The puzzle master’s to-do list is a word search with a punny twist! Famous NYC locations are scattered about the grid with substitutions to some of the letters. Diligent solvers found these substitutions to be consistent across the answers, they were

d -> c

c -> m

m -> μ

μ -> n

n -> p

p -> f

f -> a

a -> z

z -> y

The strange μ in there, and the references to small (or “minute”) things throughout the text, clued that this substitution was generated by moving one rung down the metric prefixes ladder: these are the symbols for deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto, and yocto. With that guide in hand, the 23 tasks could be crossed out, leaving “little itzly” left over, which is the substitution for the thematic area of Manhattan, Little Italy. Note there was one source of confusion as a non-creator of the puzzle on the JS puzzle team edited the puzzle, not noticing a 24th errand of “chinatown” that was entirely crossing other answers. Very sorry if this threw off solvers, definitely a lesson in carefulness on our end.

Congrats to this month’s solvers!