JA-NEW-ARY! PUZZLE #267: Sudokurostic

JA-NEW-ARY!

PUZZLE #267

SUDOKUROSTIC

It's the final puzzle for this theme month, and this one was based off of an idea that one of my solvers provided! Longtime solvers may recall that Lynn Sweeney, one of my regular solvers and someone who I often see in person, originally provided the idea that became "Sudokurossword". This new idea that she came up with a while ago is similar, but it involved transferring letters into a sudoku grid rather than numbers. Inspiration was quick to strike me once she told me about her idea, and this new hybrid of a sudoku and an anacrostic puzzle was what I ultimately came up with! I hope you'll enjoy it!

Below is supposed to be a sudoku/wordoku puzzle, but unfortunately, the whole grid is completely blank. To fill it in, solve the clues so that the answers fill out the dashes (one letter per dash), then transfer each letter to the grid according to the coordinates below each dash, like an anacrostic puzzle. For example, if the coordinates were "e5", then its corresponding letter should go in the square in row "e" and column "5". Not all of the grid's squares will ultimately be filled in, so it's up to you to complete the rest of the wordoku puzzle, making sure that each row, column, and 3x3 box contains the same nine unique letters without any repeats.

Once the grid has been completely filled, look through it like a word search to find the FINAL ANSWER: an adjective that's at least six letters long

• 2000s TV drama about the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815
   __ __ __ __
   d4 i7 b5 h5
• Deuce Bigalow: Male _____ (Rob Schneider film)
   __ __ __ __ __ __
   d3 g6 c2 b1 e7 a5
• Female sheep from U.S. Acres (HINT: she's named after a wax secreted from sheep, which might explain why she's constantly grumpy.....)
   __ __ __ __ __ __ __
   i3 a6 c4 h4 g8 f9 e3
• Like clocks that aren't analog
   __ __ __ __ __ __ __
   g5 a2 b6 i8 d9 h2 c5
• They're streamed by Spotify
   __ __ __ __ __
   f1 c9 f6 i4 a7
• Using one of the five senses that's located in one's mouth
   __ __ __ __ __ __ __
   b8 f7 h9 a3 d1 i5 g1

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 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!

ANSWERS: Sunburst

It's been thirteen days since my first "Sunburst" puzzle was posted on this blog, and eleven people have correctly solved it since then, all of whom you can view in this list:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Joe Bernard ****
• Kevin Orfield ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Mom ****
• Stephen Potter ****
• Cindy Heisler ****
• Debbie Benford ****
• Kevin Finnegan ****
• Lynn Sweeney ***

Now head below the break for the answers and a solver's comment!

JA-NEW-ARY! PUZZLE #266: Chess Words

JA-NEW-ARY!

PUZZLE #266

CHESS WORDS

Okay, including this puzzle type for this theme month might be considered cheating, considering that I had already made a "Chess Words" puzzle as a Patreon-exclusive, but I did say that every puzzle slated to be posted this month will be all-new to this blog, so I'm gonna abuse semantics and say it still counts. Now, this is a pretty tough puzzle type in my opinion, so I added some clues to it in order to hopefully make it easier, even if just a little bit. I hope it helps!

Eight 8-letter words are scrambled on the chessboard, all of which are the answers to the provided clues. Each chess piece starts on the first letter of one of the words, and can be moved across the board via standard chess moves to spell the rest of the word. Every square is used exactly once. The chess pieces move as follows:

King: one space in any of the eight directions
Rook: any number of spaces in a horizontal or vertical direction
Bishop: any number of spaces in a diagonal direction
Queen: any number of spaces in any of the eight directions
Knight: two spaces in a horizontal or vertical direction and then one space in a perpendicular direction

Once all the words have been found, pick two of the words and combine them to get the FINAL ANSWER: a common two-word phrase

  Queen's Rook: E _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                a1 
Queen's Knight: P _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                b1 
Queen's Bishop: W _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                c1 
         Queen: G _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                d1 
          King: K _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                e1 
 King's Bishop: S _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                f1 
 King's Knight: M _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                g1 
   King's Rook: D _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                h1

CLUES
• Collegians
• Handy form of theater?
• In a very religious way
• Oscar-winning J. K. Simmons film
• Raccoon relative
• Redheaded X-Men character
• Sports field
• Trade

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!

