For our February puzzle we gave almost no direction, just a strange title, two word banks, some incomplete phrases with colored numbers, and a clarification that the answer was a proper noun. And then you had the shortest month of the year to solve it. So mean! Sorry about that.
Looking for structure or patterns, a solver may notice that the two word banks are both 14 words, and the colored numbers in the phrases are red and blue pairs of 1, 2,…, 14. So perhaps each number represents on of the word bank words, and top or bottom is color coded?
The meanings of the words are quite scattered and sometimes esoteric, so pruning that direction, the words can be considered bags of letters. Staring for a while, and ruminating on the “Give or Take” part of the title, anagramming and passing letters from top to bottom can lead to break-in of noticing words like JURASSIC (from CUIRASS) or MINORITY (from TRIONYM). A few more connections like this might remind the solver of movies, and in fact the partial phrases on the right side of the puzzle are those movie titles!
The word banks being alphabetized and the numbers not being in order on the right means the order of the numbers is probably a special meaning. Solving all of the movie title words out, the anagrammed Blue and Red words, bank words (called Give from the top bank and Take from the bottom bank), and passed letter for each number are:
| # | Give | Blue | Take | Red | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SURFACED | CRUSADE | RIDDLE | FIDDLER | F |
| 2 | ASTIR | STAR | TRIONYM | MINORITY | I |
| 3 | BLACK | BACK | SAT | LAST | L |
| 4 | SWARM | WARS | HOE | HOME | M |
| 5 | STICKER | STRIKES | SOLE | CLOSE | C |
| 6 | OKRA | ARK | FOR | ROOF | O |
| 7 | ADMIRERS | RAIDERS | ISOMER | MEMOIRS | M |
| 8 | WRAP | WAR | ARK | PARK | P |
| 9 | HOAGIES | GEISHA | LANE | ALONE | O |
| 10 | PREMISE | EMPIRE | CHILDREN’S | SCHINDLER’S | S |
| 11 | DITHER | THIRD | NOCTURNES | ENCOUNTERS | E |
| 12 | DRINK | KIND | TROPE | REPORT | R |
| 13 | JOLTS | LOST | CUIRASS | JURASSIC | J |
| 14 | WILTS | LIST | LORDS | WORLDS | W |
These results are confirmed by the twelve movie titles:
FIDDLER on the ROOF
STAR WARS
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the THIRD KIND
The EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
RAIDERS of the LOST ARK
[Indiana Jones] and the LAST CRUSADE
HOME ALONE
JURASSIC PARK
SCHINDLER’S LIST
MINORITY REPORT
WAR of the WORLDS
MEMOIRS of a GEISHA
The passed letters spell out FILM COMPOSER J W, and in fact all twelve of the movies have scores (of top quality!) composed by John Williams, the proper noun answer to this puzzle! The jaws-droppingly prolific film composer turned 93 this February 8th, thanks for all the memorable themes!
That was a tough one, congrats to those of you who cracked the code!