Charm of Christmas Past

 

Finally got around to this after ahemahem years - didn’t even open it up before. You get four chapters in four A4 envelopes plus an intro letter and a Christmas tree to slot together.

It’s very structured in approach, very clear what you have to do in what order - this picture is the first puzzle, I had to follow a few pictures to work out how to thread the ribbon through the tree and you line up symbols on the ribbon with symbols on the holes and decode to form a password to the next stage.

The second puzzle I had a lot of trouble with - it’s essentially a logic puzzle, a few letters and postcards and a bunch of guest lists and you have to work out which guest list is the one you want- however one letter breaks the puzzle and I don’t know why - so anyone who has played this and remembers this bit or can dig it out please drop me a line and I’ll spoil what I think is wrong.

Puzzle three in chapter one is good fun, no controversy there!

 The absolute peak of this for me was the Christmas Tree in part one -- the very first thing you do. Nothing else came close to this and in fact I found another problem in Chapter Three (the chess puzzle) which doesn't tie up with the solution given (one example -- they say there is only one five letter word obtainable but I'd immediately come up with CORAL and that sort of screwed their theory...not least that the word their answer suggested could be made could NOT in fact be made with either piece).

Now whether I particularly have a bugged version of the product or something, but it's two errors as far as I can see and they sort of spoil the feeling throughout.