FINAL SCORES
Here is a table of all of the participants and their scores (click to enlarge):
Participants are sorted by score (high to low), and then alphabetically.
* Bo & Becky Green got to see some puzzles early, since y’all aren't competing against each other, but against my wallet, and therefore I’m actually only hurting myself. However, I have put this asterisk here in case y’all care about comparing yourselves to each other. Also, now that I have three anonymous benefactors matching my donation, and y’all are competing against four wallets instead of one, maybe I should refrain from this practice if there’s ever a “Season 2” of Kevin’s Puzzles at Home. . .
The total number of points scored was 7675. Thus, the final money pool for the Food Bank of West Central Texas was $76.75. Three anonymous readers are offering to match this donation, meaning that the Food Bank of West Central Texas will actually receive $307.00. Thanks in advance to all of you for your generosity!
Head below the break for the actual solutions!
The Pokémon depicted are ABRA, CLEFABLE, DEWGONG, GASTLY, GOLEM, IVYSAUR, MACHOP, MAROWAK, PIKACHU, PINSIR, PORYGON, PRIMEAPE, SEAKING, SLOWPOKE, and ZUBAT. Each one can be found in the word search, with a Pokéball standing in for a letter:
The letters symbolized by the Pokéballs spell LOMBRE EVOLUTION, a clue for LUDICOLO.
Author’s note: The leftover letters spell WE HAVE FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME AT HOME, since this puzzle is essentially a knock-off version of this particular puzzle from the real Kevin’s site.
PART 2: THE JOY OF PAINTINGS
The two paintings are slightly different. Specifically, the bottom one has some extra lines that the top one does not:
The extra lines form letters spelling PBS BLANK ROADSHOW. This is a reference to the PBS series Antiques Roadshow, so ANTIQUES is the answer.
Author’s note: This puzzle is a knock-off of Not Like the Other and Imperfect Reproduction from the real Kevin’s site.
PART 3: SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE DISNEY-NESS
The first step is to identify the Disney movies that the characters are from:
4 LETTERS: BOLT
5 LETTERS: BAMBI, DUMBO, MOANA, MULAN
6 LETTERS: FROZEN, TARZAN
7 LETTERS: ALADDIN, ENCANTO, TANGLED
8 LETTERS: HERCULES, PETER PAN, ZOOTOPIA
9 LETTERS: ROBIN HOOD
10 LETTERS: CINDERELLA, POCAHONTAS
11 LETTERS: BROTHER BEAR, THE LION KING
12 LETTERS: WRECK-IT RALPH
13 LETTERS: THE ARISTOCATS, THE JUNGLE BOOK
16 LETTERS: THE BLACK CAULDRON
17 LETTERS: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
It is then easy to fit the movie titles into the crisscross grid:
The letters in the highlighted spaces spell LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI FILM. Leopold Stokowski was the conductor in FANTASIA, which is our final answer.
Author’s note: This puzzle isn't a knock-off of a specific puzzle from the real Kevin’s site, but as the real Kevin’s puzzles are targeted at a younger audience, references to media commonly consumed by such an audience, including Disney media, are fairly common. Tale as Old as Time, in particular, is entirely Disney-themed, as hinted at by the titular reference to a song from Beauty and the Beast.
PART 4: OVERBOOKED
The “good book” that Kevin wants to read is the Good Book. The names of the 27 books of the New Testament are scrambled, each with an additional letter:
AAAGILNOST → GALATIANS + O (9)
AACDEEHILNNNOOPSSSST → SECOND THESSALONIANS + P (14)
AAEEFHIILNNORSSSSTT → FIRST THESSALONIANS + E (13)
ABEEHRSW → HEBREWS + A (19)
ACCDEHHIINNNOORSST → SECOND CORINTHIANS + H (8)
ACCILNOOSSS → COLOSSIANS + C (12)
ACFHIIINNORRSSTTW → FIRST CORINTHIANS + W (7)
ACOST → ACTS + O (5)
AEEHINOPSS → EPHESIANS + O (10)
AEEILNORSTV → REVELATION + S (27)
AEHHMTTW → MATTHEW + H (1)
AEJMSY → JAMES + Y (20)
AEKMR → MARK + E (2)
AHIIILNNPPPS → PHILIPPIANS + N (11)
AMNNORS → ROMANS + N (6)
CDDEEENOPRST → SECOND PETER + D (22)
CDEHIMNOORSTTY → SECOND TIMOTHY + R (16)
CDEHJNNOOOS → SECOND JOHN + O (24)
DEEJU → JUDE + E (26)
DHHIJNORST → THIRD JOHN + S (25)
EEEFIPRRSTT → FIRST PETER + E (21)
EHILMNOPR → PHILEMON + R (18)
EKLSU → LUKE + S (3)
FHIIMOORSTTTY → FIRST TIMOTHY + O (15)
FHIJMNORST → FIRST JOHN + M (23)
HJNOT → JOHN + T (4)
ISTTTU → TITUS + T (17)
The extra letters, taken in the canonical order of the New Testament books (as indicated by the numbers in parentheses above: MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN, etc.), spell HESTON WHO ONCE PORTRAYED MOSES, a clue for the answer CHARLTON.
