THANK YOU to everyone who submitted their Metro Parks 2025 Holiday Crossword puzzles by the deadline of January 5. We hope you all had fun doing it, or trying to do it! The ANSWERS are shown below. Thank you for your comments, some of which are shown at the end. We will make our draw and notify the winner soon.
ACROSS
1. Always a popular Holiday gift. (8)
4. Welcome to the holiday feast, but it would surprise no one if the kids refuse to eat these. (6)
7. You might melt them if you hold a flame to these wings, or maybe it’s simply a tree. (5)
8. An act of great skill or daring. (7)
9. They reflect. (7)
11. It’s a kind of a leaf on an ancient plant. (5)
13. I challenge you to a run, or maybe you should just study up on your botany. (6)
15. It’s for the chop. (3)
16. They’ll cart you off on your travels. (4)
20. Now that’s got teeth! (3)
21. This ancient Roman Festival happened around Christmas time. (10)
22. The life blood of a tree. (3)
23. Not sitting straight. (5)
25. A snowy owl is one of these in Ohio. (6)
26. Milk or sauce, it’s the GMO of choice. (3)
27. It’s a species of oak, among other things. (5)
28. It’s a pig all right! (3)
29. We live in one of these. (5, 6)
DOWN
1. Take a hike to the giants at Highbanks and see these. (9)
2. A summer highlight of the Darby Plains (7)
3. Some planets have these, and fingers too. (5)
4. Long-necked ruminants. (8)
5. We have ‘em spring and fall. (9)
6. If this trumpeter was mute, would he or she be unable to speak, or rather be one of these? (4)
10. It’s a grass and a grain and all sorts of stuff. (3)
12. In Ohio we see the flakes more often than these migrants. (4, 5)
14. The first part will help you get around, but taken together, probably very slowly. (3, 7)
17. Look for the common and black varieties of this migrant seabird in park rivers and lakes. (4)
18. One of trillions in the universe. (6)
19. In which our solar system resides. (5, 3)
21. The species name of a very common bird. (7)
22. It ain’t no dog, despite the name of its constellation and its common appellation. (6)
24. In ants and wasps it’s called a petiole and it’s ridiculously narrow, but we’ll never get one that small as long as fast food exists on every corner. (5)
26. The Latin name for our home star. (3)
Crossword compiled and formatted by Virginia Gordon
SOME COMMENTS FROM OUR CROSSWORD CONTESTANTS
Thank you to Virginia for putting together this fun crossword! I enjoyed it.
– Brie Cortelletti
Thanks for doing this, as we had a lot of fun completing it! It was a solid team effort 🙂
– Daniel Hyer
Thanks for putting this together. It was fun! Hope you all had a great holiday season!
– Sara Clark
I couldn’t help myself but to fill downtime on a slow morning with the new 2025 holiday crossword! Let Virginia know that I think we should start having either 2 crosswords per year, or quarterly. She always makes them so challenging! A couple of the ones that held me up I was actually making harder than they actually were.!
– Katie Lofton
Here is my holiday crossword. Thanks for another brain teaser!
– Maria Bergman