Christmas has come and gone, but Hanukkah has only just begun, and thanks to the creative minds of George Barany and Michael Hanko, I’m delighted to have an additional puzzle to share with you all at this festive time!
George and Michael have titled their puzzle December 25, 2024 (clued to midweek difficulty), and they’ve provided the following preface:
This holiday puzzle, with its dual time options and its two sets of clues, offers you the gift of choice. To accentuate your experience of your holiday–whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah–choose the clue set that corresponds to your personal tradition. Or, to ramp up your puzzle’s level of difficulty, choose a clue set that is outside your personal tradition. However you choose to approach our puzzle, we wish you a happy and/or merry solve!
Reminder, a SINGLE answer grid is produced by solving from either clue set. George and Michael are grateful to Noam Elkies, Charles Flaster, Theresa Horan, and Markand Thakar for taking time from each of their busy holiday leadups to test solve both versions and make helpful suggestions that improved it.
By request of the constructors, if you like the puzzle, please spread the cheer to your own circle.
A few years ago, I posted a holiday puzzle that had been floating around the Internet for years. It was a list of Christmas songs and carols whose titles had been reworded, and it was up to the reader to identify the actual titles.
It was a popular post, but something about the list always bothered me. There were 21 reworded titles, which didn’t strike me as very Christmassy at all. I mean, why not 12? Or 24? Or, heck, 25?
So, I did something about it.
I added 10 new reworded titles to the list, bringing the total to 31, one for every day in December. Let’s see how many of you can crack all 31 titles, shall we? Enjoy!
1.) Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.
2.) Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.
3.) Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological alpine formation.
4.) Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.
5.) Embellish the interior passageways.
6.) An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestial sphere.
7.) Twelve o’clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival.
8.) The Christmas preceding all others.
9.) Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.
10.) In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children’s slumber furnishings.
11.) Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted, metallic, resonant cups.
12.) The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.
13.) Geographic state of fantasy during the season of Mother Nature’s dormancy.
14.) In awe of the nocturnal timespan characterized by religiosity.
15.) Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as an hallucinatory phenomenon for me.
16.) Expectation of arrival to populated areas by mythical, masculine perennial gift-giver.
17.) Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of frozen minute crystals.
18.) Tranquility upon the terrestial sphere.
19.) Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males.
20.) Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders.
21.) Jovial Yuletide desired for the second person singular or plural by us.
22.) Allow winter precipitation in the form of atmospheric water vapor in crystalline form to descend.
23.) A first-person observer witnessed a female progenitor engaging in osculation with a hirsute nocturnal intruder.
24.) Your continued presence remains the sole Yuletide request of the speaker in question.
25.) Permanent domicile during multiple specific celebratory periods.
26.) Diminutive person regarded as holy or virtuous known by the informal moniker shared by two former Russian tsars.
27.) More than a passing resemblance to an annual winter festival is emerging.
28.) Are you registering the same auditory phenomenon I am currently experiencing?
29.) Overhead at the summit of the suburban residence.
30.) Attractive or otherwise visually pleasing wood pulp product.
31.) Parasitic European shrub accompanied by a plant with prickly green leaves and baccate qualities.
How many did you unravel, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!
It’s Santa’s big day, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers, and we thought we’d celebrate this joyous day of family, friends, giving, and delights with a little Christmas Quiz!
Simply answer the holiday-themed clues below! And, if you come up with the correct answers, you’ll reveal a message reading down, formed by the first letter of every answer!
Here we go!
Plant with pleasant results for those under its influence?
Santa’s helper OR Will Ferrell film
Vixen, for one
A treasured BB-gun brand
He famously sought a peppermint mine
One who wassails OR member of a loud festive mob?
Nationally observed day off
Donner’s son OR reindeer game outcast
There was no room here
The Grinch’s creator
One of the misfit toys
Scrooge’s ghostly partner
Four Sunday-period OR type of calendar
Hang this with care
Did you crack the clues and figure out the message? We hope so! Have a marvelous day!
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