	L
SPA	L
WOMB	Y	EST
BYRE	A
EARWAX	K
SILOS	P	ROKEM
SEMI	U
IMAM	L
MISO	P
RAISIN	K	OD
NECKS	E
SARIS	P
SKUA	T
RAPTOR	B	ELI
RAGER	O
RUNG	Y
AXIOM	A	NPUT
MEMOIR	W
RIOT	N
EFTS	U	AN
SHUT	T
TURBO	A
OCTOBER	H
LYRA	T	DID
AORTA	O
ARMS	N
SMOG	Y
FINCH	A	RED
HUMAN	M
NAIL	Y
CHARM	R	OVER
MUMPS	U
SCUM	N
ITEM	T	LAP
MEME	I
ETON	C
NAIADS	K

The “five stroke model input” refers to the Wubi input method, which takes up to 4 letters and returns a Chinese character. We can get these 4 letters by looking back at the letter boxes. Each word in the box traces out a letter, and all the traced-out letters in a box spell another word. We use these words as the input for Wubi (Google Translate is a great way to input Wubi!) and get the corresponding characters. In some cases, multiple characters correspond to a single Wubi input -- in those cases, we can use the positioning of the pictures, which correspond to radicals, to disambiguate.

We then notice that each of these boxes has a particularly red image. By overlapping the Chinese character with the images, we extract the red radicals and read them as English letters, giving us the phrase CHILDBEARING.

Author's Notes

I had been using Wubi as a way to transcribe Chinese, and saw the puzzle potential. (I don't think we fully demonstrated the puzzliness of Wubi in this puzzle, but hopefully it will inspire more puzzles about input methods!) At the same time, we're a big fan of "squint and you'll see letters" extraction, which was sorta the theme of this puzzle.

Another goal of this extraction method was also to use Chinese characters without disadvantaging people without knowledge of the language. We recognize that that this might have swung too much the other way, as people familiar went down rabbit holes of using radicals or had a harder time reading the final phrase.

Having the dual constraints of tracing out letters and avoiding ambiguities with the clue phrase made us very fluent in Qat. In particular, it's a miracle that the SILOS/SEMI/IMAM/MISO came together with OME all repeated in the clue phrase.

We hope you all enjoyed the 尸凵乙乙辶巳!