INTRODUCTION
This series is inspired by the website Kevin's Puzzles, on which Kevin Orfield posts an instructionless puzzle-hunt-style puzzle every Monday. Kevin Orfield's puzzles usually lean towards the easy side of this genre in order to target a less experienced and/or younger audience. Kevin's Puzzles at Home is my knockoff of Kevin's Puzzles, so called because of the "we have X at home" meme:
The puzzles in Kevin's Puzzles at Home are intended to be easier than my
Wordy Wednesday posts, and hopefully at least 80% as entertaining as the
real Kevin's Puzzles. Kevin's Puzzles at Home will be presented by my
"we have X at home" version of Kevin, a prodigious and colorful wolf named Kevin Edmund Kepler:
(This illustration by Tintinabar is not part of any puzzle. Any resemblance between this Kevin and the real Kevin, or any real Kevin, is entirely coincidental.)
Every Monday during January and February 2024, a new episode will be posted at 12:01 AM (Central); as
with the real Kevin's Puzzles, as is the standard with other puzzle hunts, the final answer will be a word or
phrase. Email me (at glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com) the correct solution
to this puzzle within the next week to score 50 points. Each puzzle will
also have a hint posted for it one week later; solving the puzzle while
the hint is up will be worth 25 points. Episode 9, which will be posted
on February 26, is a meta puzzle which requires the answers to all of
the previous puzzles in order to be solved; this puzzle will be worth double (100 points before the hint, 50 points after). The highest
possible score a solver can attain will thus be 500 points, by solving
each puzzle during its first week. In an effort to aid people who don't have food at home, for every point scored by my readers
by 11:59 PM (Central) on March 10, I will donate 1¢ to the Palm Beach County Food Bank,
up to a maximum of $100. (Thus, each solver can contribute a maximum of
$5 to this pool.) Three anonymous benefactors have
agreed to match my donation as well, making the maximum possible
donation $400 (and thus the maximum contribution to this donation by a
single solver $20). To date, the Kevin's Puzzles at Home series has raised $1,759.50 for
various food banks! A huge thank you to the solvers and anonymous
benefactors who have made this impact possible!
Unlike the
real Kevin's Puzzles, which posts each puzzle's solution one week after
its hint is posted, all puzzle solutions will be posted simultaneously
on March 11, one week after the final hint is posted. This will make
the meta slightly harder, since you can't just look up the solutions to
the previous puzzles to start solving it, but will also permit
latecomers to score more points (and thus raise more money) than
otherwise possible.
Astute readers will notice
that the words "Season 6" appear in the title. Links to the previous seasons follow:
Season 1 (May-June 2022): Puzzles and hints, solutions.
Season 2 (September-October 2022): Puzzles and hints, solutions
Season 3 (January-February 2023): Puzzles and hints, solutions
Season 5 (September-October 2023): Puzzles and hints, solutions
Have fun, and remember to check out the real Kevin's creations (which go up at noon Central time every Monday) if these fake ones are up your alley!
Special thanks to Jason Boomer, John Bulten, and Joseph DeVincentis for testing these puzzles!
KEVIN’S PUZZLES AT HOME
SEASON 6, EPISODE 1:
A HIGH-TEC PUZZLE
Kevin is a huge fan of detective fiction, but sometimes he forgets some of the details.
Much to Kevin’s disappointment, Rex Stout’s character Nero (__) ___ ___ ___ ___ is a human being and not a canine like he is.
Due to his enormous range of knowledge, like a huge volume of reference books, boy detective Leroy Brown has the nickname “___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ (__) ___ Brown”.
In the 1980’s, Stephanie Zimbalist played private investigator Laura Holt on the metallically-titled television series Remington ___ (__) ___ ___ ___ ___.
Adrian ___ ___ (__) ___ is not a friar; instead, he is a detective with OCD portrayed on television by Tony Shalhoub.
Arguably the most famous fictional detective, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
___ ___ ___ ___ (__) ___ first appeared in A Study in Scarlet.
Although you might expect otherwise, teenage television detective Veronica ___ ___ ___ (__) lives on Earth and not on a red planet in our solar system.
The Maltese Falcon protagonist Sam (__) ___ ___ ___ ___ is, oddly enough, not accompanied by cohorts named Club, Diamond, and Heart.
Much to Kevin’s disappointment, Rex Stout’s character Nero (__) ___ ___ ___ ___ is a human being and not a canine like he is.
Due to his enormous range of knowledge, like a huge volume of reference books, boy detective Leroy Brown has the nickname “___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ (__) ___ Brown”.
In the 1980’s, Stephanie Zimbalist played private investigator Laura Holt on the metallically-titled television series Remington ___ (__) ___ ___ ___ ___.
Adrian ___ ___ (__) ___ is not a friar; instead, he is a detective with OCD portrayed on television by Tony Shalhoub.
Arguably the most famous fictional detective, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
___ ___ ___ ___ (__) ___ first appeared in A Study in Scarlet.
Although you might expect otherwise, teenage television detective Veronica ___ ___ ___ (__) lives on Earth and not on a red planet in our solar system.
The Maltese Falcon protagonist Sam (__) ___ ___ ___ ___ is, oddly enough, not accompanied by cohorts named Club, Diamond, and Heart.
(This illustration by Tintinabar is not part of the puzzle.)
Submit
your answer to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com for 50 points, and stay
tuned next week for Episode 1's hint and Episode 2's puzzle. Good luck!
