Tag Archives: Puzzle to solve

Christmas Eve Puzzle to Solve!

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It’s Christmas Eve, fellow puzzlers, and it’s tradition around here to celebrate the holidays with a free puzzle to solve!

This year is no exception, as I’ve cooked up something festive and fun for you.

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have a puzzle called First and Last, and when I thought of it, I immediately had the idea to do a holiday-themed version of it.

As you might’ve already guessed, I called it…

First and Last Christmas!

You can click here to download a PDF copy of the puzzle to solve, and I’ve included the full details in this puzzle below so you know what you’re getting into!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, friends. May the holidays be kind to you.

The answer to each clue can be found in the diagram. You can move up, down, backward, and forward, but not diagonally. Do not skip over any squares. The last letter of each answer is the first letter of the next answer; otherwise, each letter is used only once. The answer to the first clue begins in the outlined box, and the first and last letters of each answer are circled. Plus every word in the grid is festively themed. Good luck!

  1. This holiday song was the first song played in space (during the flight of Gemini 6A in December 1965)
  2. Stocking __
  3. Santa has eight or nine of these, depending on the song
  4. On the fifth day of Christmas, you get five of these
  5. There are 35 different shapes possible for this
  6. George Washington had a boozy recipe for this that included the instruction “Taste frequently”
  7. “The Elves and the Shoemaker” were just one story attributed to brothers by this name
  8. Holiday plant sometimes called “witches’ brooms”
  9. Good choice for a Christmas tree
  10. Scene featuring shepherds and magi (oh, and a baby, I guess)
  11. The Christmas season, of yore
  12. After leaving Bethlehem, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus traveled here
  13. This was originally made of hammered silver
  14. Holiday lights also known as farolitos
  15. __ calendar
  16. “Santa Claus is Coming to __“

Here We Come A-Wassailing, With Some Reworded Carols!

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village-carolers
Image courtesy of The Sun Papers.

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!

The 2024 GCHQ Christmas Challenge Launches Tomorrow!

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One government agency in England celebrates Christmas a little bit differently than most.

The GCHQ — or Government Communications Headquarters — provides security and intelligence services for the British government. Back when they were known as GC&CS — Government Code and Cypher School — they were responsible for funding Bletchley Park and its successes cracking the German “Enigma” code during World War II.

And now, they provide one of the coolest and puzzliest challenges of the year, designed for solvers aged eleven to eighteen to test their skills, hoping to inspire the next generation of puzzle solvers.

Yes, it’s time once again for the GCHQ Christmas card.

GCHQ card
A look at 2021’s GCHQ Christmas Card.

We provided detailed breakdowns of their Christmas cards in 2016 and 2021, and if you’d like a sample of the GCHQ Christmas Challenge, they have an archive of the last three years ready for you to solve!

The 2024 edition of the GCHQ Christmas Challenge launches tomorrow, Wednesday December 11th for the general public. (Schools were able to register for early access to the puzzles, complete with lesson-planning materials, which is very cool.)

Here’s what the GCHQ has to say about the event:

At GCHQ, we love creating puzzles and breaking codes. That’s why every year we create the GCHQ Christmas Challenge, a series of fiendish brainteasers and puzzles, designed by our very own team of codebreakers. It encourages children aged 11-18 to think laterally and work as a team, as well as showcasing some of the skills they might need to become a spy.

The puzzles are not designed to be solved alone, and each student will bring something different to the challenge. At GCHQ, we believe the right mix of minds enables us to solve seemingly impossible problems.

I’ve always been impressed with what festive puzzly efforts GCHQ brings each year, and I can’t wait to see what the 2024 edition has in store for solvers.

So, fellow puzzlers, do you accept this year’s Christmas Challenge? Let us know in the comments section below!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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lego-store-lego-november-turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow puzzlers!

Today is a day for family and friends, for celebrating togetherness, for appreciating good fortune, health, and happiness. And we here at PuzzCulture are so so grateful for each and every reader and solver.

Whether you’re a puzzler or a gamer, a casual solver or a diehard devotee of all things puzzly, you can rest assured you are a welcome member of a very eclectic, charming, and downright likable community of puzzly people. =)

And so, in the spirit of giving thanks, I’ve cooked up a puzzle for my fellow puzzlers on this delightful Turkey Day.

Can you provide the three-letter answers to these clues and fill the grid? Some words will be entered clockwise, some counterclockwise.

If you do it correctly, a word will read clockwise around the edges of the diagram.

And here’s a collection of previous Thanksgiving puzzles we’ve created over the years:

Let us know if you solved the puzzle! Happy Thanksgiving!

Let’s Try Within-onyms!

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The heart of this blog is celebrating puzzles and wordplay in as many forms as possible, so for today’s blog, here’s a puzzle for you to solve!

