ANSWERS: Helter Skelter

Before we reveal the answers to my "Helter Skelter" puzzle from a couple weeks ago, I got some news I'd like to share with you: this little blog of mine got mentioned by the New York Times! Well, technically, it actually got mentioned in their Numberplay blog, but it's still impressive nonetheless! You see, Yossi Fendel, one of my occasional solvers, was inspired by my "Coined Phrases" puzzle from not too long ago, and he sent Numberplay a poser inspired by it, and just last Monday, it finally got published there! If you want to take a crack at Yossi's puzzle, go to this link, and if you're stuck, the answers are in the comments section.

Now that I got the good news out of the way, Let's look at who solved "Helter Skelter":

• YYW ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Punjit Sharma ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Grant Fikes ***
• Lynn Sweeney & Mom ***
• Debbie Benford ***
• Dan Simonds *
• Brad Eldredge ****
• Adam Weaver ****

Now just head below the break for the answers, along with some solver comments and how I messed up on one of the answers!

And here are the answers in text format, in case you can't make out the above letters:

1) Odette, 2) Toil, 3) Ipana, 4) Apt, 5) Pauline, 6) Norbert, 7) TV Guide, 8) Droopy, 9) Yahoo, 10) Oven, 11) Nemo, 12) Orbulon, 13) Lunch, 14) Hubby, 15) Yore, 16) Roku, 17) Kahn, 18) Alpo, 19) Plans, 20) Strange, 21) Golly, 22) Lug, 23) Gyro, 24) Ripa, 25) Phone

The gray letters unscramble to spell out CEREMONY

The Swan Princess' Odette and Derek, taking part in a wedding CEREMONY. See what I did there?

A couple of the answers proved troublesome to solver Grant Fikes, saying in an email titled "NO MERCY" that "I have all of the answers filled in but 1 [ODETTE] and 3 [IPANA]. 3 is inconsequential, but 1 is very consequential, and only one letter is checked out of six, so ???T?? is very un-guessable. No mercy, indeed." [Since the seven letters he did get anagram to that phrase] He ultimately looked up ODETTE, though he decided to take away a star as he did so [Normally, using search engines don't cost any stars]

All of this revealed a very glaring flaw in this puzzle; mainly that only one letter in ODETTE actually crossed with another word. My Puzzlecraft book suggests that half of each word's letters should cross with another word, and if you look closely you can see the unclued words PRO, ODD, DRILL, POE, ORE, TOP/POT, and APE crossing it. However, this resulted in too many three-letter words for my liking, and that same Puzzlecraft book also recommends that the number of clues should max out at 25, so I decided to not clue those words, not realizing at the time that this left an embarrassing five letters uncrossed. The next time I do another one of these puzzles, I'll be sure to not slip up like I did here!

Solver Eric Maddy put "MY ENCORE" in the subject line, then he said that he was "just kidding -- I assume we're looking for CEREMONY"

Solver Punjit Sharma said this was a "Fun new puzzle. It took me few seconds to realize you can go diagonally. :D"