Advent Calendar: Day 4

[Kathis]

The problem with puzzles and codes is that their is a solver for everything. Word searches have solvers, anagrams have solvers, nanograms have solvers, and almost every cipher you can think of has a solver. That's what makes coming up with these so difficult. It's almost an arm's race with 'How to make something challenging, that cannot be thrown into a computer and solved.' The disadvantage of course is that your understanding of how a puzzle gets solved is not taught when you go through this method. 

 

So today's puzzle comes from an old book I have.

The letters in TOYS can be found in boxes 7, 11, 15, 20 but not not necessarily in that order. similarly, the letters in all the other words can be found in the boxes indicated. Your task: Insert all the letters of the alphabet into the boxes. If you do this correctly, the shaded cells will reveal another one of Santa's Helpers. Unused Letters are J and Q.

 

 

The code is in order of what you see, but I don't care about the shade. 

 

Good Luck to all. Hopefully this one is a bit easier for you.

 

[Doink]

how many prize per day?

[Tenchi]

This one was fun!

[Phantoon]

1 hour ago, Doink said:

how many prize per day?

 

One prize per day.

[The Chief]

Awesome Job 👍

[Kathis]

So this puzzle was rather simple

 

Solution: BWMTIEKYCXVGSFNAZQJ

 

How to solve: 

 

There are many words you can start with, but the important thing is to look for words that share a number, and find out what they all have in common, that the others do not. 

 

Lets take the first word for example. 

BLITZEN  has 1, 8 , 11, 12, 13, 22, 24. 

The only word that shares a 1 with it, is WHITE BEARD which has 1,2,4,6,10,11,12,13,23  

 

We can make this easier for us if we sort the words alphabetical, and drop the duplicates, and figure out which letters are shared. 

 

BEILNTZ

ABDEHIRTW 

 

BEIT are letters in common, we know these four common numbers are 1, 11, 12, and 13

LNZ would therefor have to be 8,22,24 since those numbers are left from our first word

ADHRW would therefor have to be 2,4,6,10,23 since those numbers are left from our second word.

 

We can use this information when looking at the next word.

 

CHIMNEY: 3,10,12,13,15,16,22

CEHIMNY : two of these letters are shared (12, 13) but the only ones that are in common are the E and the I , so E and I are 12, 13 meaning that B and T are 1, 11

We can tell that N is present, and has Chimney has 22. Therefore N is 22. 

we also have a 10, and the only letter that matches in our pervious group is the H,  So H is 10. 

 

Our groups of unknowns look like this now. 

 

IE : 12, 13

BT: 1 ,11
LZ: 8,24

ADRW: 2,4,6,23

CMY : 3,15,16

 

Next work is

ELVES : 8,13,18,20

ELSV : Elves is very nice because the E and the L are the only letters shared in our unknown groups so far, and they are in different groups. So we know the E is now 13. and L is 8, since those are the only numbers shared.  And because our groups are broken down to 1 letter left, we know that I is 12, and Z is 24

 

BT: 1 ,11

ADRW: 2,4,6,23

CMY : 3,15,16
SV : 18, 20

 

Next we have FAIRY LIGHTS: 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 21, 23
AFGRSTY: 4,11,15,19, 20,21,23  At this point we want to remove anything we know, so not to confuse us, though it's good for checking your work if you are uncertain.  We have 2 letters we haven't seen before so we can put them aside in their own group with any numbers we haven't seen yet.  Next we take a loot at our groups, we can see that we share 11,  with group BT, and only a T is present, this means that B must be 1, and T is 11.  We also have S being shared with group SV, and we can see that only 20 is present and not 18. So we can S must be 20, and V must be 18.  That leaves ARY that haven't been dealt with.  Y is alone in group CMY, and we see that 15 is shared so that must be Y.  AR are sadly in the same group but this helps breaks our big group in half. While we don't know which is which, we can move the similar numbers into their new groups.

 

Our unknowns at this point. 
 

AR : 4,23

DW: 2,6 

CM : 3,16
FG : 19,21

 

Next word is GROTTO: 4, 7, 11 ,19

GOR : 4, 7,  19  

FG shares 19, so G must be 19, and F must be 21,   R shares with AR group, and the only number in common is a 4, so  R is 4, and A must be 23.  leaving O with 7

our unknowns at this point.
DW: 2,6 

CM : 3,16

 

Next word is LAPLAND: 6, 8, 9, 22, 23
DP: 6,9    This is pretty nice reduction once we remove what we already know.  D shares with group DW, and the only number that's the same is 6. so D is 6, W is 2, leaving P with 9.

Our unknowns at this point.

CM : 3,16 

 

Next word is SANTA CLAUS: 5, 8, 11, 16, 20, 22, 23

CU : 5, 16    Just like before we see a single letter shared, find the pair, and deduce. C must be 16.  Leaving U with 5. Leaving us M with 3

Next word
SLEIGH: 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 22, 23   Is  useless to us if we took this route, since we have all these letters. In-fact we're just missing 14 and 17 So any word that doesn't have these 2 letters   Will not help us. 

STOCKINGS, has the 14, and not the 17. and from that we can just remove what letters we solved already. Which is the K, meaning K is 14. That leaves just the 17. Logically speaking we know that the because the alphabet is in effect, we could just see what letter we are missing, however. It's best that we don't do that, because future puzzles, could have same letters. They are much more tricky. So for now we just need to look at our last word, VIXEN which has the 17. The only letter left is X. 

 

After all said and done your puzzle should look like this. 

Was toys a trick? No it was a bonus word if you needed it. (but you obviously didn't) 

 

The last important part for the code is... but I don't care about the shade. 

So you take the letters in order skipping the shaded letters. Which gives you

BWMTIEKYCXVGSFNAZQJ

 

 

I took the extra steps for this puzzle, because understanding is super important at this stage of the game. Hopefully those who were having troubles now understand how to solve this type of puzzle.