Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021/Kids These Days

Kids These Days
Silph Puzzle Hunt 2021
Round 1
Author(s)	Level 51
Links
Puzzle	Link
Solution	Link

Description

Kids These Days is a puzzle from Round 1 of the 2021 Silph Puzzle Hunt. The puzzle presents a list of facts similar to those found in logic puzzles, and a description of what the solver is trying to order - There are nine children, four boys and five girls, standing in file, each holding an integer from 2 to 10. Some of the logic clues are odd, and the solver might not know what to make of them at the start of the puzzle, such as One of the girls was responsible for damage to an insect living space.

Solve Path

There are two avenues of attack at the start of this puzzle - solvers may look to the logic clues and start finding information about the order and held number of the children, or they may do some external research on the children's names and odd clues. As it turns out, the logic puzzle is not fully solvable without understanding those weird clues.

Clued at from the title, flavortext, and various clues in the logic puzzle, these children are all protagonists in books whose title follow the form The [Boy / Girl] Who (Blank). There are multiple potential break-ins for this step, but one of the stronger ones is by searching for the character Lisbeth, who is the protagonist of the popular Millennium series. The book that this puzzle is referencing is The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest with the clue One of the girls was responsible for damage to an insect living space. The name Lisbeth is unique enough that Google confidently directs to the correct book series.

After each kid in the list is associated to a book, the weird clues in the logic puzzle section will make more sense. Using this new information, the logic puzzle can now be solved.

Below is an example of how one might break into the logic puzzle

For simplicity sake, clues will be referred to by number, where 1 is the first clue on the page and 13 is the bottom

• Clue 3 places two girls on the outside, who hold numbers 4 and 9 by clue 1
• Clue 10 is referring to two boys. They can not hold 2/4 or 4/8 from clue 1, or 3/6 from clue 5, so they must hold 5/10
• Clue 2 now means the other two boys hold the remaining even numbers, 2 and 8. Clue 12 now says Sammy is next to a Boy, which is the only boy-boy adjacency.

Once the logic puzzle is done, each kid is associated with an integer between 2 and 10, inclusive. Hinted by the flavor text not exactly on a first-name basis, solvers are meant to obtain the last names of each of these children, and index the number they hold into that name. Doing so yields the final answer.

Final Answer: Click to revealDONT WANNA

Puzzle Elements

Deduction - Solvers are tasked with ordering children in a line and giving each of them an integer, according to a set of rules and conditions. This is the classic Einstein / Zebra puzzle, with the slight twist of having to figure out the characteristics of the children through outside research.

Literature - One of the main ah-has in this puzzle is realizing that all the names of the children in the puzzle are protagonists of novels.