Sunday Puzzle: New newsmakers of 2025

On-air challenge

Every year around this time I present a “new names in the news” quiz. I’m going to give you some names that you’d probably never heard before 2025 but that were prominent in the news during the past 12 months. You tell me who or what they are.

1. Zohran Mamdani

2. Karoline Leavitt

3. Mark Carney

4. Robert Francis Prevost (hint: Chicago)

5. Jeffrey Goldberg (hint: The Atlantic)

6. Sanae Takaichi

7. Nameless raccoon, Hanover County, Virginia

Last week’s challenge

Last week’s challenge came from Joseph Young, of St. Cloud, Minn. Think of a two-syllable word in four letters. Add two letters in front and one letter behind to make a one-syllable word in seven letters. What words are these?

Challenge answer

Ague –> Plagued / Plagues / Leagues

Winner

Calvin Siemer of Henderson, Nev.

This week’s challenge

This week’s challenge is a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago.  Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 8 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.