Puzzles for Adults and Children
Other than the references to five years, there is no information given besides the eight puzzle answers. Solvers may notice that the puzzle answers begin with the first eight letters of the alphabet, suggesting an ordering.
Using the five year theming, and reading down the fifth letters of each answer gives the solution HIGH FIVE. Give yourself a high five for solving another metapuzzle!
Each different color of letter in the cauldron is in a different font, and the fonts correspond to the puzzle title written on the side of the cauldron. Given from roughly top to bottom, the letters in each font are as follows:
The flavor text suggests that each of these scrambles is missing a letter. It turns out that they are all missing their first letter. The unscrambled ingredients are:
The missing first letters spell out the answer EYE OF NEWT.
A couple of these ingredients (YAK MILK, TOE OF FROG) are actually more obscure – and for most solvers, harder to get – than the puzzle answer. Fortunately, it is very likely to find EYE OF NEWT even while missing a few letters, and it is probably possible with fewer than half of the ingredients solved.
Despite the order given in the provided table, the easiest way to solve this logic puzzle is in order from first heist to last.
The clue beginning “The seven heists” allows the table to begin like this:
| ORDER | THIEF | HOMETOWN | WONDER |
| 1 | Lighthouse | ||
| 2 | Eclipse | ||
| 3 | Stockholm | ||
| 4 | Colossus | ||
| 5 | Bennett | ||
| 6 | Hanging Gardens | ||
| 7 | Brussels |
Charlie committed her robbery after the thief from Nairobi and before the Temple of Artemis. Using the table, we can see that Charlie must be 3rd or later and the Temple of Artemis must have been stolen either 5th or 7th.
From the penultimate clue, the Mausoleum can only have been stolen 2nd or 5th.
Since the Statue of Zeus comes immediately after Chicago in the order, it can only have been stolen 2nd, 3rd, or 7th. Because Stockholm also begins with an S, it must be 2nd or 7th.
Because the Temple of Artemis, Mausoleum, and Statue of Zeus cannot have been stolen 3rd, the Pyramids must have been. According to the final clue, this means Fischer stole the Pyramids 3rd.
Since we already know Charlie must be after Nairobi and before the Temple of Artemis, and she additionally cannot be 4th because she cannot have stolen the Colossus, since it also begins with C, she must have been 6th. This forces the Temple of Artemis to be 7th, which causes a ripple effect, making the Statue of Zeus 2nd, Chicago, 1st, and Manila/the Mausoleum 5th, giving the following:
| ORDER | THIEF | HOMETOWN | WONDER |
| 1 | Chicago | Lighthouse | |
| 2 | Eclipse | Statue of Zeus | |
| 3 | Fischer | Stockholm | Pyramids |
| 4 | Colossus | ||
| 5 | Bennett | Manila | Mausoleum |
| 6 | Charlie | Hanging Gardens | |
| 7 | Brussels | Temple of Artemis |
The only remaining row on the table where Delaney and Sao Paolo both fit is 4th. Since Atticus stole his wonder before the thief from Bangkok, he cannot be last, so Atticus is 1st and Gabriel is 7th.
Finally, since Charlie’s heist didn’t happen until after the thief from Nairobi, Nairobi must be 2nd, and Bangkok is 6th. Rearranging the grid into the given order gives this:
| ORDER | THIEF | HOMETOWN | WONDER |
| 4 | Delaney | Sao Paolo | Colossus |
| 7 | Gabriel | Brussels | Temple of Artemis |
| 3 | Fischer | Stockholm | Pyramids |
| 1 | Atticus | Chicago | Lighthouse |
| 5 | Bennett | Manila | Mausoleum |
| 2 | Eclipse | Nairobi | Statue of Zeus |
| 6 | Charlie | Bangkok | Hanging Gardens |
Treating the position in the order as an index into the thief, hometown, and wonder, as indicated by the bolded letters in the table, gives letters which spell out APOLLO’S ORACLE LOCATION. The famous oracle to Apollo was located at DELPHI.
Each of the answers to the clues can have the suffix -ium added to sound like an element. The given blanks correspond to the lengths of the element names.
Equating each element to its atomic number allows solvers to transform each element into a new element. For example Neptunium is element 93. 93 – 1 = 92, which is Uranium. The new elements are:
In order, the symbols for these elements are U, Ni, N, Te, Re, S, Ti, N, Gd, O, W, N, and Er, which can be read as the phrase UNINTERESTING DOWNER. This is a clue for BORE. Adding the suffix -ium again lead to the answer BOHRIUM.
The answers to the “Clockwise” clues may be placed in the grid, starting from the given number. The “Moving Inward” clues cross these answers, moving from out to in. The answers to the clockwise clues are:
And the inward clues (in given order) are:
The completed grid looks like this:
The two highlighted regions are the only letters which are not part of an inward clue. Read from left to right, they spell out the answer, ARACHNID.
As hinted by example in the flavor text, each of the clues leads to a three-word phrase, with the middle word being AND. The first and last words of each phrase fit into the given grid. The pairs are:
The completed grids look like this:
In numerical order, the letters where the pairs cross spell out the phrase INT’L RED CROSS CITY. The International Red Cross has its headquarters in GENEVA, Switzerland.
This puzzle starts as a simple crossword. All of the given body parts can be found in the grid like so:
The letters which are not part of any word spell out the message YOU HAVE A SKULL, YET WHERE ARE THE CROSSBONES? THERE YOU WILL FIND YOUR ANSWER. This hints that solvers should look for crossbones – that is, places where bones cross. Highlighting only the bones in the grid gives this:
The bone names cross or overlap in exactly seven places. From top to bottom, these crossing letters spell out the answer FOSSILS.
As is referenced in the flavor text, each of the pokémon in the grid is to be categorized by its type, its number of evolutionary stages, and the generation of games it originated in. Color coding the grid can help patterns emerge. Here are the pokémon sorted by type (Note that all the pokémon used in this puzzle have a single type):
The only types which are adjacent to others of the same type are the normal, psychic, and water pokémon, which make the letters to spell out ICE, another pokémon type.
The number of evolutionary stages grid looks like this:
The one-stage pokémon form a number 1, suggesting that the answer is a single-stage pokémon as well.
Finally, sorting by generation looks like this:
The colors in this one are a bit noisy, but it is still possible to read a G5 in the Gen 1 and Gen 3 blocks.
These results suggest that the answer is an ice type from generation five, with a single evolutionary stage. The only pokémon to match these criteria is CRYOGONAL.
In this puzzle, each of the overlaps is a seven letter word, which can be formed by combining two of the four-letter parts. The parts are:
And the overlaps are:
In given order, the overlapping letters from each answer spell out HORN AND NETS. Overlapping these two words gives the answer, HORNETS.
Each of the seven feeder answers (DON’T ASK ME WHY, RESCUE WORKER, MICROPRINTED, FALSE ECONOMY, SOLOMON GRUNDY, LABORATORIES, AND TIME TRAVELER) begin with a solfege tone (DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI). In fact, each of the answers contains exactly ten letters after the solfege tone.
The given tune also contains ten notes. In order, they are DO, LA, TI, FA, RE, FA, LA, MI, DO, and SOL. Taking the first letter after the DO, the second letter after the LA, and so on, gives the following:
The highlighted letters spell out the answer NOTEWORTHY.