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It's 2019, and the Advent calendar has disappeared, so it's time to reveal the answers and annouce the winners. But first, some good news: with your help, Santa was able to work out who had stolen the presents and save Christmas:

Now that the competition is over, the questions and all the answers can be found here. Before announcing the winners, I'm going to go through some of my favourite puzzles from the calendar, reveal the solution and a couple of notes and Easter eggs.

My first highlight is the first puzzle in the calendar. This is one of my favourites as it has a pleasingly neat solution involving a surprise appearance of a very famous sequence.

My next highlight is a puzzle that I was particularly proud of cooking up: again, this puzzle at first glance seems like it'll take a lot of brute force to solve, but has a surprisingly neat solution.

My next highlight is a geometry problem that appears to be about polygons, but actually it's about a secret circle.

My final highlight is a puzzle about the expansion of a fraction in different bases.

I had a lot of fun this year coming up with the names for the possible theives. In order to sensibly colour code each suspect's clues, there is a name of a colour hidden within each name: Fred Metcalfe, Jo Ranger, Bob Luey, Meg Reeny, and Kip Urples. Fred Metcalfe's colour is contained entirely within his forename, so you may be wondering where his surname came from. His surname is shared with Paul Metcalfe—the real name of a captain whose codename was a certain shade of red.

On 20 December, Elijah Kuhn emailed me to point out that it was possible to solve the final puzzle a few days early: although he could not yet work out the full details of everyone's timetable, he had enough information to correctly work out who the culprit was and between which times the theft had taken place.

Once you've entered 24 answers, the calendar checks these and tells you how many are correct. This year, I logged the answers that were sent for checking and have looked at these to see which puzzles were the most and least commonly incorrect. The bar chart below shows the total number of incorrect attempts at each question.

You can see that the most difficult puzzles were those on 13, 24, and 10 December; and the easiest puzzles were on 5, 23, 11, and 15 December.

I also snuck a small Easter egg into the door arrangement: the doors were arranged to make a magic square, with each row and column, plus the two diagonals, adding to 55.

The solutions to all the individual puzzles can be found here. Using the clues, you can work out that everyone's seven activities formed the following timetable.

Following your investigation, Santa found all the presents hidden under Kip Urples's bed, fired Kip and sucessfully delivered all the presents on Christmas Eve.

And finally (and maybe most importantly), on to the winners: 73 people submitted answers to the final logic puzzle. Their (very) approximate locations are shown on this map:

From the correct answers, the following 10 winners were selected:

Congratulations! Your prizes will be on their way shortly. Additionally, well done to Alan Buck, Alex Ayres, Alex Bolton, Alex Lam, Alexander Ignatenkov, Alexandra Seceleanu, Andrew Turner, Ashwin Agarwal, Becky Russell, Ben Reiniger, Brennan Dolson, Carl Westerlund, Cheng Wai Koo, Christopher Embrey, Corbin Groothuis, Dan Whitman, David, David Ault, David Kendel, Dennis Oltmanns, Elijah Kuhn, Eric, Eric Kolbusz, Evan Louis Robinson, Felix Breton, Fred Verheul, Gregory Loges, Hannah, Jean-Noël Monette, Jessica Marsh, Joe Gage, Jon Palin, Jonathan Winfield, Kai Lam, Louis de Mendonca, M Oostrom, Martine Vijn Nome, Matt Hutton, Matthew S, Matthew Wales, Michael DeLyser, MikeKim, Naomi Bowler, Pranshu Gaba, Rachel Bentley, Raymond Arndorfer, Rick Simineo, Roni, Rosie Paterson, Sam Hartburn, Scott, Sheby, Shivanshi, Stephen Cappella, Steve Paget, Thomas Smith, Tony Mann, Valentin Vălciu, Yasha Ayyari, Zack Wolske, and Zoe Griffiths, who all also submitted the correct answer but were too unlucky to win prizes this time.

See you all next December, when the Advent calendar will return.

Recently, I made myself a new Christmas decoration:

Loyal readers may recognise the Platonic solid presents from last year's Christmas card, last year's Advent calendar medals, or this year's Advent calendar medals.

If you'd like to make your own Platonic solids Christmas cross stitch, you can find the instructions below. I'm also currently putting together some prototype Platonic solids cross stitch kits (that may be available to buy at some point in the future), and will be adding these to the piles of prizes for this year's Advent calendar.

Cross stitch thread is made up of 6 strands twisted together. When doing your cross stitch, it's best to use two strands at a time: so start by cutting a sensible length of thread and splitting this into pairs of strands. Thread one pair of strands into the needle.

Following the patterns below, cross stitch rows of red and non-red crosses. To stitch a row, first go along the row sewing diagonals in one direction, then go back along the row sewing the other diagonals. When you've finished the row, move the the row above and repeat. This is shown in the animation below.

When doing the first row, make sure the stiches on the back cover the loose end of thread to hold it in place. Looking at the back of the aida, it should look something like this:

When you are running out of thread, or you have finished a colour, finish a stitch so the needle is at the back.

Then pass the needle through some of the stitches on the back so that the loose end will be held in place.

The patterns for each solid are shown below. For each shape, the left pattern shows which colours you should cross in each square (/ means red, o means non-red); and the right pattern shows where to add black lines after the crosses are all done.

Just like last year and the year before, TD and I spent some time in November this year designing a Chalkdust puzzle Christmas card.

The card looks boring at first glance, but contains 10 puzzles. By splitting the answers into pairs of digits, then drawing lines between the dots on the cover for each pair of digits (eg if an answer is 201304, draw a line from dot 20 to dot 13 and another line from dot 13 to dot 4), you will reveal a Christmas themed picture. Colouring the region of the card labelled R red or orange will make this picture even nicer.

