armchair

Type of Hunt

Armchair

money-bag

Prize

$240.00

chart-pie-3

Winner Type

Shared Bounty

verified

Solved

Nov 18, 2025

Connections #1

Each person who fully and accurately solves this hunt will be a winner, earning an equal share of the reward.

The hunt is completed! You can download the hunt and solve it. It was solved on Nov 18, 2025 by seanccronin, UNiCoRn, jenga3, Tahoeeyes, MakaMi, Tawny3591, ChasingAnEpiphany, Feniks.

Find four groups of four words that share a common theme, and then solve the puzzle!

Submitted Solve Status

While there was some intentional misdirection when it came to possible categories, only one solution hit the mark all the way through. Keen eyes were able to identify the following four categories:


TENNIS TERMS: slice, break, ace, love

_____ BEE: honey, queen, drone, busy

THINGS THAT CAN BE "DROPPED": ball, beat, mic, call

FAMOUS BASEBALL NICKNAMES: "Nails" (Lenny Dykstra), "Lefty" (e.g., Grove, Gomez, etc.), "King" (Mike Kelly), "Babe" (George Herman Ruth)


From there, the Caesar-shift revealed "MORE THAN MEETS THE" - and thus, to finish the phrase, quite a simple final solve: EYE


UPDATE: Hat tip to Cascade_Diver for pointing out that the NYT version alphabetizes the items in each category (which we did not realize), so technically two of the "blanks" (DRONE and BABE) should have been presented in a different order in the Hunt Materials. Leaving everything as is for posterity, but we'll follow this rule in future installments!