M Puzzle: Cans and Donations Gratefully Accepted

by Bridget Copley and Jofish Kaye

After this puzzle was released (and about once an hour until teams solved the puzzle), teams received a spam message.

In this spam, there is a 5-digit number (17548) in the subject line and various dollar amounts in the text. The dollar amounts correspond to the amounts raised by the winners of the APO Big Screw and Ugliest Manifestation on Campus charity fundraisers in the past few years. (APO, hence all the words that start with APO.) When you take the specified letters out of the people's names, you get the message HAIKU WITH THE SPAM NUMBER SECOND WORD:

HA      $932.63         Hale V. D. Bradt 1,2    2001 Big Screw
IK      $493.76         Ken J. Lin 6,1          1993 UMOC
UW      $335.05         Matthew H. Braun 12, 7  1998 Big Screw
IT      $291.40         Eliot S. Levitt 3, 11   1993 Big Screw
HT      $376.55         Stephanie A. Sparvero 5,2       1994 UMOC
HE      $249.40         Joseph A. Powers 6,4    1991 UMOC
SP      $416.35         Pascal R. Chesnais 3,1  1991 Big Screw
AM      $233.82         C. Michael Mohr 6,2     1998 Big Screw
NU      $308.52         Justin O. Cave 6,2      1995 UMOC
MB      $296.35         Shirley M. McBay 8/9,11 1985 Big Screw
ER      $242.84         Wesley L. Harris 2,10   1995 Big Screw
SE      $1,997.71       Steven B. Leeb 1,3      2002 Big Screw
CO      $179.12         Robert D. Logcher 11, 2 1994 Big Screw
ND      $295.88         Alice A. Enevoldsen 8, 13       1999 UMOC
WO      $87.04          Neal H. Dorow 10,7        1997 Big Screw
RD      $979.97         Neal Dorow 8,6          2000 Big Screw

The names can all be found in the relevant issues of the Tech (or on APO's web site). And yes, Neal (H.) Dorow is listed with his middle initial in 1997 and without in 2000, in both places.

The haiku with the number 17548 in the spam haiku archive is:

17548.
Unmitigated
gall; to serve greasy SPAM chunks
at fancy dress ball.

--Milford Pigboy

The second word, and therefore the answer, is GALL.