Allard’s Annual Puzzle Puzzle SOLUTION

…you know I don’t normally give solutions on my blog – but I break that rule once a year for my annual puzzle, so here you go:

First off, for those of you playing at home and wanting to confirm your answers, the two-word exhortation I was looking for was “SAVE CHICO” … my first idea had been to shoot for “TONGUE DEPRESSORS” but I decided that was too long… I’m lazy and it was Christmas – and judging by how few people solved it, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t make it any more complicated.

OK, so how the heck am I supposed to get SAVE CHICO from that page?!

Allard’s intended solution, which may or may not bear much resemblance to how my solvers actually got there:

1. Start in the usual place by identifying the puzzles and designers, because that’s what we always do, right? And I sort of told you that in the instructions… which then asked you to derive a 2-word exhortation, but didn’t tell you how…
2. Notice there aren’t many designers and they all appear more than once.
3. Wonder why those pics are laid out rather deliberately all around the page.
4. Try and make sense of things by concentrating on one of the designers, say Strijbos…
5. There are a lot of ways to join those pictures up, surely there must be some sort of way of defining how they should be connected? But I didn’t tell you how to do that, so what could it be? We’d need some sort of universal rule that everyone already knows… if only we had something like that.
6. Take the list of designers’ surnames and puzzles (dropping any leading articles), sort them alphabetically by designer and then within that, by puzzle name.
7. For each designer, connect the puzzles in alphabetical order… that will trace out a shape for each designer, which should look quite a lot like a letter – actually they should be rather unambiguous, very specific letters - make a note of those.
8. Cool, I have a list of letters now: “SACVHEICO”  …. Which could lead you to my answer if you’re in a hurry, but if you look at the lines you’ve drawn on the page, you might notice that the there are two distinct tangles of letters in there – they overlap a bit, but don’t tangle – if you separate the tangles and take the left one first, you get “SAVE CHICO”.

Two people solved my puzzle!

Many people sent me a pretty darn good list of puzzles and designers, and even more sent me a list of exhortations – several of them repeatable!

Kudos to Brendan Perez for sending in the first complete list of designers and puzzles, sadly without the final answer.

The first correct entry arrived at 02:25 (my time) on Christmas morning from Nick Baxter… and then about 5 days later I received my second correct entry from Ali Morris – well done gentlemen!! And thank you all for playing along. 

Nick and Ali will be getting something puzzling in the post in due course, as will Brendan for being the first supplier of a complete list of designers and puzzles, and Mike Toulouzas wins my lucky draw. 

Happy New Year folks!

ID	Row	Col	Puzzle	Designer
13	4	5	Circle	Hales
5	2	3	Fire Starter	Hales
12	4	1	Pentagon	Hales
31	8	5	Turn the Plug	Hales
37	10	3	Viper	Hales
28	8	1	Wire Cutter	Hales
36	10	1	Barrel	Kamei
21	6	3	Cassiopeia	Kamei
38	10	5	Nonsense Box	Kamei
30	8	4	Pentagon	Kamei
29	8	2	Whiskey Bottle	Kamei
34	8	10	Duet	Kawashima
40	10	8	Pod	Kawashima
24	7	5	Rose	Kawashima
15	4	8	Spring Camera	Kawashima
23	6	10	Twin-Lens Reflex Camera	Kawashima
1	1	1	Barcode Burr	Krasnow
17	5	3	Merkaba	Krasnow
4	1	5	Sequential Star	Krasnow
14	4	6	Cocobolo Maze Burr	Sound
39	10	6	Diamond Box	Sound
32	8	6	Loop Box	Sound
33	8	9	Lotus Box	Sound
41	10	9	Snake Box	Sound
8	3	2	First Box	Strijbos
9	3	4	Lotus	Strijbos
3	1	4	Pachinko Box	Strijbos
2	1	2	Revenge Lock	Strijbos
16	5	2	Tube It In	Strijbos
18	5	4	Washer Cylinder	Strijbos
19	5	10	Down the Rabbit Hole	Wiltshire
42	10	10	Golden Ratio Box	Wiltshire
20	5	11	Borg Box	Yarger
11	3	9	Checkmate Puzzlebox	Yarger
22	6	6	Fulcrum Box	Yarger
35	9	9	Gordian Knot	Yarger
27	7	11	Little Game Hunter	Yarger
6	2	7	Blitz	Young
7	2	9	Gold Coast Parking Meter	Young
26	7	9	Louvre	Young
25	7	7	Opening Bat	Young
10	3	7	Telephone Box	Young

[Table and diagram taken from Nick's solution.]