The Hooks' Adventure Continues!: Wediditwediditwedidit!!!!!!!

Chiavetta

Phew! The last two days have been a stop and then a whirlwind! Michael got a bit behind us in his puzzle construction, so we hung out and did other things part of the day yesterday.

And then...in the afternoon...he was ready! The key, as promised, was on the ledge in our bedroom. It was a gold "chiavetta" ("little key"): a flash drive. When inserted into the computer, "Robot" came up: a retro video logic puzzle in which we had to get a robot through a maze. We could go north, south, east, west. We could turn and look, and we also had an "arm tool".

The game had little "Easter eggs" inserted, including "This wall has a plaque saying, 'Merry Christmas 2014 to my family love from Daddy'; if you use the arm tool, your robot polishes the plaque. Tricks included acid gas, electric fields that scrambled electronics, pits, moats, dying batteries that needed to be replenished, water valves that flooded the maze, furnaces, and conveyor belts. It took the fastest of us almost 2 hours of work to get get the treasure chest out of the maze...at which point the "treasure" came up on the screen: a pile of jewels! Colored jewels! (Get the picture?)

First question: one jigsaw or two?

Running the colors through our previously identified "Christmas Lights" code, we were directed under the master bed -- where we found a jigsaw puzzle and some hard candies ("Spicchi"). Yes, Michael was going to make us put together a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle in order to get our present.

Scramble scramble scramble. Many arms were overlapping, much complaining about blocked light and stolen pieces, and eventually -- we finished putting it together! Michael had purchased a custom puzzle with pictures of all the elements that he'd used in the codes! There were Braille strips, pingpong balls, the code dials, and his coffee mug! We laughed at that reflection of how many late nights he had spent working on the puzzle for us!

Close family?

Having already noted that there were some handwritten letters on the reverse side, we knew from prior years' experience that we would have to flip the jigsaw to read the message.

Very short. Very few letters.

Uh.oh. Decoded, it said "This side down" (grr!). It was a surprisingly difficult anagram to solve, given that there were enough common letters that could be anagrammed different ways that nearly made sense!

Okay, flip the puzzle back (preferably without destroying it! Time to look at the pictures more closely.

Completed Puzzle!

Red-green decoding

Let's see...the puzzle dial ISN'T in the "official" order. Take apart. Find the correct new order of the disks. Align.

Braille...oops! He used "level 2" Braille (a more complex and complete form) for this part. Oh, and the cards! Pull out the correct cards! Message? Says "From Daddy"...but what about the red and green elements? And the periodic table? Anything in that? And what in the world is that rodent doing in the puzzle? We haven't seen him before!

So, from top left down, we unscrambled the following:

Lifting the coffee table...
maybe they could have cleaned it off first?

"Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo" ("Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" from the greeting card)
"From Daddy" (first letter code of scrap of paper reading "Fabulously romantic Mistletoe dangles. Definitely dynamite"; the red-green coding reads, "it's a vole" -- a reference to the rodent!)
"With lots" (from Braille)
"Of" (decoding the nail polish colors)
"Love" (anagram of vole)
"The" (pingpong balls)
"Key" (Taken from the candies..."chi" is pronounced "key")
"To the last" (from the cards)
"Gift" (wrapped present)
"Is under the" (code disk)
"Coffee table" (coffee ring next to periodic table).