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 "ratio" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2025 

Jan 2025

Christmas (2024) is over
Friendly squares
 2024 
▼ show ▼
 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

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

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2025