New Year’s Eve + Jumble Puzzle

John and James discussing some poetry by Robert Service. Or, for the purposes of the Jumble puzzle, we can pretend he is asking James a question comparing this Nunatak Pie to the previous one he (James) and I (Scott) had a couple days prior.

Ioannis wishing everyone a happy new year.

James serves up some warm Nunatak Pie.

 Happy New Year’s Eve everyone, Today was another tent day due to hazardous weather looming. To ring in the new year, we did a short hike up to the summit of the neighbouring nunatak. The winds were so strong we were leaning 30-45 degrees into the wind at the summit to maintain our footing. It was quite the experience. Upon returning to camp, we set to start making dinner for the evening’s celebrations. But before we get to that, let’s give a little backstory first. Yesterday we posted Episode 2 of Cooking with James: Nunatak Pie. We actually made and ate this a couple days prior and have been referring to it simply by name to John and Ioannis. Needless to say, their curiosity piqued. We informed them we would bring it for dinner tonight and they could provide dessert. James and I improvised on-the-go in their tent last night listing a strange assortment of ingredients that we’re claiming are in it. To add to the drama, after returning from the hike I shoveled some snow from near “the yellow mound” for apparent (but not really) inclusion into the (fake) dinner dish, to Ioannis’ shock. Upon arriving at their tent for 18:30 dinner, we had two items with us. First, the real Nunatak Pie, and the second, our fake Nunatak Pie. Consisting of snow with drizzled orange Gatorate chunks, an ice “nunatak” sticking out, and some sprinkled frozen/dried veggies that had fallen out of the bag during our stay here, the fake Nunatak Pie was presented first with the real one hidden outside their tent for a few minutes. Eventually the gag was up, and we all had a good laugh. We got on with the actual meal which was consumed in quick fashion. The only change to the recipe was a *double serving of minced beef*. After dessert was over, we decided to ring in the new year at 20:00 (commensurate with shortly before John’s typical bedtime), likely making us the first people in the world to celebrate the new year (setting 20:00 to midnight is like being in North American Mountain Time but a day ahead). To end this year’s blogging, I thought we’d try something new that hopefully you find fun: an ANSMET/Antarctica-themed Jumble puzzle. Read on below for those of you interested in giving it a try. Happy New Year to all, much success and joy in 2018 from all of us here on Team B: John, James, Ioannis, and Scott.

Posted by Scott from Nødtvedt Nunatak on 2017-12-31 at 21:00 local.

Jumble Problem: For those of you not familiar, in a Jumble puzzle, you’re given the letters for scrambled words. Unscrambling the letters into the appropriate words will inform you which letters in each word make up the scrambled letters in the final puzzle accompanied by a picture. In the case below an underscore corresponds to a letter and an underscore in parentheses corresponds to a letter to be used in the final puzzle. Letters (underscores) are separated by hyphens for simplicity. The four initial scrambled words are all common in the blog postings and themed around our experiences thus far. For example, in the first scramble below “SAVECRES” is re-arranged into an 8-letter word whose 3rd and 8th letters are used in the final puzzle (alongside letters from the other three words) to complete the phrase (not an actual quote in this case, just a funny fictional question). Good luck and enjoy! I’ll post the answers in a blog post in the coming days.

Initial Words to Unscramble:

_ – _ – [_] – _ – _ – _ – _ – [_] === SAVECRES

_ – _ – [_] – _ – _ – _ – _ === DRUMCOM

_ – _ – _ – _ – [_] – _ – _ – [_] === GASRUTIS

[_] – _ – _ – _ – _ – [_] === SANTEM

Final Puzzle: John asked James: “Compared to the previous one, you made this Nunatak Pie _ – _ – _ – _ – _ – _ – _, right?”