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Christmas (2016) is over
2016-12-28
More than ten correct solutions to this year's Advent calendar puzzle competition were submitted on Christmas Day, so the competition is now over.
(Although you can still submit your answers to get me to check them.) Thank-you to everyone who took part in the puzzle, I've had a lot of
fun watching your progress and talking to you on Twitter, Reddit, etc. You can find all the puzzles and answers (from 1 January) here.
The (very) approximate locations of all the entries I have received so far are shown on this map:
![](javascript:showlimage("advent2016map.jpg"))
This year's winners have been randomly selected from the 29 correct entries on Christmas Day. They are:
| 1 | Jack Jiang |
| 2 | Steve Paget |
| 3 | Joe Gage |
| 4 | Tony Mann |
| 5 | Stephen Cappella |
| 6 | Cheng Wai Koo |
| 7 | Demi Xin |
| 8 | Lyra |
| 9 | David Fox |
| 10 | Bob Dinnage |
Your prizes will be on their way in early January.
Now that the competition has ended, I can give away a secret. Last year, Neal
suggested that it would be fun if a binary picture was hidden in the answers. So this year I hid one. If you write all the answers in binary, with
each answer below the previous and colour in the 1s black, you will see this:
![](javascript:showlimage("advent2016secret.jpg"))
I also had a lot of fun this year making up the names, locations, weapons and motives for the final murder mystery puzzle. In case you missed them these were:
| # | Murder suspect | Motive |
| 1 | Dr. Uno (uno = Spanish 1) | Obeying nameless entity |
| 2 | Mr. Zwei (zwei = German 2) | To worry others |
| 3 | Ms. Trois (trois = French 3) | To help really evil elephant |
| 4 | Mrs. Quattro (quattro = Italian 4) | For old unknown reasons |
| 5 | Prof. Pum (pum = Welsh 5) | For individual violent end |
| 6 | Miss. Zes (zes = Dutch 6) | Stopping idiotic xenophobia |
| 7 | Lord Seacht (seacht = Irish 7) | Suspect espied victim eating newlyweds |
| 8 | Lady Oito (oito = Portuguese 8) | Epic insanity got him today |
| 9 | Rev. Novem (novem = Latin 9) | Nobody in newsroom expected |
| # | Location | Weapon |
| 1 | Throne room | Wrench (1 vowel) |
| 2 | Network room | Rope (2 vowels) |
| 3 | Beneath reeds | Revolver (3 vowels) |
| 4 | Edge of our garden | Lead pipe (4 vowels) |
| 5 | Fives court | Neighbour's sword (5 vowels) |
| 6 | On the sixth floor | Super banana bomb (6 vowels) |
| 7 | Sparse venue | Antique candlestick (7 vowels) |
| 8 | Weightlifting room | A foul tasting poison (8 vowels) |
| 9 | Mathematics mezzanine | Run over with an old Ford Focus (9 vowels) |
Finally, well done to Scott,
Matthew Schulz,
Michael Gustin,
Daniel Branscombe,
Kei Nishimura-Gasparian,
Henry Hung,
Mark Fisher,
Jon Palin,
Thomas Tu,
Félix Breton,
Matt Hutton,
Miguel,
Fred Verheul,
Martine Vijn Nome,
Brennan Dolson,
Louis de Mendonca,
Roni,
Dylan Hendrickson,
Martin Harris,
Virgile Andreani,
Valentin Valciu,
and Adia Batic for submitting the correct answer but being too unlucky to win prizes this year. Thank you all for taking part and I'll see you
next December for the next competition.
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Comments
Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
2017-02-03
Thanks for the prizes. Fascinating books!Steve Paget
×1 I got my prize in the mail today. I really liked the stories from Gustave Verbeek; I thought that was pretty clever. I really appreciate you being willing to send the prizes internationally.
Thanks for setting this all up; I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles every day (and solving half them again when my cookie for the site somehow got deleted). I'll be sure to participate next time too!×1
Thanks for setting this all up; I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles every day (and solving half them again when my cookie for the site somehow got deleted). I'll be sure to participate next time too!
SC
×1 Thanks, Matthew! The puzzles were really fun, and piecing the clues was very interesting too!×1
Jack
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