Author: korfield

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[Solution] Back to Basics – 13 May 2024

None of the answers to the feeder puzzles (BUNS, DRAWER, LEEK, MAPS, NUTS, PUPILS, TRESSED, and WOLF) match the clues given in this metapuzzle. However, each of the answers forms a new word when reversed, and each of those words matches a given clue.

  • Move forward (1) = FLOW
  • Hull part (4) = KEEL
  • Mistake (3) = SLIP-UP
  • Junk Mail (2) = SPAM
  • Pavlova (7) = DESSERT
  • Floor (3) = STUN
  • Prize (1) = REWARD
  • Eschew (2) = SNUB

The numbers can be used to index into the reversed answers, for example the 1st letter of FLOW is F. Doing this for all eight answers yields the meta solution of FLIP TURN.

This metapuzzle was actually not written until after half the puzzles had been released. It was originally a more high-concept puzzle, still based on reversing the words, but not as easy to work out. It also had the flaw of barely using the feeder puzzle answers. I knew it wasn’t the best metapuzzle, though I thought it good enough to publish. However, following Fantastical Journeys dropping like a load of bricks, I knew I wanted a tighter, if not super creative, metapuzzle, and I wrote this puzzle to use the answers I already had.

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[Puzzle] You Light Up My Life – 13 May 2024

The hint for last week’s Nono-Nonsense Puzzling is now available, as is the solution to the March-April metapuzzle. Congratulations to all twenty of you who solved it, and a big thank you to anybody who solved at all in the past two months.

This week’s puzzle is the Mother’s Day special, You Light Up My Life. Complete the grid to find your answer, then save both the answer and the grid.

Reminder that Grant Fikes is in the midst of his seventh season of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home, his homage to this site. Normally, he posts word puzzles every Wednesday, but during Kevin’s Puzzles at Home, he posts a simple puzzle hunt puzzle each Monday, twelve hours before my puzzles. What’s more, he donates to a food pantry for every solve, so head on over and solve some puzzles to help the hungry!

The answer to the puzzle each week is a word or short phrase. Enter it into the box below, ignoring any punctuation. Due to a quirk of the setup, answer submissions with unorthodox spacing will take a while to appear on the leaderboard, though the solve time will be properly recorded.

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    [Solution] Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? – 6 May 2024

    This puzzle is based off the popular game show of the same name. The first step is to determine the correct answers to the questions. In order, they are:

    • Uranus
    • Shade
    • Easter Island
    • Aristotle
    • Semicolon
    • Charlemagne
    • Isosceles
    • Iodine

    In order, the first letters of these answer spell out USE ASCII. ASCII is an encoding used in programming where symbols can be encoded by strings of eight binary bits (ones or zeros). Conveniently enough, there are eight questions in this puzzle. That means each person’s correct and incorrect answers can be encoded as ones and zeroes to give six characters. (It may not be immediately obvious to solvers whether correct answers should be one or zero, but since all letters in ASCII start with 01, it quickly becomes clear.) The strings are:

    • Alison: 01010000 = p
    • Bennett: 01010101 = U
    • Charlie: 01010000 = p
    • Dennis: 01001001 = I
    • Emma: 01001100 = L
    • Faith: 01010011 = S

    The capitalization can be ignored. (It only varies so that the third question could have a mix of correct and incorrect answers.) The answer is PUPILS.

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    [Hint] Back to Basics – 6 May 2024

    Nearly twenty people have solved the March-April metapuzzle, Back to Basics. If you’re working to join them, check out this hint.

    Once you’ve finished that, the first puzzle of May-June is Nono-Nonsense Puzzling. This puzzle set will rely more on existing puzzle forms than creative design, but hopefully the puzzles themselves are still a fun diversion.

    The answers to the puzzles have somehow all been reversed. To solve this metapuzzle, you will have to fix that!

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    [Puzzle] Nono-Nonsense Puzzling – 6 May 2024

    Hello, everybody! It’s a new month, which brings the beginning of a whole new puzzle set! This is the first themed set on this site, and the meta will work a little differently. You will need not only the solutions to the puzzles, but also their completed grids in order to complete the meta.

    On the subject of metapuzzles, congratulations to all nineteen of you who solved last week’s meta. The hint for it, as well as the solution to the final feeder puzzle are both available for anybody who hasn’t solved it yet.

    The first of seven gridded puzzles over the next two months is Nono-Nonsense Puzzling. Complete the grid to find a one-word answer, then save both the answer and the grid.

    Another bit of news for this week is the return of the Contact page. You should be able to find it on the top menu. To fight the spam that caused the previous removal of the page, sending a message to me will require you to look up an answer to a previous puzzle from the Archive page. Hopefully this proves relatively simple for humans but difficult for bots.

