Cook, recall, is the local woman who for the past 29 years has received a Christmas riddle delivered to her doorstep. She then goes half crazy trying to figure out what it means.

        Likewise, she goes a little bit nutso every year trying to figure out who's sending them. The anonymous trickster leaves the puzzles while she and husband David are away.

        This year's problem , as reported here last week, is a 4-foot by 4-foot plywood board with a Ken doll in a rowboat. He's wearing a shirt with clumps of holly on front and holding a fishing pole. There's a lure at the end of the line and a fish-shaped piece of limburger nearby.

        It was Cook who figured it out: Ken lures a' reeking.

        “Historically, whoever's doing this likes "Deck the Halls' and "12 Days of Christmas,' so I always start by looking for numbers.” As in “10 lords a leaping.”

        She has already solved days one through eight (a bullet in a leafless tree translated as “cartridge in a bare tree,” a chicken with three cans of limburger represented “three stench hens”). So, she started thinking about days nine through 12.

        “It came to me while I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room with David. I think I'm right, too.”

        Don't know if readers will agree. Among the suggestions, most of them having to do with “Deck the Halls:”

        • It has to be “Deck the doll with boughs of holly/Fish the cheese out to be jolly,” faxed Dr. Matt Connolly.

        • Nope, it's “Deck the doll's lapels with boughs of holly,” voice mailed Nancy Whalen, though that doesn't explain the fishing lure and limburger.

        • Laura Brooks, meanwhile, took a different approach: “Cheese ships come sailing in.”

        • Don Zimmerman, apparently a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, sang his entry: “Lotta good fish in the sea, in the sea, in the sea.”

        • Mary Lynn Bridge sang hers, too: “We fish you a smelly Christmas and a happy new lure ... ”

        The 15-year-old unsolved puzzle — a naked Ken with a halo, a nickel glued to his fanny, a deck of cards and a rowboat — continues to perplex. Several readers came up with St. Nickel-Ass, but none could explain the cards.

        • Vicki Otten tried: “A year to row 'til St. Nickle-Ass comes.” Still doesn't explain the cards, but it's getting closer.

        Pig invasion: Going to prove once again, Big Pig Gigs never die. They just go international.

        That from Munich Sister City board member Uta Papke, who took two unfinished pigs and three finished ones — CAM Ham, Pigtisse and Albert Swinestein — to a recent trade show in Munich.

        “About 180,000 people saw them and were full of questions and comments,” Papke says. “So many fell in love with them that I sold all the books (Big Pig Gig: Celebrating Pigs in the City) and took orders for many more.

        “Artists in Munich decorated the two unfinished ones and they were auctioned off at the end of the show.” They brought in $1,800 each.
       Contact Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330. Read his previous columns at the Enquirer web site on Cincinnati.Com.

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