Off The Cuff: Minding the Ps and Qs and crossing Ts

Bleary-eyed and stiff-jointed, we decanted ourselves from the Dubai flight and were sucked into the bowels of Manchester International Airport in Britain.

The huge baggage claim hall with its tireless, whirring luggage carousels lay before us, and as we waited patiently for our bags, our eyes were drawn to a sign on the wall: Arouse tarts

when a arm

ounds

Was it English? Or had we accidentally landed in some central European republic where people have names that could win you a Scrabble championship?

We decided it was indeed English. Clearly, some of the letters had dropped off. But try as we might, we could find no permutation of letters to make any sense of it.

The riddle provided an interesting, if infuriating, diversion for myself and fellow travellers as we waited for the luggage.

It had not really occurred to me that there were in fact 5,000 people on the Dubai flight, each of them with six suitcases which were now going round and round in an insane waltz. All of them, it seemed, except mine.

Nevertheless, there was still the riddle to keep me occupied. Arouse tarts ... hmm

MLS, or Missing Letter Syndrome, which I have diagnosed and named, is a sickness that has rampaged around the globe, spreading with all the virility of salmonella in a five-week-old shawarma.

The number one risk here comes from exposure to neon signs. Neon signs on the whole are about as reliable as a third hand Lada from Honest Joe's Autos.

Letters, sometimes entire words and phrases, disappear at random, often tantalisingly flashing on and off.

Back in Dubai, I was confronted with one sign which flashed alternately red and blue. Alas, when it turned to red a section was missing, giving us: Al s ravel. When it went blue, another bit was missing, giving us: Rai t.

I was going nowhere, stuck in the nightly Bur Dubai traffic snarl up, so out came the code book without which I never travel, and I set about descrambling the message.

The trick was to close your eyes and overlay each image in your mind. At last I was able to jot down the decrypted version: Al Rais Travel. However, those among us afflicted with colour blindness, should be able to get it right at first glance.

Then there was a friend visiting New Zealand, puzzling over a sign across the street as he sat having a coffee. It read Chi en Ta Awa. He tried in vain to fill in letters.

Could it, he wondered, be one of those strange Maori names, such as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa?

Curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered across for closer inspection. Some primordial instinct associated with his nostrils and saliva glands filled in the gaps where his logic had failed. It was: Chicken Take Away.

Meanwhile, back in Manchester Airport, we were no further forward in solving the puzzle.

Arouse tarts

when a arm

ounds

This one seemed uncrackable. This one made The Da Vinci Code look like the Quick Crossword in Tabloid.

However, the solution had been staring at us all the time. Not exactly staring us in the face, but in the back. A flurry of passengers arrived at a neighbouring carousel, and one of us suddenly had an idea.

Did they have a sign too? We went over to check, and sure enough there was another sign in all its pristine glory ...

Carousel starts

When alarm

Sounds