PUZZLE #519
LOGICROSSWORD
This puzzle type was suggested by Patron Grant Fikes. Normally, you can suggest a puzzle type of your own choice over on my Patreon page, but both slots are still full, so you might have to resort to PayPal if you still want to make a request of your own.
It's the final puzzle of the month, and I have a strong feeling that it'll also be the hardest puzzle of the month as well. Since I imagine that a lot of my usual solvers will struggle with this one, I've decided to include an easier version of this puzzle with most of the black squares already filled in, and it'll be located via this hyperlink (as well as below the break underneath the link to the normal version). It's up to you which .PDF file you want to use, and you're allowed to tell me if you used the easy version or not. However, if you think you're up to the challenge, keep reading for the directions to the regular version of this puzzle, as well as the completely blank grid it uses.
Using the clues below (as well as your vocabulary and logic skills), blacken some cells in the grid and fill the rest with letters to form words that are two or more letters long. All of the resulting words are legal to play in Scrabble, contain at least one vowel, and should be reasonably familiar to most people (those that aren't may be explicitly mentioned in the clues).
Once the grid has been correctly filled out, use it to get the FINAL ANSWER: the last name of a current daytime talk show host whose first name is one of the words in the solved grid
• No two black cells share an edge, though most of them do touch at
their corners. All the white cells connect each other through their
edges.
• There are 13 black cells in total throughout the grid. Row 8 has two
of those black cells, while Row 5 has three black cells and only one
word: VEE.
• Of the eight planets in our Solar System, four of their names are
legal in Scrabble and appear in the grid. The longest one is in Row 6,
and the other three (one of which is VENUS) intersect with it.
• The letter pair "SS" appears twice in row 9, and once in row 1. The
letter pair "RR" appears once in column C.
• The first word in Column A starts with D and ends in T; T is also the
only letter in that word to appear in Column G.
• Column B and Column H both have two 4-letter words each; one of those
four words has the letter combination "EO", and another has "UN".
• Column F contains the word KILN, which intersects with the word
VENEER.
• Column I contains three instances of the letter E, and one instance of
the letter Y.
• The letter W appears exactly twice in the grid, in D1 and H9.
• The word BE is located in the row immediately beneath the row
containing YO.
• The last letter of FLEECY intersects with the last letter of a
5-letter flower (which is the only word that uses the letter P in the
entire grid).
• One of the rows contains FIFTH and OUR, not necessarily in that order.
• Only one column has a 7-letter word; the other columns have shorter
words.
Once you think you know what the FINAL ANSWER is, 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 even ask
for a hint, though you'll be marked as having used one if you do so) 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 links to two .PDF versions which you can print out!
