Puzzles for Adults and Children
The puzzle Betrayal! has been out for a week now. If you’re struggling, check out the hint below.
Once you’ve finished that, check out this week’s new puzzle, Short-Changed. It’s like looking in a mirror.
Once you find the characters who were betrayed, repeat the process one more time. This puzzle includes three characters from animated Disney movies, and two from Shakespeare plays.
The solution to Evolutionary Theory has now been posted. As well, the hint is up for last week’s puzzle, Betrayal!
Short-Changed is the new puzzle for this week. Are you tired of answers which just go on and on? Then this puzzle is for you!
Reminder that Grant Fikes is running his ninth season of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home. These puzzles run to the easier side, and for every solve, he donates to a food bank. There are four puzzles up so far – go check them out!
Please enter your answer below, leaving out all punctuation.
This puzzle consists of five lines of characters from comic strips which must be identified. Many can be identified through a reverse image search, while others require searching for descriptions or text in the picture. The characters and the strips they come from are:
The first letters of these characters taken in order spell out the phrase WEBCOMIC ANSWER MINUS ANSWER. This references the webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield. The answer is GARFIELD.
The puzzle Evolutionary Theory has been out for a week now. If you’re struggling, check out the hint below.
Once you’ve finished that, check out this week’s new puzzle, Betrayal!.
After you find all thirty hidden pokémon, read the leftover letters for the next step. The pokémon used in this puzzle are all from the first generation of games. Besides that, what else do they have in common evolutionarily?
The solution to Funny Pages has now been posted. As well, the hint is up for last week’s puzzle, Evolutionary Theory.
The new puzzle for this week is Betrayal! This puzzle should not prove too difficult. Perhaps a nice break for anybody who participated in the MIT Mystery Hunt this weekend.
Reminder that Grant Fikes is running his ninth season of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home. These puzzles run to the easier side, and for every solve, he donates to a food bank. There are three puzzles up so far – go check them out!
Please enter your answer below, leaving out all punctuation.
This metapuzzle requires the answers from the previous two months. They are GRIT, ESCAPES, BUY, DEUCE, COVERT, FIST, HOSE, and INFECTION. The metapuzzle provides eight clues, which do not define these eight words. The breakthrough comes in realizing that the clues all describe the puzzle answers with an additional letter added – the “missing piece” of the puzzle title. The clues and their corresponding answers are:
These extra letters don’t spell anything in the order given, but that order is merely alphabetical by clue. Solvers will notice that the answers begin with the letters from B through I. Putting the answers in alphabetical order gives the following:
In this order, the added letters spell out ONDERFUL. The lack of a word starting with A suggests adding a letter to the front of this to form the answer WONDERFUL, as in “You did a wonderful job in solving this puzzle!”
The puzzle Funny Pages has been out for a week now. It turned out to be harder to look up the comics than I intended, so if the hint below doesn’t provide enough help, feel free to reach out for more guidance.
Once you’ve finished that, check out this week’s new puzzle, Evolutionary Theory.
The pictured characters are from the following comic strips, though not in the same order:
Asterix, B.C., Baby Blues, Beetle Bailey, Big Nate, Calvin and Hobbes, Cathy, Dilbert, Eek & Meek, For Better or For Worse, FoxTrot, Garfield, Gasoline Alley, Get Fuzzy, Hagar the Horrible, Jump Start, Krazy Kat, Luann, Monty, Mother Goose and Grimm, MUTTS, Nancy, Peanuts, Pearls Before Swine, and Pickles
Additionally, two of the pictures in the fourth row have been updated to include more context clues for searching.
I want to start with an apology for last week’s puzzle. While it is definitely solvable, it is harder – or at least more tedious – than I would prefer, especially for the first week of a puzzle set. The hint is up now, which will hopefully help anybody who got stuck on it. The solution to the November-December metapuzzle, The Missing Piece, has been posted as well. Well done to everybody who solved it, and a big thank you to all the people who solved during the last two months.
The new puzzle for this week is Evolutionary Theory. With apologies to my mother, I expect a majority of my solvers will be familiar with this subject.
I forgot to post about it last week, but Grant Fikes has started his ninth season of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home. These puzzles run to the easier side, and for every solve, he donates to a food bank. There are two puzzles up so far – go check them out!
Please enter your answer below, leaving out all punctuation.
This sort of puzzle, where solvers are tested on their ability to follow incomplete or otherwise complicated constructions, is often referred to as a Conundrum or Konundrum. In this case, solvers are given all the information, and this puzzle is just a test of their comprehension and ability to follow directions. This is easiest to do with a physical copy of the board game, but a wordy walkthrough is provided here.
The theming of the puzzle suggests the board game Clue (or Cluedo in the UK – the differences between the versions are immaterial for this puzzle). The first three paragraphs serve to set the scene and explain the rules of the puzzle. At this point MR. GREEN, MRS. WHITE, and the KNIFE are in the STUDY, PROFESSOR PLUM and the ROPE are in the HALL, COLONEL MUSTARD, MRS. PEACOCK, and MISS SCARLET are in the KITCHEN, the LEAD PIPE and REVOLVER are in the BALLROOM, the WRENCH is in the LOUNGE, and the CANDLESTICK is in the CONSERVATORY.
