My Puzzling Year

  Where is Kris Kringle? -- Cold Case Investigation Unit's Advent Calendar for 2023 Here's a thing about this -- the intention for this product was you get a box of 24 envelopes and open one each day in December, gradually revealing more pieces of information about the Disappearance of Kris Kringle "in real time". To encourage people to play one day at a time, they stated they would release video clues/news reports/etc on a dated basis....so if you wanted the news report for 16th December, you had to wait until 16th December to view it. But....no longer. All of them are now online. Looking around for clues as to why, I found this piece of text on their website: "this is because we have received abuse from people who want it all at once rather than waiting. We simply cannot win here so my suggestion is – you are adults, play as it is intended or however you like, its your pleasure but hopefully you will enjoy however you choose to do it" Having said all that,...

  This one is pretty poor.   Very little to do, very little to puzzle over or investigate, and criminally everything is also online so you can scan a QR code if someone has posted on on a review on Amazon for example, and play the whole thing -- and pretty much in minutes. It's a shame, because it's cheap and looks and feels nice, but as a puzzling experience it's terribly disappointing.

  Don't think this is available anymore, it was one of the first things I bought from etsy some years ago and only just got around to playing it whilst sorting out my shelf of shame. Essentially you get the dossier shown in the centre top of the picture plus a whole bunch of evidence bags containing the contents of the desk of the (known) killer. You read through wtiness statements in the dossier then work through the bag, containing such goodies as -- a tote bag! a tea cup (well it says coffee but I'm a tea man)! A Harlan Coben book! A hand mirror! This sort of thing I'd previously seen a number of years ago (maybe ten at this point) in two boxes from some long-since departed mystery person, where you essentially opened an envelope or box or parcel per day and solving things got you bonus items. Once you've opened everything you can get into a evidence area and start to solve a few things using these items, really nice use of the book and the cup as part of t...

  More along the lines of a murder mystery than a set of puzzles, but instead of picking out suspects, working out motives and breaking alibis, you have a simple task -- here are thirteen letters, photos, clippings - sent but undelivered in 1993 by Alex Dunn - after the last one they disappeared and the question you have to solve is...what happened? It's a cross between a Murder Mystery and House of Leaves...or is it? It's the sort of content you'd get in a single box of The Inheritance from CosyKiller -- a ton of letters that mean something and you have to work out what -- but in this case it forms an entire narrative and puzzle complete in itself. So those who like the idea of the setup of CK but baulk at committing to a twelve box series would do well to check this out (and frankly if CK picked up the idea of doing single box experiences along the lines of this then I for one would sign up immediately).

  A change of pace for today's puzzling, a modern-day Choose Your Own Adventure equivalent by the Jason Shiga, the creator of the magnificent Meanwhile... amongst others. This one is book two in an undefined series, nominally the followup to Leviathan in book one, but a discrete adventure in itself with no holdover from that previous book. Same style though -- you are at a funfair, do you go on the coconut shy (page 2) or the big dipper (page 3), that sort of thing. This time there's a short prologue adventure to get into the swing of things, plus an unrelated epilogue -- the meat of the book has a nice little mechanic of the player having to work out what page to turn to by combining other items -- a book-based version of Unlock if you like. I really enjoyed this, although - as is my want - by mapping each option out you soon realise that the story barrels onwards pretty much regardless of what you do, so replayability isn't great if you're seeking different paths or b...

  I seem to be on a bit of a Choose Your Own Adventure kick at the moment then, what with this and the previous book (well okay maybe two in a row doesn't really make a sequence), but this thick book seemed a logical follow-up to the previous thing. The way I tend to approach these is to make a map as I go -- there are some good analyses of this sort of thing on Emily Short's blog -- but I'm not one for playing through and then going back to the beginning and playing through again, I rather like the pictorial version I make of the branches and how the story goes off at tangents and loops back.... ...or in the case of this book, goes off at an almost negligible tangent and rejoins the main thread almost immediately. Progressing through the feel of the TV show isn't really there, because you just have no agency over what goes on -- even when you are seemingly presented with a chance to do things differently, you either are forced back into the thread the books wants to fo...

 review of what remains

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This one was so joyous -- really fast to solve because I'd be waiting to use the screws on the decoder strip (but even so, I'd never noticed the tin man's hat on it and I'VE BEEN LOOKING AT THIS DAMN THING EVERY DAY FOR 21 DAYS. Nice that it doesn't just need to line up the screws in the window to get the number, but you have to align it with the holes in the tin man himself....

  Another victory for remembering that the clapperboard was on the box and had numbers on.... Three sneaky holes to illuminate three numbers...

  One picture does it all -- previously note the tab of most doors had a letter on and a direction to travel, it was just a case of waiting for which puzzle needed it...and so here we are.

  A victory for remembering the half watermelon was on the back of one of the books...

  This one was easy to overthink -- forget the pencil in the fish tank, forget the direction the fish are in or where they are looking, literally just put the italicised words together as a sentence and perform that action

  The "screwdriver" was a card with a mirror on one side, inserted into a slot in room 17 and shining a torch in revealed the code in mirror writing in the dark room....

Remember those cats that kept on appearing in random rooms.... Here's where it all pays off...

Just thought it was worthwhile to highlight a few phrases for later although the torch one was needed right now...

  Really simple one today and fast to do but weirdly really very enjoyable -- more crafty than puzzley, an example is the picture below of the C: instruction forming the number 1

  Pretty straightforwards, obvious what to do from the off, counting was a bit of a mare because the box is dark and the pictures small but maybe old man alert....

and what do these blue numbers mean....check out the text below the red pill: and taking that action... smart!

  Another one using the box itself, and another one I remembered was on the box -- quick solve, clever puzzle and I have to say I did not notice previously that the credits listings had numbers in ...hidden in plain sight, very nice.

 After yesterday's blip, a return to form: Logic puzzle ahoy -- and that name Kaddy, that rings a bell from the box lid.... Finally, something on the lid that I'd actually spotted and knew would be of use. Inside the room is this little note on the floor: And the puzzle cards look like this: Put it all together and voila! Loved this one!