In late December, we published the 2020 edition of our annual RSS Christmas Quiz – a brain-meltingly tricky collection of puzzles devised by Dr Tim Paulden. How many did you manage to crack?
(If you’d like to take another look at the original quiz page before seeing the solutions, the puzzles are still available here.)
The quizmaster was delighted to receive an exceptionally large number of high-quality entries this year, with the top submissions separated by just a handful of marks.
The winning entry this year was submitted by the team comprising Jonny White, Patrick Gildersleve, David Nandi, Tom Barrett, and Jake Barrett, who are awarded the first prize of £150 in Wiley vouchers. In second place, with a remarkable solo effort, was Vincent Fish of Massachusetts, USA, who receives the runner-up prize of £50 in Wiley vouchers.
Finishing in third place was the team comprising Evelina Ozola, Janis Strods, Ljeta Putane, and Vladimirs Murevics; in fourth place, Andy Knott and Sam Knott; and in fifth place, Paul Southern. As third to fifth place finishers, they will receive a puzzle book plus a choice of either a puzzle board game or an online “escape room” experience – all of which will be sent out to them shortly.
In addition, the quizmaster will be making a charitable donation of £510, divided among the eighteen good causes below, which have been nominated by our top-five finishers and by the other thirteen teams who scored 50% or more:
Nominated by our top-five finishers [£50 to each charity]
- Prostate Cancer UK (nominated by Jonny White, Patrick Gildersleve, David Nandi, Tom Barrett and Jake Barrett)
- Refugee Action York (nominated by Vincent Fish)
- Dogs Trust (nominated by Evelina Ozola, Janis Strods, Ljeta Putane, and Vladimirs Murevics)
- Partners in Health (nominated by Andy Knott and Sam Knott)
- Albert Schweitzer Foundation (nominated by Paul Southern)
Nominated by teams scoring 50% or more, in alphabetical order [£20 to each charity]
- Alzheimer’s Society (nominated by Craig Fothergill and Alvin Kissoon)
- Battersea Dogs & Cats Home (nominated by Abi Williams, Ellen Williams, and Simon Turner)
- The Big Issue Foundation (nominated by Kryzi Fell and Ben Goddard)
- The Brain Tumour Charity (nominated by Mary Ann Collins and Dave Monteiro)
- British Red Cross (nominated by Lance Nathan)
- Children in Need (nominated by Gerad Carter)
- First Touch at St George’s Hospital, Tooting (nominated by Clive Richardson)
- The Friary, Nottingham (nominated by Becky Russell)
- Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (nominated by Corey Plover, Paul Melamud, Nick Poulos, “The” Dan Miller, and Andrew McManus)
- Mermaids (nominated by Liam Hughes)
- The Motor Neurone Disease Association (nominated by David Harris)
- Oxfam (nominated by Les Gaulois)
- Shelter (nominated by James Taverner and Mattias Andersson)
Many congratulations to all the teams and individual solvers who successfully broke through the magic 50-point threshold.
If you have enjoyed the puzzles in this year’s quiz, please do consider making a small donation to one of the good causes above – or another charity close to your heart.
Before we unwrap the solutions, we wanted to embrace the spirit of making connections, and briefly share a few words from our winning team and runner-up on how they originally got into the Christmas Quiz, and their experiences of solving it this year.
Jake Barrett, on behalf of the winning team, writes: 'We first heard about the RSS quiz when the 25th anniversary edition was featured in the Guardian. A team quickly formed of people united by the patience to unravel these seemingly impossible puzzles, and since then the quiz has become part of our Christmas calendar. Puzzles 9 and 12 were our favourites this year, with excellent ‘Eureka!’ moments and some really smart connections with the other questions. Puzzle 11 was a turning point, when we realised we might be doing quite well! Even then, there are some very clever teams in the competition, so to win the whole thing is a big surprise. Finally, we would like to thank the quizmaster for running such a consistently high-quality quiz. If it takes us a month to solve, we can only imagine how much work it takes to put the questions together. We're sure we speak for all the entries when we say: thank you, Tim.'
Runner-up Vincent Fish writes: 'I heard about the RSS Christmas Quiz from the blog Futility Closet and eagerly jumped right in. After working out a few puzzles, I tried unsuccessfully to recruit friends into creating a solving team. Undaunted, I kept plugging away at it over the next few weeks, going down lots of blind alleys. I loved the simple elegance of Puzzles 5 and 6 and the mirror theme in Puzzle 9, and I banged my head against Puzzle 4 for a long time before the title suddenly made sense. I feel great pride in coming in second, and I offer hearty congratulations to the winners, to the community of other solvers united by their "aha!" moments, and especially to the quizmaster for putting together a devious set of puzzles!'
Many thanks to Jake and Vincent for the kind words – and congratulations once again.
OK – time for the solutions!
In the solutions PDF (linked below), each puzzle will be reproduced again, with the solution appearing immediately underneath. We will begin each solution with a brief one-sentence overview, presented in bold font, before stepping through the details. In some instances, solvers might find it enjoyable to revisit an unsolved puzzle again after reading just the bold overview at the top of the solution – it may provide just enough extra information for them to successfully figure out the remaining steps themselves.
View the solutions (PDF)
The 2020 edition of the RSS Christmas Quiz was devised and created by Dr Tim Paulden. Many thanks to Tom Thorpe for his helpful contributions.