[Solution] Categories – 9 May 2022

Solvers are given a list of twenty-eight items. They may notice that these items may be sorted into categories corresponding to the seven puzzle answers. They will likely also notice that the items are not distributed evenly. The seven categories are Pokemon, letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet, US Presidents, books of the Bible, mysteries in The Boxcar Children series minus the word “Mystery”, Trains from Thomas and Friends, and (nouns from) the labors of Heracles/Hercules. The complete sorting is below:

PokemonNATOPresidentsBibleMysteriesTrainsLabors
CharizardBravoGarfieldDanielBlue BayDonaldBirds
QuebecJacksonGenesisBus StationDouglasBull
TylerNumbersCabooseEdwardCattle
ProverbsHouseboatGordonHorses
SnowboundPercyHydra
TobyLion
Stables

As we see, the number of items in each category is a distinct value from 1-7. This seems like a good ordering for the answers: PIKACHU, OSCAR, ARTHUR, JOB, BICYCLE, HENRY, and GOLDEN APPLE. To get the final answer, solvers can take the number associated with each answer in the discovered groups, and translate that into a letter. For example, pikachu is pokemon #25, and the 25th letter is Y; Oscar is the fifteenth letter in the NATO alphabet, which unsurprisingly gives O.

Completing this for all seven answers gives the answer phrase YOU ROCK. If you have made it this far, you certain do! Well done!