January 2025 - Nursery Rhymes

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Location: Mary Had a Little Lamb

  1. Trace a path from the lamb to Mary, moving square to square and never making a left turn.
  2. This might take some trial and error, but focus on reaching new areas of the grid.
  3. Revisiting a square while moving in the same direction means there was an unnecessary loop. But revisiting a square while moving in a different direction can lead to new places.
  4. Sorry, that's all the hints for finding the path. Keep going, I believe in you!
  5. Does anything look suspicious about the second row?
  6. The untravelled cells spell ANSWER MINT SAUCE

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

  1. She swallowed a spider which, in turn, caught a fly.
  2. Answers are made by having one word "swallow" another, which then "swallows" a letter.
  3. Five of the word pairs are AGAR and MINE, ARES and PERU, ASTI and CONE, BEST and RANI, COME and POST.
  4. The other pairs are CRAM and SING, HARD and PONE, HEAT and HYPE, METE and TORI, ROSS and WINE, TIER and WITH.
  5. The added letters spell the answer PREDILECTION

London Bridge is Falling Down

  1. Start with numbers that require every possible bridge connecting them. E.g. a 4 with only two possible directions must have double bridges in both.
  2. A 1 can never connect to a 1 since that pair would then be isolated from the rest. Similarly, there can never be a double bridge between a pair of 2's.
  3. Keep checking numbers as their options become more limited, either by bridges blocking off some options or maxing out nearby numbers.
  4. Sorry, that's all the hints for building the bridges. Keep going, I believe in you!
  5. Look at all the single bridges then, separately, all the double bridges
  6. The single bridges spell REINVE and the double bridges spell NTION giving the answer REINVENTION

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

  1. Six bugs are hidden in the grid. No letter is used more than once.
  2. The bugs can change direction, running up, down, left and right, but not diagonally.
  3. Two of the bugs are FLEA and MOSQUITO
  4. The other four are BEE, COCKROACH, LOCUST and TERMITE
  5. What do the leftover letters spell?
  6. There are five letters in each row of the grid.
  7. Each row in the grid is a number in binary with consonants as 0's and vowels as 1's.
  8. From top to bottom, the binary spells the answer THE INTERIOR

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

  1. Look for lines that already have all their planets, or that require every cell to be filled with planets.
  2. Any cell not adjacent to a star, or any cell that is adjacent to more than one star, must be empty.
  3. Look out for stars that must have both of their planets in a certain line.
  4. Notice that the final answer has 11 letters. How many stars are there?
  5. Once you find all the planets, you can flag them in your star chart.
  6. Each system represents a letter in semaphore.
  7. Reading left to right, top to bottom gives PERIHELIONS

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

  1. Answers on the left side are in alphabetical order
  2. The answers on the right have something in common.
  3. There be pirates!
  4. ARRR!
  5. Answers on the right side all start with the sound "ARRR".
  6. Each answer on the left has a corresponding "piratese" answer on the right, e.g. TICKLE and ARTICLE.
  7. Connect the corresponding answers with straight lines.
  8. The first five answers on the left are BITTER, BURR, COMEDIAN, GONE and GUILE.
  9. The remaining six are KANA, KING, MURRAY, NULLED, TICKLE and TWERK.
  10. The crossed-out letters, read in order of the numbered cannons, spell LEIF ERIKSON

Meta: Old MacDonald Had a Farm

  1. What do all the answers have in common?
  2. E-I-E-I-O!
  3. Each answer can be placed in one of the lines so that the shaded cells contain E-I-E-I-O.
  4. Some parts of the earlier flavour texts may have jumped out.
  5. (That's what I heard from her neighbours, at least.)
  6. Nine animal sounds are hidden in previous puzzles's flavour text (they may span words!)
  7. The sounds heard in each puzzle, in puzzle order, are moo and neigh, cluck and mew, hiss and bleat, cluck and neigh, and finally hiss.
  8. Circle the letters corresponding to the animals heard in each puzzle.
  9. Reading down, these nine letters spell LIVE STOCK

Bonus: The Wheels on the Bus

  1. Answers are entered one after another, winding twice around the wheel.
  2. The answers' first letters are TCT?EI?HA?AOV?CCR?.
  3. The first words, in order, are TETRA, CORAL, TOO, ???, ETA, INCHES, ??? and HOSE.
  4. The rest of the words are ANTE, ??? ALTO, OMNI, VANE, ??? CHESS, COOT, RHO and ???.
  5. The unclued entries are not generally words, but have something in common.
  6. Buses aren't the only things with wheels.
  7. Each unclued entry is one letter short of being a wheeled vehicle.
  8. The number beside each ??? clue gives the position of the missing letter.
  9. The five vehicles, in clue order, are MINIVAN, SCOOTER, TRACTOR, TRAIN and SEDAN.
  10. The missing letters, read around the wheel, spell TIRED.