TheElephant

One clue a day, and the answer is always a pun — a word that sounds like, or doubles as, what the clue describes (an uninterested plank is board; an equine parking spot is a stable, steady and full of horses both). The boxes show the answer's shape — how many words, how long — but never its letters. Letters you land in the right place stay lit. You get four shots, and every shot must be made of real words.

The quarry comes in kinds, and the kicker above each clue names the day's:

• a single word — “an uninterested plank” → board (sounds like bored)
• a phrase — “a violent rodent” → maul rat (sounds like mall rat)
• a soup — several sounds stewed together: “the smallest possible mother” → minimum (mini + mum)

Either spelling of the sound wins the shot — board or bored, maul rat or mall rat.

• plurals matter — “stairs” is a different beast.
• any true homophone wins — stair or stare, the shot counts.
• one puzzle a day — the quarry appears at dawn in Wonder Valley, California, and not a moment sooner. No big game could survive the Mojave. That's the joke.

Why we hunt

During a cross-country hunt for goblins, Shawn, John, and Hannah found themselves with an unexpected problem: boredom. Goblins are notoriously scarce and remarkably skilled at staying hidden from human sight, leaving the trio with long stretches of road between encounters.

To keep their minds sharp, they relied on the only weapons they always carried — their extensive vocabularies and quick wits — challenging one another with riddles in preparation for the day they might finally meet a goblin capable of presenting the most difficult and elusive riddle of all time. From these friendly contests of cleverness and wordplay, a new pastime was born: the Elephant Game.

Yes — they hunted goblins and named the game after an elephant. Nobody said nerds were taxonomists.