In the next turn, COLONEL MUSTARD moves to the STUDY, and MR. GREEN goes to the KITCHEN. MRS. WHITE arms herself with the KNIFE and moves to the HALL. MISS SCARLET and MRS. PEACOCK have no weapons to pick up, but both move to the BALLROOM.
Since MRS. WHITE is now holding the KNIFE in the same room as an unarmed PROFESSOR PLUM, she knocks him unconscious, and the KNIFE and PROFESSOR PLUM are removed from play. Write the letter F in the HALL.
In the next turn, MRS. WHITE picks up the ROPE. MRS. PEACOCK gets the LEAD PIPE and MISS SCARLET takes the REVOLVER. COLONEL MUSTARD moves to the CONSERVATORY and claims the CANDLESTICK, and MR. GREEN moves to the LOUNGE and gets the WRENCH. Everybody is armed, so no crimes are committed this turn.
Next, COLONEL MUSTARD with the CANDLESTICK moves to the LOUNGE, and MR. GREEN with the WRENCH goes to the CONSERVATORY.
There is only one pair of suspects in the same room, so at the end of the turn MRS. PEACOCK has the REVOLVER in the LIBRARY, and MISS SCARLET has the LEAD PIPE in the LIBRARY. The letter I is written in the LIBRARY.
The next clue references the KITCHEN, since it, the BALLROOM, and the DINING ROOM are empty. MR. GREEN with the WRENCH goes to the KITCHEN. COLONEL MUSTARD with the CANDLESTICK also reaches the KITCHEN. MRS. PEACOCK with the REVOLVER moves to the CONSERVATORY, MISS SCARLET with the LEAD PIPE goes to the BALLROOM, and MRS. WHITE with the ROPE ends up in the DINING ROOM. Since two armed suspects meet in the KITCHEN, write a T there.
MRS. PEACOCK leaves the REVOLVER in the CONSERVATORY and moves to the BILLIARD ROOM. MRS. WHITE drops the ROPE in the DINING ROOM and moves to the BALLROOM. There, an unarmed MRS. WHITE is knocked unconscious by MISS SCARLET with the LEAD PIPE. MRS. WHITE and the LEAD PIPE are removed from the game, and an I is written in the BALL ROOM.
COLONEL MUSTARD takes the CANDLESTICK to the BALLROOM, MRS. PEACOCK moves to the LIBRARY, and MISS SCARLET goes to the CONSERVATORY and then to the LOUNGE. At the end of the turn, no two suspects are in the same room, so an E is written in the LOUNGE.
There are unconscious bodies in the BALLROOM and the HALL, so MR. GREEN and the WRENCH move to the DINING ROOM, COLONEL MUSTARD takes the CANDLESTICK to the CONSERVATORY, MRS. PEACOCK goes to the BILLIARD ROOM, and MISS SCARLET enters the DINING ROOM. At the end of turn, MR. GREEN uses the WRENCH to knock MISS SCARLET unconscious in the DINING ROOM. MISS SCARLET and the WRENCH are removed from the game, and the DINING ROOM gets a C.
MR. GREEN is in the DINING ROOM along with the rope, so he remains unarmed and moves to the KITCHEN. COLONEL MUSTARD is in the CONSERVATORY with an unclaimed REVOLVER, so he keeps his CANDLESTICK and goes to the BILLIARD ROOM. MRS. PEACOCK is already in the BILLIARD ROOM, unarmed, so she gets knocked out by COLONEL MUSTARD with the CANDLESTICK. the CANDLESTICK and MRS. PEACOCK are removed from the game. An N is written in the BILLIARD ROOM.
By the penultimate turn, the only two rooms without weapons are the CONSERVATORY and the STUDY. Since the REVOLVER is in the CONSERVATORY, both remaining suspects rush toward that room. In one step, COLONEL MUSTARD reaches the CONSERVATORY and arms himself with the REVOLVER. MR. GREEN gets to the BALLROOM, but finds no weapon there with which to arm himself. (The one remaining weapon is the ROPE, currently in the DINING ROOM.) Write the letter O in the CONSERVATORY.
Since the STUDY is now the only room without a letter, MR. GREEN rushes there, where COLONEL MUSTARD knocks him unconscious with the REVOLVER. MR. GREEN and the REVOLVER are removed from the game, and the letter N is written in the STUDY.
Colonel Mustard may have knocked all the other guests out, but the puzzle asks what caused the death of Mr. Boddy. Reading the letters in the rooms clockwise starting in the library, spells out the answer, INFECTION. There was no murder done today.
The November-December metapuzzle, The Missing Piece, has been out for a week now. If you are stuck on solving it, check out the hint below, as well as the solutions to all eight feeder puzzles on the solutions page.
Once you’ve finished that, check out the first puzzle in a new set, Funny Pages.
Every answer in this puzzle is missing a letter. Don’t forget to look for a way to order your answers.