PUZZLE #30: Charadagrams 2

PUZZLE #30

CHARADAGRAMS 2

Since Grant Fikes decided to adopt one of my original formats last week (and one day before my birthday, too! Thanks for the birthday gift, Grant, even though it wasn't planned as such!), I've decided to return the favor by adopting one of his formats... again! If you're unfamiliar with this puzzle, here's Grant's original version of it, and here's my first effort at it. Now read on for the directions!

When the answers to the clues in the REBUSES are anagrammed and then assembled, they form the answers to the WHOLES clues. For example, if one of the REBUSES consists of clues reading "[Forearm bone] + [Holy item associated with a saint] + [Telepathy and such]", and a WHOLES clue is “Event in which the Earth casts a shadow”, then the answers ULNA, RELIC, and ESP can be anagrammed and assembled into LUNA/R ECLI/PSE. Both the REBUSES and the WHOLES clues are in no particular order, and you must determine which answer goes in which row of blanks.

The letters in the shaded squares, reading down, will form two words that can be anagrammed and assembled into the FINAL ANSWER: the name of a candy.

REBUSES

• [Avengers: _____ of Ultron] + [Fail to finish first] + [Destined] + [Louise's cinematic partner in crime]
• [Basketballer who once scored 100 points in one game] + [Love at first _____] + [Kendrick Lamar's genre] + [Wapiti]
• [Battering device] + [Elixirs] + [Clairvoyants with crystal balls]
• [I Am _____ (Upcoming E! miniseries)] + [Revered poet Maya] + [Luke Wilson's brother]
• [Last name of Chloe from 24] + [Chicken's sister in a Cartoon Network series] + [Not guilty]
• [Midpoint of a soccer match] + [Covered with sleet] + [Mangy mutts]
• [Not too far away] + [Big galoot] + [Butterfly _____ (this caused trouble in the 2000 US elections)]
• [Ogle] + [Singer Cyndi who's Still So Unusual] + [Pearl Jam's debut album]
• [Tails' surname] + [Glitters]
• [The Black _____ ("Hard to Handle" band)] + [Relaxation's partner] + [Will's beneficiary] + [Just _____ (series of open-world video games)]
• [Their only hit song was "How Bizarre"] + [PlayStation 3 game where you fling humans from a slingshot] + [2000 Ben Affleck/Gwyneth Paltrow film]
• [Type of table for rubdowns] + [British wheels] + [Baseball team that used to play at Shea Stadium]

WHOLES

• "Wannabe in L.A." band with a wildly inaccurate name
• Recurring KaBlam! segment filmed in "Chuckimation"
• Comic strip that frequently features dotted-line paths
• Condiment that many Americans can't pronounce
• Song by an amphibian that peaked at #25
• Princess Celestia's "most faithful student"
• Disney film featuring Captain Amelia
• "Weighted" Portal "character"
• "Sport" with Faces and Heels
• Director of Shutter Island
• It came before Genesis?
• Indoor gridiron game

Once you think you know what the FINAL ANSWER is, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net (the main email for my home computer) or itsredhead64@gmail.com (the main email for my tablet and whenever I'm not at home) 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 solved it (you can also get some free hints for that puzzle here). If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: 4X Game (and FREE HINTS for "Section Six 2")

Before I get to the solvers and answers of "4X Game", I'd like to provide you guys with an update to my previous puzzle, "Section Six 2". I think I might've made that one a little too hard, since just six people so far have solved it. Since I want that number to rise, I've provided some alternate clues to what I believe are some of the harder clues in that puzzle. To find out what they are, just highlight the white space after each clue number! (Don't worry, I won't be taking any stars away if you do use these new clues)

RING 1
2) Dracula, for one
3) Walking stick
6) Fit together (Anagram of NY CUPS): 2 wds.

RING 2
* Clark Kent's alter-ego
* Shoestring
* Dancehall/Reggae subgenre with electronic instrumentation
* _____ and the Brain ('90s animated series)
* Rhyming pairs of lines

RING 3
* Current WWE champion John
* Radio buttons that are already tuned in to a station
* Green duck from Tiny Toon Adventures
* _____ Falls (waterfall that borders Ontario and New York)

RING 4
* Rough and scratchy, like old film
* Tight gathering
* Kind of nut used in pies

Now with all that out of the way, here are all of the people who have solved "4X Game"!

• Grant Fikes ****
• Paolo Pasco ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Mom ****
• Debbie Underwood ****
• Christian H.P. ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Giovanni Pagano ****
• Lynn Sweeney **

Now just go below the break for the answers, along with solver comments, some pictures, and even a Tex Avery cartoon!

PUZZLE #29: Section Six 2

PUZZLE #29

SECTION SIX 2

This puzzle's grid has six rings and six sections. Each ring contains a series of words placed end to end, reading either clockwise OR counterclockwise; all the words in a given ring will read in the same direction. Ring 1 (the outermost ring) contains six answers that read clockwise; the starting spaces are numbered in the grid. Clues for the answers in the remaining rings are given in order, but their starting points and direction are for you to figure out. The sections (separated by the heavy lines radiating from the center) will help you place the inner rings: in a given section, each ring segment contains all but one of the letters in the next segment outward. In other words, a section's outermost segment contains six letters; the next segment inward contains five of those six letters in some order; and so on, until only one of the original six letters remains.