ANSWERS: Honeycomb

It's been almost two weeks since my first proper "Honeycomb" puzzle was posted on this blog, and an impressive twelve people have correctly solved it since then, all of whom you can view in this list:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Joe Bernard ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Kevin Orfield ****
• Stephen Potter ****
• Mom ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Cindy Heisler ****
• Patrick Jordan ****
• Debbie Benford ***
• Lynn Sweeney ***
• Eric Maddy ****

Now head below the break for the answers and some solver comments!

JA-NEW-ARY! PUZZLE #265: Sunburst

JA-NEW-ARY!

PUZZLE #265

SUNBURST

First, solve each 4-letter word listed in the first set of clues, then rearrange them and attach an extra letter to its end (which will be up to you to determine) to form a 5-letter word that matches one of the answers listed in the second clue set. For example, if an answer is ATOP, scramble those letters, add another letter to the end, and form the 5-letter word TOPAZ. Next, place each resulting 5-letter word into the Sunburst at their corresponding numbers, starting at the outermost tile and reading inwards. Since all the 5-letter words have the exact same final letter, make sure that each 5-letter word ends in the center of the grid.

Once the grid has been filled in, the outermost ring of the Sunburst, when read clockwise from 1 to 18, will spell out the FINAL ANSWER: A video game from the late 2000s

4-LETTER WORDS
1) Prefix for "present" and "potent"
2) Layer of paint
3) Stab like a bull
4) Air Jordan company
5) He lost to Clinton in the 1996 presidential election
6) Landlocked Asian country whose capital is Vientiane
7) Hey _____ (1989-91 Nickelodeon sitcom set at a guest ranch)
8) October birthstone
9) All finished
10) Brightly colored fishing hook attachment
11) King Kong and Donkey Kong, for two
12) Francis was a talking one in a series of 1950s movies
13) Color gradiations
14) Ancient Roman wrap
15) Dungeons & Dragons spellcaster
16) What the "T" video game rating stands for
17) Fashion designer Wang who started out as a figure skater
18) Lisa Loeb song parenthetically known as "(I Missed You)"

5-LETTER WORDS
* _____ the Dragon (Bruce Lee film)
* A tape measure is a kind of one
* Comic book line artist
* Dancer wielding glowsticks, maybe
* Fictional moon that's home to the Ewoks
* Gary Oldman or Gary Cooper, for example
* Goat's milk sac
* Gray alien from American Dad
* King Julien from the Madagascar movies, for one
* Mythical goat-legged creature seen in the "Fracture Hills" level of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage
* Name (or breed) of a white bear playable in Crash Team Racing
* Not as young
* Pickle portion
* PlayStation player, perhaps
* R&B artist who sang "U Remind Me" and "U Got It Bad"
* Type of eclipse that was visible across the entire contiguous United States in August 2017
* Ursa _____ (The Little Dipper)
* Wally from Hanna-Barbera cartoons, e.g. (HINT: He's not a crocodile)

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 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!

ANSWERS: Chain Reaction: Branching Out 3

Boy, I'm guessing my third "Chain Reaction: Branching Out" puzzle must've been on the harder side (either that, or people were still recovering from the holiday weekend), cuz the number of solvers for this one dropped slightly to seven of 'em. Take a look:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Mom ****
• Kevin Orfield ****
• Cindy Heisler ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Sam Levitin ***
• Lynn Sweeney ****

If you want the answers to this puzzle, head below the break to get them (as well as a couple solver comments)!

JA-NEW-ARY! PUZZLE #264: Honeycomb

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!

ANSWERS: Compound Crosswords 5

Happy New Year! Before I reveal the answers to "Compound Crosswords 5" from a couple weeks ago, I'd like to list the nine people who have successfully solved it:

• Grant Fikes ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Patrick Jordan ****
• Stephen Potter ****
• Mom ****
• Cindy Heisler ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Kevin Orfield ****

Now head below the break for the answers as well as some solvers' comments!