2025 was another busy and exciting year at CERN. See how well you’ve been paying attention to what’s happened by taking part in the CERN 2025 end-of-year crossword! You could have the chance to win two CAGI tickets to the Vitam water park, a CERN lunch bag made from upcycled banners, or a CERN-branded Toblerone.
Interested? Here’s how to enter:
- See below or download this PDF to access the crossword.
- Send your answers from your CERN email address to bulletin-editors@cern.ch before 9 January 2026. Your answers can be in the form of a completed crossword or a numbered list.
- All correct entries will be entered into a prize draw. The prize winners will be announced in the first Bulletin of 2026.
Please note: you must have a CERN email address to enter the prize draw.
Good luck!
Across1. Who will complete their ten-year term as Director-General at the end of 2025? [7, 8] 5. CMS observed the production of which quark with W and Z bosons for the first time this year? [3] 6. Fill in the blank: In March, CERN released a report on a study to assess the ____ of a possible Future Circular Collider. [11] 9. Fill in the blank: In October, TIME Magazine named the LHC as one of the 25 best ____ of all time. [10] 13. Fill in the blank: The Inner Triplet (IT) ___ test stand was strung together this year in preparation for the Long Shutdown starting next year. [6] 14. Charge-parity (CP) violation could help explain why matter and antimatter are not found in equal amounts in the Universe. The LHCb experiment observed CP violation in which particles for the first time in 2025? [7] 17. Fill in the blank: In February, ATLAS announced they had observed the production of a Z boson alongside two other ____ bosons for the first time. [6] 18. Fill in the blank: Generation ____, CERN’s 2025/2026 cultural season, was launched with the screening of a CERN documentary by Cédric Klapisch. [5] 20. Arts at CERN collaborated with the Nobel Prize Museum and Copenhagen Contemporary for which residency programme? [7] 21. Where did more than 600 scientists meet this year to discuss the future of particle physics at the Open Symposium of the European Strategy for Particle Physics? [6] 22. The first high-energy collisions between neon nuclei at the LHC revealed that a neon nucleus resembles which object? [7, 3] 23. Which fluffy CERN-born technology is being tested for its possible application to quantum communication? [5, 6] |
Down2. Fill in the blank: The ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb collaborations received the prestigious ____ Prize in Fundamental Physics on 5 April. [12] 3. Fill in the blank: From 29 June to 9 July this year, LHC facilitated proton– ____ ion collisions and ____-____ collisions for the first time. [6] 4. How many days did CERN engineer and ESA astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski spend in space? [6] 5. Which rare “quasi-bound-state”, formed from the temporary pairing of top and anti-top particles, may have been observed by ATLAS and CMS? [8] 7. Which country became CERN’s 25th Member State in June this year? [7] 8. Which collaboration has demonstrated the first antimatter quantum bit? [4] 10. Fill in the blank: This year, the NA61/SHINE collaboration announced that the ____ between up and down quarks is more broken than expected. [8] 11. Fill in the blank: In May this year, agreements were signed to admit Chile and Ireland as ___ Member States of CERN. [9] 12. Which event explored a hypothetical city built using the principles of quantum mechanics? [6] 15. At which event, held at CERN Science Gateway, could members of the public meet astronauts? [7] 16. What is the name of the new arts residency opportunity for Geneva-based artists? [9] 19. ALICE detected the conversion of lead into which element loved by medieval alchemists? [4] |