The team hosting the costume party has realized one of the costumes was never delivered! One attendee won't have a match!
Which costume is missing?
The “Ode To Candy” is a good place to START.
Each section of Ode To Candy has the same pattern of rhyming lines. The first two lines always rhyme with each other. The third and fourth lines always make sense, but they don’t rhyme with each other.
In each section of Ode To Candy, the last word of the fourth line needs to be replaced. The replacement word shouldn’t change the meaning, but it should rhyme with the last word of the third line. For example, the first section ends with “Not-Me.” Replacing that with the word “You” will keep the meaning the same and rhyme with “True” from the third line.
The replacement words can be strung together to form the phrase “YOU HAVE BRUSSELS SPROUT ACQUIRE MEGA YACHT.”
The Trading Post is a good place to go to exchange one thing for another.
In the Trading Post section, Jeff is looking to get rid of a mega yacht, but he doesn’t seem interested in a Brussels sprout. Before you can trade with Jeff, you’ll need to acquire “anything with wheels.”
Start by trading your Brussels sprout to Luiz N for his snow cone machine. Then trade (or use) that snow cone machine to get something better.
The series of trades that lets you acquire a mega yacht is:
- Trade Brussels sprout to Luiz N for a snow cone machine
- Trade a snow cone to Jodie Z for a book on cooking fish
- Trade the fish cookbook to Leah S for a video game (Dino Hop 2)
- Trade the video game to Stella L for season passes to the Hippodrome
- Trade the season passes to Troy P for a robotic mop
- Use the robotic mop to clean Finn S’s floor in exchange for a car
- Trade the car to Jeff for a mega yacht
Each trade from the Trading Post has a significant word. Those words can be strung together to form a message.
When the italicized words of each trade (excluding the names) are combined in the order that converted a Brussels sprout to a mega yacht, they form the phrase “Follow flounder, steal first letter of surnames.”
The hero of Fish Out of Water 2 is named Flounder and his exploits are described in the Movie Review section.
The movie review section describes how Flounder travels through different locations in a city. The credits of the movie include some characters that might’ve appeared at some of those locations.
Use the context clues of each location that Flounder moves through to determine which character was there. For example, Flounder starts by going through a casino, so it makes sense that he would’ve seen the Jackpot Winner, played by Carly Irving.
After Flounder left the casino, he passed:
- A bus driver at the transit depot
- An angry hotel guest who was awoken by the fire alarm
- A lifeguard who whistled at him to stop running
After Flounder left the hotel, he passed:
- A comedian doing stand up at a comedy club
- A chef who was cooking in the back of the comedy club
- A sanitation engineer who was picking up trash in the alley
After Flounder left the club, he passed:
- A magician who just sawed a person in half (as part of a trick)
- A produce stand attendant who is giving out free samples
- A man walking his ferret (a member of the weasel family)
- A bearded hipster complete with plaid
- A game master at an escape room
When the cast is placed in the order that Flounder saw them, the first letters of their surnames spell out the word INCOMPUTABLE, which is the favorite line of the movie reviewer.
The Fine Art Fiasco section describes a broken piece of art that even a supercomputer cannot put back together.
The grid in the Fine Art Fiasco section can be filled in to transform the shattered pieces into a new piece of art that displays a hidden message.
Each of the squares in the grid should be filled in to match the pattern displayed next to one of the letters.
Use INCOMPUTABLE, along with the letters underneath it to determine which symbols match which letters in the Fine Art Fiasco section.
The symbols from the Movie Review don’t match the Fine Art Fiasco symbols exactly. However, each symbol from the Movie Review is a transformed version of one of the Fine Art Fiasco symbols. For example, the first symbol is a potato, which can be transformed into french fries, which shows up in the Fine Art Fiasco grid.
Since the potato is next to the letter I in INCOMPUTABLE, any pictures of french fries in the Fine Art Fiasco grid can be filled in to match the square that corresponds to the letter I.
The symbols in the Movie Review section can be transformed to the symbols in the Fine Art Fiasco section in the following ways:
- Potato = French fries
- Corn = Popcorn
- Eggs = Chicken
- Tree = Paper
- Grapes = Wine
- Tomato = Ketchup
- Caterpillar = Butterfly
- Seeds = Flower
- Flour = Bread
- Water = Ice
- Peanut = Peanut Butter
- Cream = Butter
The crown shows that the numbers on the newly constructed piece of art are associated with the Combo King Food Court.
Each of the numbers from the art piece match a combo in the food court. The price of each of those combos can be determined by following the rules that Cashier Craig describes.
The combo #4 has six bellowed words that are entirely capitalized, but only one of those words, MUSHROOM, does not start with a vowel. The price would be $1, but the dish includes candy, ORANGE lollipops, which doubles the price, meaning that the total price is $2.
From top to bottom, the relevant combos cost these amounts:
- Combo #4 = $2
- Combo #5 = $14
- Combo #7 = $6
- Combo #8 = $8
- Combo #9 = $3
- Combo #11 = $22
Use the words beneath the prices at the bottom of the section to uncover a hidden message. Some combos will translate into a single word and some combos will translate into two words.
When order from the Fine Art Fiasco section is placed, the combo prices can be matched with the words at the bottom of the Combo King Food Court section:
- Combo #4 = TAG
- Combo #9 = PLUS
- Combo #4 = TAG
- Combo #8 = THEN REMOVE
- Combo #7 = TWENTY FOR
- Combo #5 = EACH CHAOTIC
- Combo #11 = PAIR
Putting those words together reveals the phrase TAG PLUS TAG THEN REMOVE TWENTY FOR EACH CHAOTIC PAIR.
The volunteers at the Hincksville Community Center expect that there will be some chaotic results when some of the costume pairs come together in the Costume Craze section.
Each costume from Costume Rack A1 has a matching costume in Costume Rack Z26. Find the match by figuring out which pair would be the most chaotic. For example, a person dressed as a Thumbtack would have some chaotic results if they were paired with a Balloon.
The pairs of costumes are:
- Thumbtack and Balloon
- Box of Baking Soda and Vinegar
- Caramel Apple and Braces
- Fly and Ointment
- Red Wine and White Carpet
- Powerful Magnet and Credit Card
- Homework and Dog
- Diet Soda and Roll of Chewy Mints
- Chewed Gum and Hair
- Open Paint Can and Tall Ladder
- Fork and Outlet
Notice, the only costume without a pair is Water from Costume Rack Z26.
Following the directions from the food court, will generate a number from each pair of costumes. For example, Thumbtack has Tag 27 and Balloon has Tag 16. When those tags are added together the result is 43, and when 20 is subtracted from that number, the final result is 23.
The names of the costume racks show how the number generated from each pair of costumes can be converted to a letter.
The costume racks are named A1 and Z26, which shows that each number is converted to the letter that matches its place in the alphabet. For example, the result of Thumbtack and Balloon is 23, and W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet, so the first letter is W.
The letters that come from the costumes pairs are:
- Thumbtack and Balloon = 23 = W
- Box of Baking Soda and Vinegar = 9 = I
- Caramel Apple and Braces = 3 = C
- Fly and Ointment = 11 = K
- Red Wine and White Carpet = 5 = E
- Powerful Magnet and Credit Card = 4 = D
- Homework and Dog = 23 = W
- Diet Soda and Roll of Chewy Mints = 9 = I
- Chewed Gum and Hair = 20 = T
- Open Paint Can and Tall Ladder = 3 = C
- Fork and Outlet = 8 = H
Combining the letters from all the costume pairs reveals the words WICKED WITCH, which is the costume that matches WATER and also the final answer. What a world, what a world.