Puzzle: Season's Greetings!

The Game Room
1

My wife’s idea was to send out a holiday puzzle instead of a newsletter this year (2011 was fairly uneventful in the Biotop household). And because I am quite fond of all the good folks at the SDMB, I thought I’d post the puzzle here as well. Season’s Greetings!

This puzzle consists of a list of movie titles with something in common. The titles have been broken into “doublets”, and the doublets then alphabetized.

Example:

THE SANTA CLAUSE
TH ES AN TA CL AU SE
AN AU CL ES SE TA TH

Problems:

• Because it is that giving time of year, each title has given its common factor as a gift to another title. Each title also, therefore, receives the gift of a common factor.

• Prior to the altered titles being broken into doublets, an extra letter was added to the beginning and ending of each. These extra letters are not a part of the altered titles at all.

Mitigating Circumstance:

• The extra letters spell out our holiday message to family and friends.

Can you discover the movie titles and our holiday message?

  1. CK DG ED EE FR GS IN OM OS PP TH TO TS
  2. AC EM IR LE LO OF SG ST UI
  3. AT HE HL HT IG NT SE SO VE
  4. AC CO CT EF ES HE MU OF RE SI TH
  5. AN AN DD DI ES ND SL TA UP
  6. AL GR LY NB NW OA OK OW RO SE SI
  7. AI ER IN IN IR IT HU ND NT SP
  8. DV EN EN ES ET FP HE IP LO NE NG PI PR RE SO TL TU WA
  9. AR CA CU EF ES GA IL LI LL MG NS RO RO
  10. AN AN AR DT ED GE LE RC RE RT
  11. AR DA DO HE LI NG TT VI YC
  12. DO FD HE HT IN NE RA SO UN
  13. AM AN DR EL ER HE TH WI YC
  14. EV EW HE KE NT OR RL
2

I would really like to try to solve this puzzle, but I don’t know what this means.

3

Okay. Let’s say the common factor was “Colors”.

The titles might be:**

The Green Hornet

The Thin Blue Line

Black Sunday

White Christmas**

and the titles might be altered to:

**THE WHITE HORNET
TH EW HI TE HO RN ET

THE THIN BLACK LINE
TH ET HI NB LA CK LI NE

BLUE SUNDAY
BL UE SU ND AY

GREEN CHRISTMAS
GR EE NC HR IS TM AS**

The doublets would then be alphabetized.

4

Ah.

5

Uh oh…

If the puzzle-expert folks here can’t figure this out, what’s going to happen with my family and friends?

6

I just skipped the movie titles and figured out the proper first and last letters to make the message. It’s POSTULATE LARYNGITIS INSURANCE, right? … Well, it’s the thought that counts.

No, I got it. I think it’s a reasonable puzzle if your crowd is into solving puzzles–and your family and friends are all spies, right? (If not, look on the bright side: you can save money on postage next year!)It took me a little while to figure out how ISLAND fit in with the theme though (the other words are mostly more generally seasonal).

7

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas Omphaloskeptic!

Now we’ll see if any of the family can get it. After all, what better gift than Laryngitis Insurance during the frigid winter months…?

Cold weather is what generally follows Christmas, after all.

8

Thanks, Biotop! Super fun, and I’m proud to say I did it even without looking at Omphaloskeptic’s clue. As for me:

I got a little stuck on SEAL. Somehow, I had only heard of them associated with another time of year. Learned something new! And I had to Google the title for #9. I had never heard of it, and it sounds… really terrible. :slight_smile:

Have a happy holiday!

9

Heart of Dorkness:

Glad you enjoyed it. I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season.

Be sure and note in the classic Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer that there is a humorous reference to those very seals at the beginning of the show.