Self-revealing hints are available below. It is recommended looking at them one at a time, and only in case of frustration. Do not spoil the satisfaction of having the “aha-moment”!
You may prefer to request a personalized hint by email. In that case, please mention which puzzle you are working on, and what you have tried so far. If you’d like only a small nudge, you may try to ask only a few yes/no questions.
Puzzle 1: Lets’s sit and solve
Hint 1 (reminder) (click to display)
Remember you can always google the information you don’t know.
Hint 2 (How to get started)
Each word or phrase contains the substring “chair”, sometimes in an unusual way. In the grid there is one chair for each clue.
Hint 3 (What to do in the end)
Read the letters that are not crossed out to obtain a hidden message.
Puzzle 2: My year in review
Hint 1 (reminder) (click to display)
Remember you can always google the information you don’t know.
Hint 2 (discover something special)
The 12 words have a very specific thing inside. The numbers in parentheses represent the word lengths somehow, but what do the interrogation marks mean?
Hint 3 (what to do in the end)
How would you go about extracting one letter from each word? Use the specificity of each.
Bonus Puzzle: International Party
Hint 1 (small nudge)
Hint — Pista — Indice — Hinweis — Indizio: Multilingual teams have an advantage when solving this puzzle. The others will have to use a few dictionaries.
Hint 2 (another small nudge)
Some words are especially important in the announcement.
Hint 3 (more explicit hint)
Each line represents the same things in a different language. The languages can be determined from the title of the blackboard. What represents each line is hinted at by the italicized words in the introduction: counting, number, language, the end, at least ten.
Hint 4 (much more explicit hint)
Write down the numbers from 10 in English (ten, eleven, …), what do you notice about the endings? What if you do the same in the other languages?
Hint 5 (on how to extract the answer)
The white rectangles hide the same type of information as the other elements of the sequences. Notice that the numbers in these rectangles are not always in the same position.
Solving Fun 