Author’s note: This puzzle felt the least Kevin-like of all of them at the time I wrote it, since it references regular culture rather than contemporary pop culture. However, the real Kevin has since published a meta which uses books from the Old Testament (as well as some more contemporary things).
PART 5: AIR LETTERS
The first step is to identify the 20 U.S. cities from their three-letter airport codes:
1. FLG (8/9): FLAGSTAFF, AZ
2. ROW (6/7): ROSWELL, NM
3. ALB (6/6): ALBANY, NY
4. BTR (10/10): BATON ROUGE, LA
5. ANC (6/9): ANCHORAGE, AK
6. OKC (7/12): OKLAHOMA CITY, OK
7. LAR (6/7): LARAMIE, WY
8. LAX (8/10): LOS ANGELES, CA
9. BZN (4/7): BOZEMAN, MT
10. MEM (7/7): MEMPHIS, TN
11. MSN (3/7): MADISON, WI
12. LAS (5/8): LAS VEGAS, NV
13. TLH (8/11): TALLAHASSEE, FL
14. BIS (7/8): BISMARCK, ND
15. PIT (8/10): PITTSBURGH, PA
16. MOB (4/6): MOBILE, AL
17. ASE (3/5): ASPEN, CO
18. BOS (4/6): BOSTON, MA
19. LBB (5/7): LUBBOCK, TX
20. SPI (3/11): SPRINGFIELD, IL
The numbers after the slashes in parentheses indicate the number of letters in each city’s name. The corresponding states on the map are also labeled with numbers; these numbers can be used to fill in the blanks before the slashes, and indicate which letter from the city’s name to extract (the 8th letter in FLAGSTAFF, the 6th letter in ROSWELL, and so on). These letters spell FLYER MILES DESCRIPTOR, a clue for the final answer FREQUENT.
Author’s note: I deliberately chose cities whose airport codes have all three letters in the code appear in the city name, in order to reward solvers who endeavored to solve it without looking things up. The sole exception, LAX, is such a familiar colloquialism for Los Angeles that it seemed safe to include. Some pedantic solvers pointed out that "frequent" describes the flyer, not the miles, and some other solvers were tripped up by an inability to pull "frequent flyer miles" out of their hats. Unfortunately, none of the solvers thus tripped up were among the testers, or else I would have rewritten the puzzle!
PART 6: WORDS ON RYE
The words which answer the clues can be placed in the corresponding white spaces, and then letters can be placed in the middle to form new longer words:
The shaded letters, HOT TUB and USES OARS, clue the words SPA and ROWS. Inserting a letter between them to yield a longer word yields the answer SPARROWS.
Author’s note: This puzzle is also known as Link-Letters, and was, to my knowledge, invented by Will Shortz. Some solvers had difficulty spelling MASTADON [sic].
PART 7: WHAT’S THE DEAL?
The card games can be identified as CRAZY EIGHTS, GIN RUMMY, EGYPTIAN RAT SCREW, CRIBBAGE, HEARTS, OLD MAID, GO FISH, and CANASTA, which fit in the grid as follows:
The letters in one of the columns spell the answer PINOCHLE.
Author’s note: The real Kevin’s Playing Cards is identical to this puzzle in solving mechanics, but uses proprietary card games instead of traditional ones. Whether this puzzle qualifies as a knock-off or not is left to the reader to decide. Judging by solver feedback, EGYPTIAN RAT SCREW was easily the most obscure of all the games, though all of them appear on Bicycle's “How to Play” page; PITCH would have been an acceptable alternative with its unique length, but SPADES would not have been because it's the same length as HEARTS.
PART 8: BREAKFAST SCRAMBLE
When the letters in each column are placed in the right order, the eight breakfast items HASH BROWNS, FRENCH TOAST, PORRIDGE, BAGEL, PANCAKE, CREPE, ENGLISH MUFFIN, and WAFFLE read horizontally:
The letters in the unclued shaded column spell the final answer, SCRAPPLE (a Pennsylvania Dutch dish containing pork scraps, cornmeal, and wheat flour).
Author’s note: Dropquotes are a common puzzle style, but I believe that the only puzzle on the real Kevin's site which uses one is Letter Drop Soup.
PART 9 (META): “ATE” QUEENS PROBLEM
First, one must write the eight answers across the correspondingly-numbered rows of the chessboard. As hinted at by the flavortext and the title, one must then solve the Eight Queens Problem by placing eight queens on the chessboard so that no two of them attack each other. Two of the answers contain the letter Q, the abbreviation for “queen” in chess notation, and placing queens on these two positions uniquely forces the positions of the other six:
Reading the letters under the other six queens from top to bottom, the solution to Kevin’s stomach problems is a dose of PEPCID.
Author’s note: This meta is probably much harder than anything on the real Kevin's site, though the metas there have gradually gotten harder over time. For one thing, you have to have prerequisite knowledge of the Eight Queens Problem, or suspect that you should look it up from the quotation marks in the title. It then takes several "a-ha" moments to write the answers across the rows, treat the Q's as queens, and try to place the rest (a step which requires a bit of backtracking and trial and error if one doesn't just take advantage of all 92 solutions already being enumerated in numerous places). I can't even recall the real Kevin referencing chess at all, never mind this type of chess-related esoterica!