Once you're done, unscramble the six spaces with stars in them to get the FINAL ANSWER: a six-letter word.

RING 1
1) Yoga positions named after a flower
2) Barnabas Collins, for one
3) Accessory frequently carried by Barnabas Collins
4) "Gargantua" lava monster from Yoshi's Island and Tetris Attack
5) Cloth placed on one's lap
6) Correspond: 2 wds.

RING 2
* He was once killed off by Doomsday (he got better)
* The plastic thingy at the tip of this shoe part is called an "aglet"
* Type of vocals used in Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move It"
* The Brain's "insane" sidekick
* Poetic pairs of lines

RING 3
* Wrestler John who appeared on boxes of Fruity Pebbles
* With "The", Australian electronica duo who sang about "My People"
* Green Tiny Toon Adventures character who had his own short-lived spin-off series
* "_____ Falls" (Vaudeville sketch famously performed by the Three Stooges)

RING 4
* Not smooth, like old film
* What A _____ (Ben & Jerry's flavor)
* Type of tree that grew out of Dog's head in an episode of CatDog

RING 5
* Saving, like Chip & Dale's Rangers
* What Oxy and Proactiv are used to treat

RING 6
* This author's zodiac sign (Free Hint: my birthday is three days after I post this!)

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net (the main email for my home computer) or itsredhead64@gmail.com (the main email for my tablet and whenever I'm not at home) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in roughly 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 solved it (but make sure you do so before this Sunday!). If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Mixed Doubles

It's been two weeks since I've posted my "Mixed Doubles" puzzle, so now it's time for me to reveal the answers, as well as a list of people who have solved it:

• Eric Maddy ****
• Paolo Pasco ****
• Grant Fikes ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Lynn Sweeney (no stars)
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Christian H.P. ****
• Mom **
• Sam Levitin ****
• Giovanni Pagano (no stars, but only because he sent in his answers after this post went up)

Now just head below the break for the answers! There are also some comments for you to read, as well as a video and... well, that's about it. This puzzle didn't exactly give me enough material for pictures to go along with the comments...

PUZZLE #28: 4X Game

PUZZLE #28

4X GAME

This one's kinda tough to explain, but I'll try my best; below, there are 4 "X"'s, each containing four 5-letter answers. Each answer is entered at an angle, following one of the arrows as it does so, and the last three letters of one answer will be the first three letters of another, albeit in reverse order. In the example above (I know all the answers are three letters instead of five, but I hope you'll still get the gist of it), the words in the first "X" are MAP, PAT, TAR, and RAM, and the words in the second "X" are ROT, TOW, WON and NOR. However, to make things even harder, none of the clues are numbered or in order, so you'll have to figure out which word goes in which angle, but don't worry, as each "tip" of each "X" (the outermost letters) will contain the same letters as the "tips" of its neighboring "X". Going back to the example above, the rightmost "tips" in the first "X" contain the letters "R" and "T", so the leftmost "tips" in the second "X" has the same exact letters, in the same exact placement.

Once you're done, unscramble the letters in the "tips" that have no neighbors (the yellow squares) to get one of two four-letter words; that's this week's FINAL ANSWER!

X #1
* Old TV knobs you "don't touch"?
* Sedate and unadventurous
* Pesky little insects
* Symphony in _____ (Tex Avery short)

X #2
* Doctor Who baddie who wants to EXTERMINATE! all of humanity
* _____ Marner (old book subtitled "The Weaver of Raveloe")
* R&B singer whose first album was 1999's Kaleidoscope
* Waldorf, but not Statler

X #3
* "Brain"y Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain
* Hits a fly or a fly ball
* Chews like Daggett or Norbert
* The Man in the Iron Mask, according to Marvel?

X #4
* Act on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, say: hyph.
* Former baseball commissioner Bud
* Liver fluids
* Griffon who was Rainbow Dash's friend from flight camp [I'd say more, but that would act as SPOILERS for a certain My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode from late last month...]

Once you think you know what the FINAL ANSWER is, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net (the main email for my home computer) or itsredhead64@gmail.com (the main email for my tablet and whenever I'm not at home) 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 solved it (but make sure you do so before this Sunday!). If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Moving Staircases

It's been about two weeks since I posted my "Moving Staircases" puzzle, so now it's time for me to reveal the answers! As usual, I post a list of people who have solved it before I reveal the answers, and here they are:

• Paolo Pasco ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Grant Fikes ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Giovanni Pagano ****
• Mike Tiffany (no stars)
• Debbie Underwood & Mom ****
• Christian H.P. ****

Now just click on "Read more" for the answers, along with some solver comments and a lot of videos!

