The SOTR Holiday Quiz is over. As you saw, we included more puzzle-solving and less trivia. Partly because I couldn’t find enough newsworthy items to include. Let’s look at the answers.
Q1: S is for Santa who misplaced the instructions (7 points)
Solving this Scrabble the usual way hits a dead-end very fast. Scanning the word list, you’d see that all the words have HO’s in them. Crossworders will quickly recognize the rebus element that all HO’s are squeezed into one cell. You’d also be right to suspect the snowflakes which indicate all the rebus cells. The Scrabble can now be solved!
Bonus fact, this puzzle was written ten (!) years ago in 2014. I tend to over-curate puzzles and end up with many unused grids. Hopefully they all find an outlet somewhere one day.
Q2: Candy Cane Tapa (5 points)
There are over 100 Tapa variants so coming up with a new trenchant idea is difficult. Tapa clues (mostly) apply to 8 cells. The candy canes here also conveniently take up 8 cells. And that’s it, they are also separate regions. The clues for each candy cane are the cells at the bottom of each cane. I was one cell away from symmetry, but Christmas barged in too soon.
Q3: Secret Santa (3 points)
It helps to be Santa’s seat mate as James McGowan pointed out that Santa “looks a lot like the mighty Thomas Luo, who I sat next to for 3 days in Toronto.”
Q4: Connecting Wall (16 points)
Welcome to Only Connect. No, this is not the New York Times’ Connections. As much as I love their crosswords and respect Will Shortz, I refuse to believe they came up with Connections without knowing about Only Connect. The touchscreen interface and the animation are wayyyy too similar to the TV show. Their doubling down when confronted about this during an interview was somewhat distasteful.
Anyway, let’s reveal the connections:
Voxas (A), Aqre (C), Square Jam (E) and Eels (I) are all genres invented by Eric Fox.
Four Snails (B), Snake Pit (H), Tiger in the Woods (K) and Slitherlink Sheep and Wolves (O) all contain animals in the name.
Shakashaka (D), Ring-ring (J), Norinori (L) and Tomtom (P) are all repeated names.
And Lakes (F), Oasis (G), Creek (M) and Cross the Streams (N) all feature bodies of water.
A lot of perfect scores. Well done!
Q5: Instructionless (3 points)
Apparently, this almost solve as a Detour. The correct answer is Aqre!
I was curious of how to determine which cell to put Aqre clues in. Nikoli would use the highest of the left-most cells for genres like Stostone. This feels weird to me, so I went with the left-most of the highest cells. Eric Fox himself doesn’t follow either rule, especially if he is going for a theme.
Q6: Do you want to build a Snowman? (5 points)
Like the Scrabble, this puzzle was a product of 2014. Each snowman is made up of three circles, with the biggest one at the bottom and the smallest one as the head. Because physics. They will spell out: ARCHERY, BIATHLON, BOBSLEIGH, CURLING and SKELETON.
The odd one out is ARCHERY (not SKELETON!) because it is Summer Olympics event while the rest are featured in the Winter Olympics. Skeleton is a type of sled and has been featured in every Winter Games since 2002.
Q7: The Vowelless Round (16 points)
Lastly, another nod to Only Connect. I just love that show. I made one episode for a family trip and came up with a Thai equivalent of the vowelless round. It was not as fun.
The answers are:
Yummy puzzles: Even Odd Sandwich Sudoku, Honey Islands, Choco Banana, Snake Egg.
Seen on WSPC competitors’ desks: Water bottle, Instructions booklet, Nametag, Eraser.
Top 10 puzzlers: Taro Arimatsu, Niels Roest, Ko Okamoto, Wei-Hwa Huang.
Landmarks in WSPC locations: Christ the Redeemer, Prague Castle, Hadrian’s Gate, London Eye.
Perfect scores all around! Too easy. This would’ve been more fun with buzzers.
And now the results!
We have a tie! And since they all were docked three points for not recognizing Thomas Luo, the tie-break rules mean they go to Rock Paper Scissors!
Drum roll please…
Congratulations to Michael Tang of USA!
He will receive Nikoli no Penpa 2024 for his efforts. This is Michael’s second SOTR win after his winning PuzzleDo back in 2017. I hope to churn out more puzzle content here soon. I’ll be attending the Asian Sudoku Championship in Japan next week, do come say hi if you’re going there!
Have an excellent 2024!
Somewhere Over the Rainbow 