Kevin's Puzzles at Home Season 3: FINAL RESULTS!

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 (A to Z). The total number of points scored was 8900. Thus, the final money pool for the Palm Beach County Food Bank is $89.00. Three anonymous benefactors have agreed to match this donation, meaning that the Palm Beach County Food Bank will actually receive $356.00.

Head below the break for the actual solutions! If you're looking for more easy-ish puzzles in this style, remember to visit the actual Kevin's website every single Monday, or come back to this site in May when I plan to launch Season 4! The puzzles are already written and tested, so all that's left to do is wait patiently for May to roll around!

SEASON 3, EPISODE 1:
NAME THAT TOON

The names of the cartoon characters, which are alphabetized as a solving aid, are CHARLIE BROWN, DARWIN, FLUTTERSHY, FRED FLINTSTONE, MICKEY MOUSE, PENNY, SCOOBY-DOO, and TIGGER. The letters in the numbered blanks, in order, spell STOP-MOTION BOY WITH DOG NAMED GOLIATH, a clue for the final answer DAVEY.

 

Author's note: I've learned to not stress out too much over the difficulty curve, but I try to have the easiest puzzles in the first half, the hardest puzzles in the latter half, and the most self-explanatory puzzle as the first one. This one is extremely self-explanatory. A few people tried to submit the full name DAVEY HANSEN, but most people went with the character's first name only, as represented in the cartoon's title Davey and Goliath.

SEASON 3, EPISODE 2:
FUZZY FLOCK

The sheep are arranged such that, when the black sheep are treated as Braille dots, they spell A MALE SHEEP, a clue for the final answer RAM.

 

Author's note: While most longtime puzzlers will recognize the Braille instantly from the 2x3 groupings, if you don't recognize it, you will be at an impasse. Thus, I didn't want this to be any new solver's first impression of the series, and I made it second. In a rare edit, the word "A" was added to the clue shortly after the puzzle was published to clear up an ambiguity that my testers missed (due to "sheep" being its own plural, RAMS was also a possible answer). Other terms for a male sheep do exist, but are so obscure that everybody submitted RAM first. Apparently, if you're keen enough to suspect that a substitution cipher is involved and guess that the words "A" and "SHEEP" are used, you can solve this from "A _A_E SHEEP" without recognizing the cipher as Braille.
 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 3:
TRICKY TRIPLETS

When the triplets of letters are put in the blanks in the correct order, they spell “WHAT’S THE FIRST NAME OF THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED ECHO IN THE FILM ‘THE UNHOLY THREE’?”. The actor is Lon Chaney, so the final answer is LON.

Author's note: This puzzle type is called an "anaquote", though my introduction to it as a youngster was in a Kappa puzzle magazine, under the name Groupies. One solver tried to submit LON CHANEY, but re-reading the clue makes it clear that only the first name LON is needed. Plus, as we will see later, trying to use a 9-letter answer in the meta would be problematic!

SEASON 3, EPISODE 4:
TOTALLY A-MAZED

The unique route through the maze is as follows:

The letters along the path spell BODY PART OR UNIT OF CORN, a clue for the final answer EAR.

 

Author's note: The real Kevin has posted several puzzles of this variety (solve a maze and read the letters along the path), and I can certainly see why. The false trails spell pseudo-messages like "BASKIN-ROBB", "BODY PILLOWS", and even "BODY PART OR UNIT OF TWELVE INCHES" so that you can't eliminate a route on the basis of the letters spelling nonsense; the real Kevin told me that I probably did a better job at this than with the actual puzzles on Kevin's site, so make of that what you will.

 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 5:
PEOPLE OF NOTE

The “people of note” are literally people who appear on banknotes (specifically ones used in Australia, Canada, Scotland, and the United States), and we must evaluate the mathematical operations using the values of those banknotes:
David Unaipon (Australian $50 note) ÷ Sir John A. Macdonald (Canadian $10 note) = 50 ÷ 10 = 5
Catherine Cranston (Scottish £20 note) + George Washington (American $1 note) = 20 + 1 = 21
Mary Reibey (Australian $20 note) - Thomas Jefferson (American $2 note) = 20 - 2 = 18
Mary Somerville (Scottish £10 note) + Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Canadian $5 note) = 10 + 5 = 15
Converting the resulting numbers 5, 21, 18, and 15 to letters (1=A, 2=B, 3=C, and so on) gives the final answer EURO.

