JA-NEW-ARY!
PUZZLE #264
HONEYCOMB
It's a brand new decade! And to celebrate it, I'm gonna do another theme month in the form of JA-NEW-ARY! It'll be similar to back when I did "Newvember" in 2018, which means that every puzzle slated to be posted this month will be all-new to this blog!
To start off, let's begin with "Honeycomb": a reworking of a puzzle type that was originally planned to be published in mid-2015 (Whoa, has it really been that long? It must be, 'cuz I completely forgot about this blog's fifth anniversary last month! My bad!). My original plan was to have multiple hexagons spell out a clue that would lead to the FINAL ANSWER, but that wound up being easier said than done, and it resulted in a few entries with terrible fill. Since this was before I had a test solver to rely upon, I called on Grant Fikes to try and help me, but even he couldn't help, so I pretty much gave up on it. On the plus side, this incident inspired Grant to make a Honeycomb puzzle of his own, which you can access right here if you're interested (and you can click here for the answers). Grant's version had eight shaded hexagons which unscramble to spell out the FINAL ANSWER, but for this new Honeycomb puzzle of mine, I decided on a different way of getting a FINAL ANSWER. Read on to find out what that is, as well as how to solve it!
Each six-letter word is to be entered clockwise or counterclockwise around the correspondingly numbered black cell, though the direction and starting point of each answer is for you to determine.
Once the grid has been filled out, the colored hexagons, when read clockwise or counterclockwise, will spell out the FINAL ANSWER: a 6-letter noun
1) Dudley Dursley's father and Harry Potter's uncle
2) Former Miami Dolphin QB Dan
3) Insect's midsection
4) Sword holder
5) "Ridin' Solo" singer Jason
6) White and purple root vegetable
7) A ______ (deduction-based reasoning)
8) Lifts up the mizzenmast, maybe
9) Lilo's alien "pet" in a 2002 Disney movie
10) Cough drop brand whose ads feature a large Alphorn
11) Greeting to a naval officer
12) Car radio button that quickly changes to a new station
13) Name of Tennessee Williams' streetcar
14) Suppress inappropriate laughter
15) Tutti _____ (ice cream flavor)
16) 1997 film about a dog that plays basketball: 2 wds.
17) Evil unicorn king from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (or the Spanish word for "shadow")
18) Heavy burdens
19) Pressed "Start" while playing Super Mario Bros. 3, perhaps
20) Combined, as funds
21) Gardenia or geranium, e.g.
22) Hardy's partner in comedy
23) Gray raincloud
24) Gymnast Biles with four Olympic gold medals
25) Fine distinction
26) Like two peas _____: 3 wds.
27) Genre for the Penguins and the Flamingos: Hyph.
28) Gardener's spade
29) Son of Apollo Creed
30) "Alright, alright, just give me one moment!": 3 wds.
31) Outdoor meal eaten on a blanket
32) Lake where the 1980 Winter Olympics took place
33) Acclaimed first-person puzzle video game with an erratic A.I. named GLaDOS
34) Second reindeer called out by Santa in "A Visit From St. Nicholas"
35) Minute Waltz composer
36) Metal Coke container: 2 wds.
37) _____ Beach: The Real Orange County (MTV reality(?) show)
Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or get a hint from me in exchange for a "hint star", more details for that are on the sidebar to the right) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for two versions you can print out: a .PNG and a link to a .PDF!
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