A holiday hello to my fellow puzzlefiends and solvers!
In the giving spirit of Christmas, I wanted to leave a small token of wordplay wonder for you. As such, I’m happy to present one of my all-time favorite comedy routines, a Victor Borge classic called “Inflationary Language.” It’s a little word puzzle in and of itself, and I think you’ll quite enjoy.
A great story from crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. He wrote on his Facebook page the other day that a friend of his, Alex, had sent him an e-mail:
The lady that sits next to me in the lab has a 10 year old son who’s just of the age to be questioning Santa. Since Santa sees all, he decided to write a Christmas list in code, and only utter the decryption key to the code once, out loud, to a friend of his on the playground, under the assumption that Santa or his agents should hear it and would decrypt his list. His mom and dad have been working on the code for a week or two now with little progress, and Christmas is getting close. Think you know a puzzle geek that wants to take a crack at it?
The coded message is as follows:
Vdge Fxqct,
Wlju vdgz bcn J iyci b bnsjgpgwwo, gpb jsijgm gp fhrga: kxfabmt ivryt, Frqeqkg, bcn J iyci hju Mtnnxvrhcfpf gp icqyayeqpj xjfqwo ryu. Prdju xqz!
As Alex points out in his e-mail to Brendan, the first and last phrases sync up nicely to “Dear Santa” and “Thank you.” But what about the rest of it? Click through to see how a group of puzzle solvers helped save Christmas.
There are puzzles out there for every skill level, from super-easy to staggeringly challenging. And every once in a while, you will come across a puzzle that feels expressly engineered to be as difficult as possible, if not borderline mind-meltingly impossible, even for an experienced solver.
If you’ve ever suspected a puzzlesmith of such diabolical shenaniganry, you’ll probably feel vindicated by Sean Adams’s post on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a bitingly funny introduction from a (hopefully) mythical puzzle book.
Enjoy!
(Thanks to Wes Carroll)
Apologies for the delay in posting the answers to the Word Mastery for the Holidays post, my fellow puzzle fiends! The holiday season, so ridiculously hectic.
In any case, here are the answers! How did you do?
1.) Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
2.) Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
3.) Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological alpine formation.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
4.) Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.
Silent Night
5.) Embellish the interior passageways.
Deck the Halls
6.) An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestial sphere.
Joy to the World
7.) Twelve o’clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival.
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
8.) The Christmas preceding all others.
The First Noel
9.) Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
10.) In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children’s slumber furnishings.
Away in a Manger
11.) Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted, metallic, resonant cups.
Jingle Bells
12.) The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.
We Three Kings (of Orient Are)
13.) Geographic state of fantasy during the season of Mother Nature’s dormancy.
Winter Wonderland
14.) In awe of the nocturnal timespan characterized by religiosity.
Oh Holy Night
15.) Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as an hallucinatory phenomenon for me.
I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas
16.) Expectation of arrival to populated areas by mythical, masculine perennial gift-giver.
Here Comes Santa Claus
17.) Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of frozen minute crystals.
Frosty the Snowman
18.) Tranquility upon the terrestial sphere.
Peace on Earth
19.) Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
20.) Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders.
Little Drummer Boy
21.) Jovial Yuletide desired for the second person singular or plural by us.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
PuzzCulture 