🎄❓ ちょっと探偵してみませんか - A Mystery Short Story Advent (2023) 🔎

Day 14, 組長たちの休日

Solved this one quite easily. About time :slight_smile:
Back to 50% success rate.

I’m very behind, but starting to catch up:

Day 15, 最後の講演

I solved this, although I’m not sure it was for the right reasons. I thought it suspicious that someone who ran to tend to a dying person would think to take care of the cigarette and fallen bottle. My suspicion was that they did that so as to have a valid reason to have fingerprints on there (although they had already touched the bottle for legitimate reasons). Now why use a poisoned cigarette, but also add poison to the whiskey, I’m not sure I understand, but ok.

Day 16, 愛をもってなせ

Didn’t quite solve it, I’m afraid, even though I was kinda close. I had thought that the caller might not have hung up, but then he heard the it ring, so I discarded the idea. Didn’t even think it might be a recording. My idea was that the 導師 left on his own.

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I liked this one :grin: particularly the nice set-up of the arrogant criminal underlining how perfectly everything was thought through!

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Day 17, 明かりをつけて

Didn’t solve. While I did think it was strange that it didn’t short circuit again, it didn’t cross my mind that the killer might have used the car. Even so, when was the dummy cable put in place exactly? I don’t see an opportunity for that. Oh well.

Day 18, ルームランプは消さないで

Didn’t solve. In fact I took it for granted that the police would investigate the boyfriend for some reason, even without the fingerprints. And then I thought it might have been the only such lamp sold, which would explain why he could point the police in the right direction. Apparently no, he just had a good memory, and the police needed his fingerprints to investigate him in the first place.

Day 19, 机の中には何がある?

Once again, didn’t solve. Once again, I wondered briefly about what turned out to be the clue to the solution, but discarded it because I thought I just hadn’t clearly understood the layout of the desk and where the camera was. I need to trust my instincts more.

I read these on my train to work, so all that katakana was a nope for my sleepy brain :sweat_smile:

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Christmas has come and gone, but the “advent” continues for me. :sweat_smile:
New goal, try and finish before the end of the year day.

“Day 20”, 穏やかな一族

Solved! Even before it was revealed that the door closes automatically, I had been wondering whether that was the case.

“Day 21”, 酔って候

This one is fittingly set on Christmas Eve! But I didn’t solve it. And it didn’t make much sense to me either. Carry the body all the way to the construction site so that he’s not suspected? Not risky at all, sure. And couldn’t he have gone back to the dormitory, then leave later for whatever reason, maybe to meet someone? I don’t know, I’m not convinced.

“Day 22”, シェラザードのひとりごと

This one is narrated by a dog :smiley:. And I half-solved it. I was between the actual solution and that man who she didn’t like the smell of. What can I say, I trust a dog’s instinct.
I’ll count it as a solve, I think. It’s not like there was conclusive evidence.

“Day 23”, 聖バレンタインデーの殺人

And a Valentine Day mystery! I solved it, although again not fully. I could figure out that the only one who could control who got which chocolate would be the one who assigned the numbers, but I didn’t think that they all would be accomplices, although of course it makes perfect sense.

“Day 24”, 奇なる故にこれをのこす

I didn’t solve it, but it was fascinating seeing how one might go about solving a kanji code like that. Also TIL about iroha, a poem dating from as early as 1079 or even earlier, which is a perfect pangram (contains all syllables once) and therefore served as a way to order the kana, an order different from our familiar あいうえお.

“Day 25”, たった一発の弾丸

I didn’t solve this one either, but it makes perfect sense. I might have if I thought about it a little longer, I suspect.


All in all, this was a very pleasant collection of puzzles, with a lot of variety, and mostly good logic behind them. I solved 11 out of 25, or 44%. Not too bad, but I could have done better if I tried more, I think. Actually, being able to solve most might not have been very satisfying. It was a good range of difficulty.

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Since I recently acquired this book, I will be doing this advent calendar this year. :triumph:

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Day 1: Clearly, I am not a mystery person. The “solution” is a bit thin, imo. I figured it must have something to do with the timing since that’s really the only detail we have been given, but the actual reason given didn’t even remotely cross my mind.

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Day 2: Nope. Not even close.

Glad I am not alone with this thought.

And now I think I am in reply jail. :sweat_smile:

Guess I’ll keep adding days to this post. :face_with_peeking_eye:

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(I’ll save you :rofl:)
I think I’ll grab this book for next year for reading as it seems interesting and I can always do with more books.

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@Biblio how long is each individual mystery?

They have not been difficult to understand, so far. So, next year looks very doable for you, imo. :triumph:

Very short. The whole thing is like 70k characters and has 25 short stories. So, probably something like 5 pages? :thinking: I think it has taken me less than 10 minutes each day to read them, so far.

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Day 3: And another miss from me. Will I manage to figure out at least one of these stories? :thinking:

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Day 4: Compared to the stories up 'til now, this feels very in your face. That was too easy. But well… a win is a win, I guess. :face_holding_back_tears:

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(commenting to break your chain @Biblio. Keep up the good detective work!)

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Day 5: I figured it had to have something to do with the glass in the back and how that will point to the window having been broken before the body was there, but I did not know why or that the murder took place at a different location.

Day 6: First story where I felt the conclusion was satisfyingly clever.

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I dropped this book halfway last year so I will also attempt to rejoin :sweat_smile: (disclaimer - nothing to do with the book but my reading progress was quite slow last December!)

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Yeah! :partying_face:

Day 7: I figured that it had to do with the bottle and I thought that they will find the second bottle - because why throw it out so close to the crime scene? rookie mistake - and become suspicious but didn’t think of the wiped off fingerprints. Guess that’s a partial win for me. :sweat_smile:

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Day 8: I accidentally saw the solution before I got a chance to think about it. It was clear that you had to figure out the correct order, but I don’t know if I would have thought about the alphabet.

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I read 煙の出てきた日 today, which I guess is day 11 - well that was the shortest solution ever :sweat_smile: