Ozymandias Walkthrough

Upon clicking on the puzzle, solvers first encounter a wondrous crossword grid. The grid perfectly adheres to every crossword rule known to man—it is a single connected set of entries with flawless 180-degree rotational symmetry, its numbers are precisely placed in exactly the right order, and every entry intersects at least two others. In fact, the central four-letter entry at 8-Across has a jaw-dropping 100% of its letters crossed by Down entries. This ties the world record for most-checked entry in a crossword!

But when solvers are finally able to bring themselves to look away from this marvel of a grid and scroll down, they are in for an unprecedented surprise twist. In the place where they would normally expect crossword clues, they instead face a bewildering array of strange, colorful rectangular images of various dimensions. What’s worse, 8-Across’s clue is simply a string of question marks. Now we see why the constructor went through the effort of ensuring every one of its letters was crossed—otherwise there’s no way you could ever know them!

But how can we convert these rectangles into words? After much staring and a few hours of research, the cleverer and more cultured members of your team may finally recognize at least one of the images as a national flag, sparking the a-ha: this puzzle is all about identifying the flags of various countries. From there, the next leap is to consider the names of these countries; for example, 1-Across in the grid is seven letters, and the flag associated with 1-Across is that of a country with a seven-letter name. As it happens, this pattern continues with every entry, such that you can fit the names of the countries into the grid, one letter per square, and all of the crossings work! Finally, all that remains is to read 8-Across, submit it as the final answer to the puzzle, and bask in the supreme satisfaction of overcoming this brilliantly devious mental challenge.