PUZZLE #27: Mixed Doubles

PUZZLE #26

MIXED DOUBLES

Last month, I asked GAMES Magazine what kind of puzzles aren't allowed from new contributors, and among those are "Mixed Doubles" puzzles. This would certainly explain why they didn't reply to the Mixed Doubles puzzle I sent them late last year. Oh, well, at least I can always post it to my blog (with an alteration or two, of course)! Anyway, here are the directions:

Each answer word in this crossword variation has two clues leading to it, using different meanings of the word. The clues are separated into Across and Down, but are otherwise ordered randomly. When you find two Across clues or two Down clues that seem to have the same answer, add up their clue numbers to determine the place in the grid where the answer should be entered. For example, if the clue for 1-Across and the clue for 17-across both have the same answer, the answer would go in the box labeled 18 (1+17). To make things harder, tags such as "Hyph." and "2 wds." have been omitted.

Once all the answers have been filled in, you should notice that there are two clues that haven't been used; one Across clue, and one Down clue. You should also notice that there are some pink squares in the grid itself. Unscramble the letters in the pink boxes, and you'll get the answer to the two leftover clues, which is also this week's FINAL ANSWER!

ACROSS
1) Frozen food brand
2) Play place
3) Porcine character from Animal Farm
4) Italian turnover
5) Hurt a fly
6) Unresolved plot point
7) Shrunken picture on the computer
8) Alaskan native
9) Foreign-language film feature
10) Each
11) A rope in need of tying up
12) Dole out
13) Part of a certain hand digit
14) Elite law enforcement team
15) Former boxer Mike
16) Type of techno
17) Greek vowel
18) Pinocchio bad guy
19) Boiling liquid
20) "What _____ of work is a man!"
21) Deep trouble
22) Layered French pastry
23) Type of dessert "pies"
24) An edition of GAMES: World of Puzzles
25) Cinema
26) The Amazing Spider-Man 2 villain
27) Very small amount
28) The Curse of the Black Pearl or The Empire Strikes Back
29) Sentinels

DOWN
1) Light browns
2) Kia compact car
3) 1981 Rush single
4) Inconsequential
5) Flo Rida song that hit #1 in 2012
6) Thing
7) Stitching awl
8) _____ Pursuit
9) Dessert made by Granny Smith?
10) Referee's necessity
11) Strict
12) Bodyguard
13) Weekly celebrity gossip magazine
14) Gives an 8 out of 10, say
15) Green _____ (comic book superhero)
16) Most ideal results
17) High heel
18) Type of collared shirt
19) Fixed costs
20) Sport played on horseback
21) Symbol of traditional American values
22) Take exception with in court
23) Connected with someone
24) Back of the boat
25) Sunbathing results
26) Mark Twain character
27) Acclaimed graphic novel that became a movie in 2009
28) Light source in a cave
29) Pocket accessory that prevents ink stains

Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net (the main email for my home computer) or itsredhead64@gmail.com (the main email for my tablet and whenever I'm not at home) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in roughly 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 solved it (but make sure you do so before this Sunday!). If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a version you can print out!

ANSWERS: Building Fences

It's been roughly two weeks since I posted my "Building Fences" puzzle, so now it's time for me to reveal the answers! But first, a list of people who have solved it:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Paolo Pasco ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Mom ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Debbie Underwood ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Christian H.P. ****
• M. Sean Molley ****

Now just head below the break for the answers, as well as some user comments (there's a lot of them this time around!).

PUZZLE #26: Moving Staircases

PUZZLE #26

MOVING STAIRCASES

I know GAMES Magazine and Will Shortz's Wordplay calls them "Shapeshifters", but I like this title better. Punny, and illustrative of what this puzzle is about! You'll see what I mean in a second...

The two staircase-shaped halves of a "Moving Staircases" puzzle are designed to be pushed together in two different ways, horizontally and vertically. A horizontal push creates shorter words ("Shorts"), while a vertical push creates longer words ("Longs"). The example above shows a completed grid and the grids that result from pushing it both ways. The lists of clues given for the Shorts and Longs are not in order; it's up to you to determine where the answers go by working back and forth between the two lists.

Once you've completely filled out the grid, the FINAL ANSWER (the name of a two-word Nickelodeon TV show) will be hidden inside it; one of the words is hidden horizontally (is it a Short or a Long? that's up to you to find out!), while the other is hidden vertically!

SHORTS
* 2010 film where Emma Stone's character gets inspired by The Scarlet Letter: 2 wds.
* Body part sometimes served with onions (blech!)
* Detective's duties
* Missing: _____ January (2004 adventure/alternate-reality game)
* Trance musician van Buuren
* What "The Devil Wears", according to a Christian metal band

LONGS
* He directed the music video for "Raspberry Beret"
* _____ pie (very simple): 2 wds.
* _____ point (relevant example): 2 wds.
* Transformers cartoon that debuted in 2002
* Very small piece of pie

Once you think you know what this week's FINAL ANSWER is, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net (the main email for my home computer) or itsredhead64@gmail.com (the main email for my tablet and whenever I'm not at home) 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) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already solved it. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break and print out that picture!