1. Each clue can be answered by scrambling TONTINE with the other two letters supplied. Do I have your full focus (ATTENTION = TONTINE + AT)?Psst, I have a low-risk, high-profit investment that may appeal to you. That was the pledge made by Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant living in the US in 1920. Trouble was, the only money on offer was that donated by the victims he attracted.
Hence a PONZI SCHEME is a finance racket where the system’s sole earnings are derived from the generated pool. To sustain the fraud, early backers are returned some profit margins; meantime the scheme’s operators—in this case Signor Ponzi— diverted the lion’s share.
Not that Ponzi invented the hoax: a similar scam is outlined in Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. But the migrant’s name is fixed to the crime, owing to the sting’s grand scale and the prominent court case that followed.
Time to meet a second Italian, with a sounder money operation. Lorenzo de Tonti was a Neapolitan banker in France. In 1650, he proposed a scheme to raise capital for various investments, where backers were paid an annuity (a fixed regular sum) as the years rolled by. Standard stuff, right? But here’s the TONTINE twist. The scheme operates for the term of the syndicate’s life. As investors die, the annuity climbs, with the last member standing to receive the fund as a lump sum. No wonder tontines recur in period whodunits, providing the ideal motive for a boom in arsenic sales.
1. Each clue can be answered by scrambling TONTINE with the other two letters supplied. Do I have your full focus (ATTENTION = TONTINE + AT)?
(a) TONTINE + CN = Australia, for one
_____________________
(b) TONTINE + DE = confinement
_____________________
(c) TONTINE + MS = medical creams
_____________________
(d) TONTINE + IN = aim _____________________
(e) TONTINE + AD = recited _____________________
(f) TONTINE + NY = insignificant person
_____________________
2. If SCHEMER arises from a Porsche colliding with a Mercedes—making sche/mer in the crumple zone— then what collisions make these other words? Only makes of car (not models) are involved. In each case a car’s tail will collide with another’s front.
(a) oversea _______________/_________________
(b) vomits _______________/_________________
(c) rumor [sic] _______________/_________________
(d) agenda _______________/_________________
(e) guard _______________/_________________
(f) wren _______________/_________________
(g) clam _______________/_________________