I call this puzzle “Within-onyms” and the concept is simple. I’ll give you a combination of letters and blanks. Each blank represents a missing letter. The given letters spell out not only a word, but your clue as well. Because when you fill those blanks with the missing letters, you’ll spell out a larger word that’s a synonym of the given word.

For example, I give you this Within-onym:

G I _ A N T _ _

The given letters spell GIANT, but if you add a G, I, and C, you spell the word GIGANTIC, a synonym of GIANT!

Ready to try it for yourself? Careful, they get tougher as we go!

WITHIN-ONYMS

L A _ _ S T

_ _ N O _ _ B L E

_ _ T _ _ O M B

H _ _ _ I E S

M A _ _ _ L _ _ E

S P _ _ _ _ E D

_ _ S E _ _ E

U _ _ _ G _ _ L Y

_ _ H E _ I _ _ R

_ _ _ T A _ I N _ T _

_ R _ _ _ _ _ _ A _ I _ N

B _ _ _ _ I _ G _ _ _ _ _ _

Happy puzzling!

How many did you get? Let me know in the comment section below!

Tackling the GCHQ 2021 Christmas Card!

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GCHQ card

Every year, one of the puzzliest challenges many solvers will encounter all year descends upon the world, as the GCHQ issue their Christmas card.

The GCHQ — or Government Communications Headquarters — provides security and intelligence services for the British government. Back when they were known as GC&CS — Government Code and Cypher School — they were responsible for funding Bletchley Park and its successes cracking the German “Enigma” code during World War II.

This year’s Christmas card was directed toward solvers with a secondary school education (essentially solvers age 11 and up), and was less complicated than offerings in previous years, but still offered an engaging challenge.

Here’s the link in case you’d like to try it for yourself.

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*

Last chance before we walk through the solution!

***

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*

Okay, ready? Good! Let’s do this!

GCHQ card 1a

Clue number one is an easy one, as you simply read the first letter of each word in the message. Your solution is CHRISTMAS.

Clue number two is a simple 4×4 across-and-down grid where 1-Across and 1-Down are the same word, 2-Across and 2-Down are the same word, and so on. The completed grid reads:

T H I S
H O O T
I O W A
S T A G

And the letters in THIS are highlighted in the grid, so the solution is THIS.

GCHQ card 1b

Clue number three is a complete-the-sequence puzzle where the names of the Hogwarts houses from Harry Potter are listed, but each house in the sequence has more letters missing from the beginning and end of the word. Slytherin is the missing house, and with three letters missing from the beginning and end of the word, your solution is THE.

Clue number four is a Blackout! or Minesweeper-style puzzle where you deduce the location of bombs in the grid according to numbers in the neighboring squares. Once you’re marked off each of the bombs, the remaining spaces form letters and spell out a word. Your solution is SAFE.

GCHQ card 1c

Clue number five is a mnemonic device, and solvers must puzzle out what chain of related words is represented by the device. In this case, the major taxonomic ranks that are used to organize related living things are represented, and the word Kindly points toward the second word in the taxonomic ranks, so your solution is Kingdom.

Clue number six has three overlapping circles, each with letters inside, and you have to figure out not only what the words are, but what missing six-letter word would sit in the middle of this Venn diagram.

I found this to be the hardest puzzle in the card by far, as I tried and failed in numerous attempts to anagram the letters into recognizable words. Finally, I decoded the shortest word — LEEDS — only because I remembered that this is a British organization and I have friends who live in Leeds.

Leeds led me to unraveling the other two answers — MANCHESTER and NEWCASTLE — and my meager knowledge of European football provided the missing six-letter word. The solution is UNITED.

GCHQ card 1d

Clue number seven is a simple cryptogram, and is quickly decoded to read “This is the 7th question: people born between nineteen forty-six and nineteen sixty-four are commonly known as baby what?”

The solution appears to be BOOMERS, but there is an additional instruction to follow after decoding the message, and you must encode the answer. Following the same letter-substitution rule, BOOMERS becomes KEEPING, and that is your solution.

GCHQ card 2

Now each word must be placed in order on the tree for your message to properly read out.

  • The word BABY in clue 7 points toward the stroller icon, so our message begins with KEEPING.
  • The lightning bolt icon refers to Harry Potter, so the word THE from clue 3 goes next.
  • The soccer ball icon points to clue 6, so the word UNITED continues the message.
  • The word KINGDOM from clue 5 aligns with the crown icon, so that’s our fourth word.
  • The lock icon is most closely associated with SAFE from clue 4, so that’s next.
  • At first, I thought the image of the Stag was a Harry Potter reference, but I then realized that STAG was one of the answers in clue 2’s grid, so this was the place for THIS.
  • Finally, the present is the perfect spot for clue 1’s solution, CHRISTMAS.

And the message is revealed, celebrating the mission of the GCHQ itself: Keeping the United Kingdom Safe This Christmas.

Did you unravel this festive puzzly challenge, fellow PuzzleNationers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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