Bob’s 2024 Christmas Bonus Puzzle

The checkered board shown below contains nine hidden words and one phrase. The letters in each word or phrase are connected, in sequence, by a series of chess knight’s moves. In chess, a knight moves in an L shape. It starts by moving two spaces in any direction — up, down, left, or right — then without stopping turns and moves one space at a right angle to that.

     

For example, the diagram below shows the letter tiles used for the phrase UP IN THE SKY. The path begins with the magenta-circled letter.

     

Nine other words are hidden on the board. Each belongs to a category hinted at by the revealed phrase UP IN THE SKY.

Every space on the board will be used and no space will be used more than once. You may find it helpful to cross off spaces as you use them.

If you don’t feel like Don Quixote and aren’t keen on the whole knight business, you might try cutting up the squares and anagramming the 54 tiles (without U, P, I, N, T, H, E, S, K, and Y) to find the four words. Letters in any word will necessarily alternate between black and while tiles.

Solutions (don’t look if you don't want to see them!)

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