Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz 2025

Christmas Quizwoz 2025

Well, I’ve had a really bad end to the year but, nevertheless, welcome to this year’s Cryptic Movie Quiz for the festive period.

How you play...

Check out the grid above and you’ll see spaces for 14 movie titles running horizontally and, below this intro, are the cryptic clues to assist you in working out what these ‘non-Christmas’ movie titles are. To help out, I’ve filled in a line of letters vertically downwards spelling out MERRY CHRISTMAS... so you have a letter in its correct position for each of the titles. Please don’t forget to click on the grid to see a larger version of it and maybe print it off to help yourself.

Email your answers to me at nuts4r2@hotmail.com by the end of January 9th 2025 to get your entries in. A few days after that, I’ll stick up the name of the winner (or winners, if it’s a tie or a group effort), along with all the answers, here on my blog. No prizes, it’s just for fun but, if you like solving puzzles and have some down time during the Christmas break, maybe you’d like to give it a go.

By way of an example, here’s a question from last year’s quiz, followed by the answer...

Example question:
Jazz legend Fitzgerald goes to see a men’s hair stylist.

Example answer:
A men’s hair stylist is a barber. The jazz legend is Ella Fitzgerald so, put them together and you get... Barberella.

Or just check out the January solution pages from the last few years to get a feel for how to put these things together (you often have to make spelling adjustments for the puntastic nature of the solutions). If you keep checking back in the comments section below, I will probably put the odd extra clue down there every now and again to help you out throughout the Christmas period.

Full marks are rarely scored by pretty much anyone so... if you’re feeling a bit stuck, there’s still everything to play for. Some people have won it with less than half the grid correct. So send me what you’ve got anyway.

I hope you enjoy playing. Make sure you have lots of fun this Christmas period... once again, drink responsibly and play irresponsibly. Here are the questions.

1. Egyptian corpse owns technical equipment

2. What you give people for Christmas.

3. A central stage for spherical objects used in sports.

4. The pride of lions’ fierce vocals are just over 19 decibels.

5. Suffering a disease in which a high temperature is a prominent symptom, on an evening at the weekend.

6. A non X-rated firebird was polished up for the plan.

7. Burglar belonging to the father of a kind of sack.

8. A choice between two indefinite articles.

9. A dagger of frozen water.

10. A musical composition made out of soup.

11. The incorrect legwear.

12. The specific nomenclature of a prickly stemmed flower.

13. Bond villain’s tool for accessing his front door.

14. Equine’s wing plumage.