Playtime

Answer: LATE EVENING

By Jonah Nan

This puzzle is about the Magic Tree House series of children’s books. This is clued by the word “magic” in the flavor text as well as the mention of a brother and sister climbing a tree. This link is further corroborated by the pictures below the calendar - each image corresponds to a noun in the title of a Magic Tree House book. In addition to these nouns, each title features a time.

We can thus match each picture to a time on the calendar via the title of a book. Some of the times are ambiguous, but requiring the number of occurrences of a picture to match the number of occurrences of the corresponding time should make things manageable. We also record each book number and note they all fall in the range 1-26, suggesting the use of A1Z26. The table below displays every correspondence.

Image Image Description Book Title Title Time Calendar Time Book # A1Z26
1 Dinosaur Dinosaurs Before Dark Before dark 6:00 PM 1 A
2 Knight The Knight at Dawn Dawn 4:59 AM 2 B
3 Mummy Mummies in the Morning Morning 6:00 AM - 12:00 PM 3 C
4 Ninja Night of the Ninjas Night 8:30 PM - 6:30 AM 5 E
5 Amazon (represented by a forest with a river) Afternoon on the Amazon Afternoon 12:01 PM 6 F
6 Sabertooth Sunset of the Sabertooth Sunset 8:30 PM 7 G
7 Moon Midnight on the Moon Midnight 12:00 AM 8 H
8 Dolphin Dolphins at Daybreak Daybreak 5:00 AM 9 I
9 Polar Bear Polar Bears Past Bedtime Past bedtime 1:00 AM 12 L
10 Volcano Vacation Under The Volcano Vacation Take a break 13 M
11 Dragon Day of the Dragon King Day 12:00 AM - 11:59 PM, in columns other than Sunday 14 N
12 Viking Viking Ships at Sunrise Sunrise 6:00 AM 15 O
13 Olympics (represented by a podium) Hour of the Olympics Hour 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM 16 P
14 Buffalo Buffalo Before Breakfast Before breakfast 7:30 AM 18 R
15 Tiger Tigers at Twilight Twilight 5:00 -6:00 AM, 8:30-9:30 PM 19 S
16 Civil War (represented by Abraham Lincoln) Civil War on Sunday Sunday 12:00 AM - 11:59 PM, in column labeled Sunday 21 U
17 Stage Fright (represented by a play) Stage Fright on a Summer Night Summer Night 10:30 PM - 4:30 AM (Nights are shorter in summer) 25 Y

With this table done, we can now replace each cell in the calendar with a letter:

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
O N E S Y L
L A B L E E
A C H F R O
M L L A M A
S P E N G
U I N M
U M M I E S

We get the following message: ONE SYLLABLE EACH FROM LLAMAS PENGUIN MUMMIES

Recall that we already used the book Mummies in the Morning. Some quick googling will show that Eve of the Emperor Penguin and Late Lunch with Llamas are also Magic Tree House books. As suggested by the clue phrase, we’ll take one syllable each from the times in these titles, using the order of llamas-penguin-mummies. The only way to get a coherent phrase from this is as follows:

LATE lunch with llamas
EVE of the emperor penguin
mummies in the morNING

This gives us our final answer: LATE EVENING, which could easily be a time in the title of a future Magic Tree House book

Author's Notes

Originally, we wanted this puzzle to have the answer LIFE EXPECTANCY. We had a bit of difficulty thinking of theme ideas which weren’t too morbid. Then, I found LATE EVENING as an alternative. For some reason, the phrase instantly made me think of the Magic Tree House books. I was really into the books as a kid, and I thought the way the titles included times of day could make for a neat puzzle mechanic. From there, writing the rest of the puzzle was pretty straightforward. I intended it to be a simple puzzle, but some solvers had more trouble with it than I expected.

In retrospect, I probably should have given a more explicit flavortext hint about the Magic Tree House theme. This would have made the puzzle more approachable to those not familiar with the books.