Author's note: This is where things get slightly tough, as you have to research the individuals, make the connection to banknotes, evaluate the arithmetic, and then make the final leap to converting numbers to letters. Veterans of Season 2 has already made that final leap before, but since it's not hinted at in the flavortext this time, it's slightly harder here. If you don't make the connection to banknotes specifically, you might get wrong arithmetic results by using coin values (for example, Sir John A. Macdonald also appeared on a Canadian $2 coin, resulting in an incorrect submission of YURO).

SEASON 3, EPISODE 6:
PAIN BY NUMBERS

This puzzle is known by many names, including Nonogram. The unique solution to the puzzle is as follows:

The shaded cells in the 5x5 boxes spell the final answer GAVE.

 

Author's note: The real Kevin has featured Nonograms before, but curiously, it was the harder variation involving color.

 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 7:
FILL ME IN

This is a standard crossword, but with the clues alphabetized by their answer and sorted by answer length. The filled-in grid is as follows:

The shaded cells spell CAT ON A HOT BLANK ROOF, a clue for the final answer TIN.

 

Author's note: It was at this point that the real Kevin observed, "All these short answers feel like they are parts of longer words." As you will see later, this proved to be 100% correct. Speaking of the real Kevin, this puzzle felt like quite possibly the most un-Kevin-like puzzle of the season. Solvers generally start with the shortest word list when solving a fill-in (the 5-letter words in this case), but I had to add anagrams to the 5-letter clues to bring the puzzle within a Kevin-ish level of difficulty!

 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 8:
FIX MY FLICKS

The films being described all have changes to them which only require changing one letter in the title:
THE DEER HUNTER ➔ THE SEER HUNTER
THE SAINT ➔ THE STINT
BEVERLY HILLS COP ➔ BEVERLY HALLS COP
THE MASK ➔ THE MARK
TOY STORY ➔ TOW STORY
TRUE GRIT ➔ TRUE GAIT
HEAVEN CAN WAIT ➔ HEAVEN CAN WART
RED RIDING HOOD ➔ RED RISING HOOD
LAKE PLACID ➔ RAKE PLACID
BROTHER BEAR ➔ BROTHER BOAR
A GOOD YEAR ➔ A GOOD LEAR
MARS ATTACKS! ➔ MARE ATTACKS!
The letters that get changed in the original film titles, from top to bottom, followed by the letters they get changed to in the new titles, from top to bottom, spell DAISY RIDLEY’S STAR WARS ROLE, a clue for the final answer REY.

 

Author's note: I think that putting this puzzle in the final position prior to the meta was the right decision, seeing as the first solution came unusually late (some avid fan usually solves the puzzle within a few minutes of it going up, but this one took almost three hours to get a first solve). I naively assumed that any incorrect answer submissions would be a full name like REY SKYWALKER, but this never happened. One solver, apparently only noticing half of the clue, submitted JEDI, and another solver, apparently having misread the clue as "DAISY RIDLEY'S STAR WARS ONE", as in the subtitle of the first movie in the sequel trilogy, submitted THE FORCE AWAKENS.

 

SEASON 3, EPISODE 9:
MIX-UP

This puzzle is very blatantly inspired by a daily newspaper puzzle written by David L. Hoyt and illustrated by Jeff Knurek.
The solver is tasked with combining pairs of previous answers and anagramming them to form ordinary words. Unscrambling 6-, 7-, and 8-letter words is a bit trickier than the 5- and 6-letter words in the puzzles on which this is based, but the task is made easier if the solver realizes that the words are “ordinary” in more ways than one, as they are also synonyms of “ordinary”.
Fuzzy Flock + Tricky Triplets: RAM + LON = NORMAL
Fill Me In + People of Note: TIN + EURO = ROUTINE
Pain by Numbers + Totally A-mazed: GAVE + EAR = AVERAGE
Fix My Flicks + Name That Toon: REY + DAVEY = EVERYDAY
The letters underlined above are the ones which land in the circled spaces, which the solver must then arrange to form the final answer. As suggested by Kevin being in a garden in the cartoon, the synonym of “ordinary” which can be spelled by these letters is the final answer GARDEN-VARIETY.

Author's note: This was a very stupid meta idea in that it intensely restricted the answers I could use as feeders (hence, as the real Kevin noted two episodes ago, the abundance of short answers), but I liked the idea of taking the "ordinary" part of this puzzle's usual instructions way too literally, and of making the illustration actually important (while also giving my illustrator an excuse to not have to color it in). I hope the payoff was worth it! Funnily enough, one tester didn't even notice the "ordinary" theme until I pointed it out, having apparently completely compartmentalized the part of the brain that thinks about what words mean from years of Scrabble experience.