Alice Solves the Puzzle is a theatrical cartoon short directed by Walt Disney. It features Alice, Julius the Cat and Bootleg Pete.
Plot
Alice and Julius are spending a summer afternoon at the beach. Julius is having a grand old time, but Alice gets caught up in crosswords and worked about her inability to complete the last one. Just as Julius seems to have managed to get her to go out and have some fun, bootleg Peg-Leg Pete, who has developped a passion for collecting rare crosswords, comes by and attempts to snatch Alice's puzzle for his collection. Julius rises to the challenge and fights the thug to get it back.
Behind the scenes
This cartoon short was released in 1925 as a silent film and later rereleased with sound. It is the fourteenth short in the Alice Comedies series (fifteenth if one chooses to count Alice's Wonderland).
The short is most notable for being the first-ever appearance of Peg-Leg Pete, under the name "Bootleg Pete". The name was better justified in the original uncut version of the cartoon, which included a scene where Pete was arrested by a customs boat and let go after the officers unsuccessfully searched his boat; Pete would have been revealed to be hiding the bottles of alcohol inside the nearby pelican's beak. The scene was cut at the request of the Pennsylvania Censorship Board, but kept in foreign prints; the scene was thus rediscovered on a German copy by film historian Russell Merritt.