My Puzzling Year

  Slightly disappointing for once as the font and the setup of the numbers on the card for once does not resemble that of where the solution is -- on the machine.  Leads one to looking all over the box for an exact match, rather than an interpretative one this time. Not really a satisfying solve...

Few bold words here -- so don't count stuff, just read it instead....and the clue, you've seen these before, usually means look elsewhere on the box for hidden stuff. So where are those three signposts on the box? Easy to overthink something like this -- something to remember, where you have letters and symbols, or doors, or boxes, just count them -- if they match then it's likely to be a simple substitution. Before that, in this room is another one of those ginger cats.... Coincidence?  I think not! Final sheet, scrawled over by my own fair hand....  

  Usual form -- pay particular attention to the words in BOLD. Given those bold words and this window frame, it seems that we need to look through the window, aligning Kevin and the colours shown.... And looking inside the room makes this so -- for A, align the window frame such that Kevin's window is fully yellow, then read off the top right number seen...so on and so forth, nice twisting and viewing and a good little exercise.

  First impressions just off this was oh my god, music -- I have a tin ear for notation and the like, so this is going to be a nightmare whatever I'm asked to do behind the door. Make a musical instrument out of the Advent Calendar box with the specific-coloured lights as the notes.  Oh my. Yet another use of the box I'd completely not foreseen when looking at it for clues. Having said that, making the instrument was a blast and fun to try to play but frankly the easiest way for this music illiterate to solve this was to calculate the notes needed for Jingle Bells and map the light to notes to determine line 6 played the tune correctly. And behind the door a cheeky little definition giving numbers to notes for the final solve.  Nice.

  This figure immediately reminds us of something on the inside box cover: These are the five cards in the room: Piecing them together gives you this -- which all flows nicely into the final code. Interesting sequence to solve, fun!

  First thing I wonder from this is how much the licensing fees cost for this game -- Ghostbusters yesterday, Star Wars today, does "fair use" cover this sort of commercial use? Anyway. Clear from just these sheets that the lightsabre colours and people involved would be used, let's see what's behind the door.... It's three lightsabres (in paper sadly) and this code order -- but this next bit on the back side of the door is curious: Why the heck is there a random cat on the back of the door?   Needed for a future door perhaps.... Placing the lightsabres between the depicted characters in order, purple first.... Then white.... Then yellow.... I think we can all see the three digit code from these!

 Much more straightforwards today: Aren't they curious mouths on those guys? Old hands will know that highlighted words are key to everything -- smile...fingers....ghosts....details. So look at the smiles on the guys faces and compared to the ghosts -- then count the fingers.  The first smile matches the one of this sheet, so that's one done, looking at the cards in the room: Nice and easy!