If you want to try the card yourself, you can download this pdf. Alternatively, you can find the puzzles below and type the answers in the boxes. The answers will be automatically be split into pairs of digits, lines will be drawn between the pairs, and the red region will be coloured...

If you enjoy these puzzles, then you'll almost certainly enjoy this year's puzzle Advent calendar.

This year, the front page of mscroggs.co.uk will once again feature an advent calendar, just like last year, the year before and the year before. 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: one of Santa's five helpers—Fred Metcalfe, Kip Urples, Bob Luey, Meg Reeny, and Jo Ranger—has stolen all the presents during the North Pole's annual Sevenstival. You need to find the culprit before Christmas is ruined for everyone.

Every year in late November, Santa is called away from the North Pole for a ten hour meeting in which a judgemental group of elders decide who has been good and who has been naughty. While Santa is away, it is traditional for his helpers celebrate Sevenstival. Sevenstival gets its name from the requirement that every helper must take part in exactly seven activities during the celebration; this year's available activities were billiards, curling, having lunch, solving maths puzzles, table tennis, skiing, chess, climbing and ice skating.

Each activity must be completed in one solid block: it is forbidden to spend some time doing an activity, take a break to do something else then return to the first activity. This year's Sevenstival took place between 0:00 and 10:00 (North Pole standard time).

During this year's Sevenstival, one of Santa's helpers spent the time for one of their seven activities stealing all the presents from Santa's workshop. Santa's helpers have 24 pieces of information to give to you, but the culprit is going to lie about everything in an attempt to confuse you, so be careful who you trust.

Behind each day (except Christmas Day), there is a puzzle with a three-digit answer. Each of these answers forms part of a fact that one of the helpers tells you. You must work out who the culprit is and between which times the theft took place.

Ten randomly selected people who solve all the puzzles and submit their answers to the logic puzzle using the form behind the door on the 25th will win prizes!

The winners will also receive one of these medals:

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.

Behind the door on Christmas Day, there will be a form allowing you to submit your answers. The winner will be randomly chosen from all those who submit the correct answer before the end of 2018. 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!

To win a prize, you must submit your entry before the end of 2018. 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!

It's 2018, and the Advent calendar has disappeared, so it's time to reveal the answers and annouce the winners. But first, some good news: with your help, Santa was able to work out which present each child wanted, and get their presents to them just in time:

Now that the competition is over, the questions and all the answers can be found here. Before announcing the winners, I'm going to go through some of my favourite puzzles from the calendar.

This puzzle revealed the surprising fact that repeatedly sorting the digits of a three digit number into ascending and descending order then finding the difference will always give the same answer (as long as the digits of the starting number are all different). This process is known as the Kaprekar mapping.

If four digit starting numbers are chosen, then all starting numbers that do not have three equal digits will eventually lead to 6174. It's not as simple for five digit numbers, but I'll leave you to investigate this...

Ruben pointed something interesting out to me about this question: if you remove the constraint that the answer must be a three digit number, then you see that the numbers 47, 497, 4997, 49997, and in fact any number of the form 49...97 will have this property.

If you didn't manage to solve this one, I recommend trying replacing the 10 and 27 with smaller numbers (eg 3 and 4) and solving the easier puzzle you get first, then trying to generalise the problem. You can find my write up of this solution here.

Pedro Freitas (@pj_freitas) sent me a different way to approach this problem (related to solving the same question with different numbers on this year's Christmas card). To see his method, click "Show Answer & Extension" in the puzzle box above.

I really like the method I used to solve this one. To see it, click "Show Answer" above.

Solving all 24 puzzles lead to the following final logic puzzle:

Together the clues reveal what each elf was wearing:

and allow you to work out where each child lives and what they wanted. Thanks Adam and Alison for drawing the elves for me.

I had a lot of fun finding place names with numbers in them to use as answers in the final puzzle. For the presents, I used the items from The 12 Days of Christmas:

I also snuck a small Easter egg into the calendar: the doors were arranged in a knight's tour, as shown below.

And finally (and maybe most importantly), on to the winners: 84 people submitted answers to the final logic puzzle. Their (very) approximate locations are shown on this map:

From the correct answers, the following 10 winners were selected:

Congratulations! Your prizes will be on their way shortly. Additionally, well done to Alan Buck, Alessandra Zhang, Alex Burlton, Alex Hartz, Alex Lam, Alexander, Alexander Bolton, Alexandra Seceleanu, Arturo, Brennan Dolson, Carmen Günther, Connie, Dan Whitman, David Fox, David Kendel, Ed, Elijah Kuhn, Eva, Evan Louis Robinson, Felix Breton, Fred Verheul, Henry Hung, Joakim Cronvall, Joe Gage, Jon Palin, Kai Lam, Keith Sutherland, Kelsey, Kenson Li, Koo Zhengqun, Kristen Koenigs, Lance Nathan, Louis de Mendonca, Mark Stambaugh, Martin Harris, Martine Vijn Nome, Matt Hutton, Matthew Schulz, Max Nilsson, Michael DeLyser, Michael Smith, Michael Ye, Mihai Zsisku, Mike Walters, Mikko, Naomi Bowler, Pattanun Wattana, Pietro Alessandro Murru, Raj, Rick, Roni, Ross Milne, Ruben, Ryan Howerter, Samantha Duong, Sarah Brook, Shivanshi, Steve Paget, Steven Peplow, Steven Spence, Tony Mann, Valentin Vălciu, Virgile Andreani, and Yasha Asley, who all also submitted the correct answer but were too unlucky to win prizes this time.

See you all next December, when the Advent calendar will return.