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This question is part of the best-puzzle award series

What are your nominations for the best puzzles, here on Puzzling.SE, of the fourth quarter (October/November/December) 2023?

Suggested guidelines for nomination:

  • Nominate each individual puzzle in a separate answer, so they can be upvoted/downvoted separately.

  • No more than 3 nominations per person.

  • Don't nominate your own puzzles.

  • Before you nominate a puzzle, check to see if someone else has already nominated it. If they have, then add to that nomination as a comment (or edit it) instead of nominating the same puzzle again.

  • In your nomination, explain what it is that (in your opinion) makes the nominated puzzle such a good one.

Some lists to help jog your memory (your nomination doesn't have to be from these lists):

Algorithmically selected "best of":

Best by votes/views:

Meta-meta issues:

Q: Is this kind of thing allowed on SE?
A: Yes, Photography SE and Sci-Fi & Fantasy SE do something very similar.

Q: What's the point?
A1: To highlight and encourage good practice in a way that goes beyond upvotes.
A2: To work towards building a 'hall of fame' of some of the best puzzles on the site (perhaps to reside on a future puzzling.SE blog) - think of it as our 'greatest hits album'.
A3: To prompt members to put forward their own reflections on what makes a high-quality puzzle.

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A Trivial Pursuit #25: Meta-Analysis by Stiv

The preceding 24 puzzles in this series were of a very high standard of inventiveness, visual appeal, and accessibility. How then to capstone the overall project? Stiv rose effortlessly to the challenge, having hidden the theme in plain sight with

the titles of of the puzzles all being xkcd titles

and the final answer

being an xkcd cartoon dedicated to word puzzles, which itself satirises collections of suggestive obscure words

It took a while to parse together the pieces and the ostensibly bizarre phrase that resulted from extractions of the equally bizarre looking answers to the series, but it all added up with additional Easter Eggs as well.

To line up the meta-solution with 24 intermediate solutions that could be divided into the six Trivial Pursuit categories with appropriate titles takes the breath away.

I can't applaud this series (and hence this final meta) enough.

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PSE Advent Calendar 2023 (Day 24): ... and a Kappa Nu Year! by juicifer

Just how many constraints can one squeeze into a crossword? The design of the grid

is not only pangrammatic, but also a Schrodinger to a seasonal theme

of course

the second constraint severely limits clue options, but to add to these juicier elects to use all the words of a capstone message in some clue or other.

The intricacy was so subtle that

the initial solution didn't actually spot the full Schrödinger.

A lovely artifact fully worthy to crown the advent calendar.

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