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.
Trial begins for officer accused of failing to protect children during Uvalde shooting
One of the first police officers to respond to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, goes on trial Monday on charges that he failed to protect children during the attack.
Miami mayor calls for Trump to ‘immediately’ reinstate TPS for Venezuelans
Higgins said the Trump administration ending TPS for Venezuelans in early 2025 was "reckless, dangerous, and wrong."
Nicolás Maduro will appear in U.S. federal court on Monday
The Venezuelan president, who was captured by U.S. forces early Saturday, is awaiting trial in New York City on federal criminal charges.
Rubio says there’s ‘not a war against Venezuela’ despite U.S. capture of Maduro
Top Democrat calls operation 'a violation of the law' and promises Senate vote on President Trump's war powers.
Denmark’s prime minister says ‘stop the threats’ of U.S. annexing Greenland
The wife of Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted a photo implying a U.S. takeover of Greenland, hours after the U.S. attacks on Venezuela.
Wellness trends worth taking into the new year (and some that aren’t)
We reported on all sorts of products and practices promising to make you healthy last year. Here are the ones that stood up to science, and those that were mostly hype.
