Solution: History Meta
Answer: A CLERICAL ERA
Written by Amos Eshel and Jason Deakins
Each of the answers in this department reads like a newspaper headline and references a particular historic event...twice! These dates can be used to identify particular letters in the given calendar which looks like a month, but is extended further to be capable of handling a month that starts on any day of the week and goes as long as 31 days.
As an example, May 2023 begins on a Monday; May 7, 2023 therefore is the Sunday in the 2nd row, an A. Extracting two letters per answer and ordering them by when they occurred (which ends up just being by year, since no two events happened in the same year), yields the answer A CLERICAL ERA.
| Date | Answer | Letter | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12/10/1817 | MISSISSIPPI ADMITTED TO UNION | A | Mississippi originally becomes a state. |
| 4/18/1853 | SEATTLE COUNTY NAMESAKE DIES | C | King County was originally named for William R. King (the 13th VP of the USA)... |
| 4/15/1865 | JOHNSON ASSUMES PRESIDENCY | L | Andrew Johnson, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. |
| 1/11/1870 or 2/23/1870 | MISSISSIPPI ADMITTED TO UNION | E | Mississippi returns to the Union following the Civil War. Two possible dates depending on definition of readmission, both yield same letter. |
| 2/20/1962 | JOHN GLENN FLIES OUT TO SPACE | R | As part of the Mercury 7. |
| 11/22/1963 | JOHNSON ASSUMES PRESIDENCY | I | Lyndon B. Johnson, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. |
| 4/4/1968 | SEATTLE COUNTY NAMESAKE DIES | C | ...before 1986 when it was changed to instead honor Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| 1/17/1971 | COLTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL | A | As the Baltimore Colts, winning Super Bowl V. |
| 6/8/1974 or 12/28/1974 | BAKER STARTS PLAYING DOCTOR | L | Tom Baker first appears onscreen as the 4th Doctor (Doctor Who), or his first full episode. Both dates yield the same letter. |
| 3/16/1984 or 3/22/1984 | BAKER STARTS PLAYING DOCTOR | E | Colin Baker first appears onscreen as the 6th Doctor (Doctor Who), or his first full episode. Both dates yield the same letter. |
| 10/29/1998 | JOHN GLENN FLIES OUT TO SPACE | R | As part of a study on age related to space travel. |
| 2/4/2007 | COLTS WIN THE SUPER BOWL | A | As the Indianapolis Colts, winning Super Bowl LVII. |
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | H | O | W | C | G | S |
| A | O | D | A | T | T | L |
| O | S | E | I | I | E | L |
| A | C | R | E | E | I | L |
| U | M | D | B | R | N | Y |
| P | N |
Author’s Notes
Amos: This meta was written before the 2022 NFL season even began, so if the Colts won Super Bowl LVII we would have had to scramble to fix things. In a previous Microsoft Puzzle hunt, I wrote a puzzle that relied on the number of championships various pro teams have won, so for this meta, Jonah suggested I should use an answer like AMOS WRITES A PUZZLE THAT BREAKS IF THE WRONG TEAM WINS THE SUPER BOWL.