Cryptic Puzzle: Decline and Fall

Solve the most recent creation of puzzlemaker John de Cuevas '52

Download the Puzzle | Download the Hints | Download the Solution

"Decline and Fall" solvers
(The first ten are listed in the order their solutions were received, the others alphabetically)

  1. Stan Francuz – Somewhere in Australia
  2. Judy Adamski – Jenison, MI
  3. Mark Navarrete – Quezon City, the Phillipines
  4. Rick Kasten – Alexandria, VA
  5. Stan Kurzban – Chappaqua, NY
  6. Steve Tice – Great Falls, VA
  7. Dave Kaplan – New City, NY
  8. Claire Trazenfeld – Crownsville, MD
  9. Lewis Gee – Poway, CA
  10. Jim Christenson – Port Townsend, WA

Dale Ashworth – San Francisco, CA
Al Backiel – Ridgewood, NJ
Tom Barnet – Spartanburg, SC
Peggy Bedell – Northampton, MA
Robert Brown – Albuquerque, NM
Cathy Childs – Pompano Beach, FL
Patricia Coppersmith – Venice, FL
Jeff Courtright – Bloomington, IL
Norman W. Davis – Englewood, NJ
Keith and Elizabeth Falkner – Sarasota, FL
Stan Francuz – Somewhere in Australia
Warren Fraser – Marmora, Ontario, Canada
Richard Friedman '71 – Silver Spring, MD
Michael N. Geselowitz – Cedarhurst, NY
Ralph Jones  – Aurora, CO
Wayne Jones  – Worcester, NY
Al Kahn – Houston, TX
Doug Kouril –  Arlington, VA
Richard Letourneau – Bonita Springs, FL
Gary Levin – Morristown, NJ
Allan Mayoff – San Felipe, Baja Norte, Mexico
Roy McLeese '81 – Washington, DC
Daniel J. Milton – Vienna, VA
Mary Lyndal Nyberg – Manhattan, KS
Ned Robert – Los Gatos, CA
Joe Rogers – Old Greenwich, CT
Charles J. Rohrmann, Jr. – Scarsdale, NY
Carolyn Roosevelt – Cambridge, MA
Mordy Rosen – Berkeley, CA
Arthur Schless – Unionville, PA
Joe Schrader – Hillsboro, OR
Dexter Senft  – Bedford, NY
Carolyn G. & Robert M. Smith – Massena, NY
Donald Stanley – Littleton, CO
Edward Stejskal – Raleigh, NC
John Stuelpnagel – Baltimore, MD
Stephen Throop – Grover, NC
Margaret Webster  – Medford, MA
Laurel Wilson – New York, NY
Thomas Wilson – South Williamsport, PA
Jay Winter – Farmington Hills, MI

You can find all 35 puzzles published in Harvard Magazine between 1986 and 1998 at John de Cuevas’s website—puzzlecrypt.com—under Harvard Puzzles. You will also find additional puzzles and contact information there and can subscribe to his mailing list.

Sub topics

You might also like

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Studying ChatGPT Like a Psychologist

Cognitive science helps penetrate the AI “black box”

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Most popular

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Diagnosis by Fiction

The “Healing Quartet,” by “Samuel Shem,” probes medicine—and life.

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy