Last week, to mark the coming of a new school year, we quizzed you with riddles whose answers are local schools, offering a chance to win a $50 gift card to a restaurant of your choice.
Three randomly selected winners will be notified today and announced in a forthcoming edition. Meantime, let’s reveal those answers!
If the first riddle—“This school now known for forensic science was born on a campus long known for giants”—were a crime scene, it would lead investigators straight to the University of New Haven, whose famous Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science has helped put the school more broadly on the map. Its location on that map is itself an item of curiosity, being in West Haven, not New Haven, where the university was founded in 1920 as the New Haven YMCA Junior College and operated out of classroom space rented from Yale.
The answer to the second riddle—“In tribute to a Pirate who died at sea, this school coaches kids to think globally”—is the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy for Global Awareness, a K-8 school named for a star athlete who was also the star of one of my fourth-grade book reports. Long before then, in 1972, Clemente, a ballplayer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, was attempting to fly aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua when the cargo plane tragically crashed off the coast of his native Puerto Rico.
Like the first riddle, Riddle #3—“Named for a bygone drinking pool, you can’t be too cool for this progressive school”—invokes a geographical transposition. The answer, Cold Spring School, now located in Fair Haven where the Mill and Quinnipiac Rivers feed the city harbor, was founded in East Rock, near the historical location of a smaller body of water: a spring that unparched generations of New Haveners. The riddle also references the school’s “progressive education” philosophy, in which students are encouraged to assume more agency in their own education.
Riddle #4, “This falcon’s feeling feathery as it celebrates a century,” refers to a school that’s currently doing some extra preening from its perch near the central peak of New Haven: Albertus Magnus College. The school’s totem is a falcon, and banners with just enough slack to flutter now grace Rosary Hall, the heart of campus, to declare the school’s centennial achievement this year.
The fifth riddle, “Looking to hit your daily steps? 18 acres here will also up your pep,” was meant to get you thinking about feet, which is only a small mental hop away from Foote School, whose very Googleably-sized 18-acre campus was a joy to walk while legworking a 2017 article.
The final riddle, “To this school’s august trend/typesetter, women’s suffrage is a lesser-known debtor,” highlights an underappreciated New Yorker-turned-New Havener who worked jobs 19th-century women weren’t supposed to work—including as a journalist and a typesetter—while organizing for labor protections, voting rights and a host of other social improvements. Toward the end of her life, which concluded in 1920, she served as a teacher and a member of the Board of Education, making her an extra fitting namesake for the riddle’s answer, Augusta Lewis Troup School.
And now that the answers have been revealed, keep an eye out for a possible winner’s notice today. Win or lose, to everyone who riddled with us: We hope you had fun with it, and thanks for playing!
Written by Dan Mims. Images 1, 2 and 4 photographed by Dan Mims. Image 3 sourced from www.albertus.edu. Image 1 features Augusta Lewis Troup School. Image 2 features a 2016 assembly at Cold Spring School. Image 3 features Rosary Hall with centennial banners at Albertus Magnus College. Image 4 features Foote School at foot level.
