mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

Christmas (2021) is coming!

 2021-11-25 
This year, the front page of mscroggs.co.uk will once again feature an Advent calendar, just like in each of the last six years. Behind each door, there will be a puzzle with a three digit solution. The solution to each day's puzzle forms part of a logic puzzle:
It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: a saboteur has infiltrated the stables where Santa's reindeer are kept, and has caused all three of Santa's test flights to be unsuccessful. You need to help Santa have a successful test flight so that he can deliver presents before Christmas is ruined for everyone.
In order to have enough magical power to fly with the sleigh, all nine of Santa's reindeer must be fed their favourite food. The saboteur gave one or more reindeer the wrong food before each of the three test flights, causing the reindeer to be unable to take off.
Behind each day (except Christmas Day), there is a puzzle with a three-digit answer. Each of these answers forms part of a piece of information about the reindeer's favourite foods and what the reindeer were fed before the three test flights. In each clue, "before test flight n" means "immediately before test flight n". Before each test flight, each reindeer was fed exactly one food, and two or more reindeer may have been fed the same food. Two or more reindeer may have the same favourite food. You must use these clues to work out what each reindeer's favourite food is, then complete a test flight by feeding each reindeer the correct food.
You can use this page to attempt up to three test flights per day. An attempted test flight will be successful if and only if all nine reindeer are given their favourite food just before the flight.
Ten randomly selected people who solve all the puzzles, complete a successful test flight, and fill in the entry form behind the door on the 25th will win prizes!
The prizes will include an mscroggs.co.uk Advent 2021 T-shirt. If you'd like one of the T-shirts from a previous Advent, they are available to order at merch.mscroggs.co.uk.
The winners will be randomly chosen from all those who submit the entry form before the end of 2021. Each day's puzzle (and the entry form on Christmas Day) will be available from 5:00am GMT. But as the winners will be selected randomly, there's no need to get up at 5am on Christmas Day to enter!
As you solve the puzzles, your answers will be stored. To share your stored answers between multiple devices, enter your email address below the calendar and you will be emailed a magic link to visit on your other devices.
To win a prize, you must submit your entry before the end of 2021. Only one entry will be accepted per person. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments below or on Twitter.
So once December is here, get solving! Good luck and have a very merry Christmas!
                        
(Click on one of these icons to react to this blog post)

You might also enjoy...

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
Thanks Matthew. Really nice to have this daily dose of brain teasing again
Gert-Jan
×7   ×5   ×4   ×4   ×2     Reply
This was a lot of fun - thank you so much for the time and effort that went into this.
Each puzzle was tricky enough to require some thought, but not so tricky as to be discouraging.
Looking forward to next year already!
Si E
×2                 Reply
Thanks, Matthew for all of your hard work to create the Advent Calendar. It was so much fun to work together with my son, even though we live thousands of miles apart. He is a coder and I am definitely old-school math.
Liz
×2   ×1              Reply
I have really enjoyed these puzzles over the last 26 days. I particularly liked the variety of puzzles, some leading me to graphing software, others to my amateur coding, and many just to a piece of paper and a pencil. Some ideas for the classroom too!
Ben
×2   ×1              Reply
@(anonymous): Yes, you should have enough info to work all that out. I recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of all the feedings.
Matthew
   ×1              Reply
Really struggling with the final logic puzzle this year...is it possible to work out what each reindeer was fed before each test flight as well as their favourite foods? The information seems so little!
(anonymous)
                 Reply
 Add a Comment 


I will only use your email address to reply to your comment (if a reply is needed).

Allowed HTML tags: <br> <a> <small> <b> <i> <s> <sup> <sub> <u> <spoiler> <ul> <ol> <li> <logo>
To prove you are not a spam bot, please type "s" then "e" then "g" then "m" then "e" then "n" then "t" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2024 

Feb 2024

Zines, pt. 2

Jan 2024

Christmas (2023) is over
 2023 
▼ show ▼
 2022 
▼ show ▼
 2021 
▼ show ▼
 2020 
▼ show ▼
 2019 
▼ show ▼
 2018 
▼ show ▼
 2017 
▼ show ▼
 2016 
▼ show ▼
 2015 
▼ show ▼
 2014 
▼ show ▼
 2013 
▼ show ▼
 2012 
▼ show ▼

Tags

javascript manchester science festival ternary crossnumber go quadrilaterals runge's phenomenon final fantasy numbers simultaneous equations christmas card matrices estimation world cup captain scarlet sobolev spaces logo hats football electromagnetic field tmip chalkdust magazine countdown inverse matrices talking maths in public wool bubble bobble dinosaurs exponential growth platonic solids big internet math-off pizza cutting rugby crochet reuleaux polygons advent calendar pythagoras trigonometry php finite element method misleading statistics frobel dragon curves live stream signorini conditions golden ratio european cup pascal's triangle map projections wave scattering statistics data visualisation golden spiral light matt parker stirling numbers asteroids ucl pi youtube palindromes matrix of cofactors squares craft national lottery fonts arithmetic plastic ratio mathslogicbot geometry fractals turtles phd latex approximation draughts sound pi approximation day boundary element methods weather station manchester flexagons finite group databet coins propositional calculus cross stitch probability sport graphs realhats convergence cambridge preconditioning games newcastle stickers binary hexapawn london underground bodmas books edinburgh guest posts video games rhombicuboctahedron logs royal baby martin gardner chebyshev interpolation datasaurus dozen news mean weak imposition braiding tennis polynomials hannah fry gaussian elimination errors fence posts folding paper data folding tube maps dates reddit the aperiodical zines programming correlation harriss spiral standard deviation pac-man computational complexity speed curvature triangles python determinants gather town mathsteroids matrix of minors game of life puzzles machine learning numerical analysis matrix multiplication geogebra dataset london recursion menace raspberry pi inline code nine men's morris hyperbolic surfaces logic people maths 24 hour maths mathsjam anscombe's quartet royal institution sorting a gamut of games gerry anderson accuracy oeis bempp christmas chess graph theory radio 4 game show probability error bars noughts and crosses

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2024