    The final bit of news for this week is that Grant Fikes has started up his seventh season of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home, his homage to this site. Normally, he posts word puzzles every Wednesday, but during Kevin’s Puzzles at Home, he posts a simple puzzle hunt puzzle each Monday, twelve hours before my puzzles. What’s more, he donates to a food pantry for every solve, so head on over and solve some puzzles to help the hungry!

    The answer to the puzzle each week is a word or short phrase. Enter it into the box below, ignoring any punctuation. Due to a quirk of the setup, answer submissions with unorthodox spacing will take a while to appear on the leaderboard, though the solve time will be properly recorded.

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      [Solution] Fractured Fairy Tales – 29 April 2024

      This story has references to characters from many different fairy tales. In fact, every sentence besides the first makes reference to a different character. The key to solving the puzzle is identifying these characters.

      CharacterSource
      Baba YagaSlavic folklore
      Ivan TsarevitchRussian folk lore, referencing Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf
      GoldilocksGoldilocks and the Three Bears
      Boy Who Cried WolfThe Boy Who Cried Wolf (Aesop)
      Ali BabaAli Baba and the Forty Thieves (Arabian Nights)
      DogThe Town Musicians of Bremen (Brothers Grimm)
      WoodcutterThe Honest Woodcutter (Aesop)
      HanselHansel and Gretel (Brothers Grimm)
      AladdinAladdin (Arabian Nights)
      TortoiseThe Tortoise and the Hare (Aesop)

      The first letters of the clued characters, with spaces added at the paragraph breaks, spell out BIG BAD WHAT. A common figure in many fairy tales is the Big Bad WOLF.

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      [Hint] Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? – 29 April 2024

      Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, the final regular puzzle of March-April, has been out for a week, and there is a hint below.

      Once you’ve finished that. check out the metapuzzle of this puzzle set, Back to Basics. This one isn’t too hard if you look at it from the right direction.

      The correct answers tell you what encoding to use to get letters from each student’s correct and incorrect responses.

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      [Meta] Back to Basics – 29 April 2024

      The hint for last week’s Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? is now up, as is the solution to Fractured Fairy Tales, from two weeks ago.

      This week’s metapuzzle brings us Back to Basics. Use your answers from the past two months to complete this puzzle. The first puzzle of the May-June set comes next Monday. Check back then to begin our first-ever themed puzzle set!

      The answer to the puzzle each week is a word or short phrase. Enter it into the box below, ignoring any punctuation. Due to a quirk of the setup, answer submissions with unorthodox spacing will take a while to appear on the leaderboard, though the solve time will be properly recorded.

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        [Solution] Allergic Reaction – 22 April 2024

        This is a fairly standard logic grid puzzle, but there are fewer clues than normally seen. However, the clues are very constrictive, and the puzzle can be solved as normal. One possible logic path is as follows:

        The third clue states that one three-day stretch was Stuffy Nose, Dylan, and Pecans, in that order. The fifth clue says that another two-day stretch consists of Shellfish and Milk, as well as Dizziness and Hives. Since the three-day period starts with a symptom and ends with an allergen, the two-day and three-day periods do not overlap, and must be one after the other, since there are only five days.

        By the first clue, Sam had a reaction to either Shellfish or Soy, and the reaction was either a Stomachache or Stuffy Nose. Since Shellfish cannot have caused either of those, according to clue five, Sam is allergic to Soy.

        Sam cannot be allergic to Shellfish, Milk, or Pecans, nor are they Dylan. By process of elimination, Soy gives Sam a Stuffy Nose. Knowing that, Dylan must be allergic to Eggs.

        By clue four, the anaphylaxis occurred two days after Jordan’s reaction. Since Sam got the Stuffy Nose, the Pecans did not cause Anaphylaxis. This means that Eggs gave Dylan Anaphylaxis. More importantly, it means that Dylan’s reaction cannot have been on Tuesday, so the Shellfish allergy was on Monday, the Milk reaction was on Tuesday and it was Jordan, Sam’s Soy Stuffy Nose was on Wednesday, Dylan’s Egg Anaphylaxis was on Thursday, and the Pecan allergy was on Friday.

        Combining this order with clue five, Hives were on Monday or Tuesday. From clue two, we know that Taylor must have had the reaction Monday, and Hives were Tuesday. Using clue five, this leaves Dizziness for Monday.

        The last remaining person and symptom – Alex and Stomachache – must therefore end up on Friday.

        The completed grid looks like this:

        The completed grid, with correct pairs highlighted.

        Read in order, the letters in the highlighted spaces spell out RENADEXTURALETTETRSINTHISTESXT. This looks close to a clue phrase, but it appears to have extra letters. Ignoring four of the letters, the phrase READ EXTRA LETTERS IN THIS TEXT. The extra letters spell out NUTS, the answer to the puzzle.