enigmatic puzzle – PSE Advent Calendar 2025 (Day 14): The Great Paper Caper

You

are on the Nice List, so you’re in no trouble! I’m just hoping Santa or his elves never saw you yesterday and so change his mind…

Why?

The sentences/phrases with names in the list are actually all cryptic clues, only lacking enumerations.

Al possibly falling behind after taking a wrong turn near motorway
Answer: METAL (Al possibly; aluminum) = LATE< near M

Bilal came up short, was rejected, and is making excuses
ALIBIS (excuses) = BILA(-l)< + IS

Chelsea maybe met a criminal
TEAM (Chelsea, maybe; a football club in England) = META*

DeSean doesn’t have direction to become authority figure
DEAN (authority figure) = DE(-se)AN, SE being southeast

Erin’s lacking structure and control
REIN (control) = ERIN*

Freya has chronic; in the end, objective is to get high
ASCEND (to get high) = _A _S _C END

Giulia perhaps opposed anti-fascist group
SEDAN (Giulia perhaps; a car model by Alfa Romeo) = group in oppoSED ANti-fascist

Herb, in all, is absolutely turned around
BASIL (herb) in alL IS ABsolutely<

Irene’s struggling to get last of assignment complete
ENTIRE (complete) = IRENE* to get _T

Juicifer’s involved in bits of lascivious activity now and then – it’s a sad story
LAMENT (it’s a sad story) = ME involved in L_ A_ N_ T_

Keiko never crafts regularly, being lazy
INERT (lazy) = letters of “Keiko never crafts” regularly, specifically every third letter

Leona spending a long time with second boy around the block
SLAB (block) = L(-eon)A with S B around

Note that

Each answer is either 6, 5 or 4 letters long (which is confirmed by the pattern of 6, 5 and 4 green circles in the art of the paper),

so that

we can form 4 sequences of 3 words in which the next word is precisely the previous word minus a letter!

ASCEND
SEDAN = ASCEND – C
DEAN = SEDAN – S

ALIBIS
BASIL = ALIBIS – I
SLAB = BASIL – I

ENTIRE
INERT = ENTIRE – E
REIN = INERT – T

LAMENT
METAL = LAMENT – N
TEAM = METAL – L

And now,

If we take the words in the list of clue answers that are each the member of their respective sequences that appears first in the list, and order these 4 words according to the order they appear in the list, we get METAL, ALIBIS, DEAN, and REIN. It follows that if we replace each word with its corresponding sequence, we can see that the letters subtracted to form the second members of the sequences spell NICE, and the letters subtracted to form the third members of the sequences spell LIST. Thus, you are on the nice list, and not on the naughty list! How fortunate. So indeed the letters left behind, i.e. subtracted, were important, as hinted by the flavor text.