Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box/Puzzles 76-100

Caution! This page contains all the hints and solutions for every puzzle from 51 to 75. Scroll carefully or you might spoil the answer of a puzzle for yourself. The solutions are hidden behind spoiler tags, so only take a peek if you're desperate.

Puzzle 076

 * Name: Top of the Tower
 * Trigger: Talk to Geoff
 * Location: Watchtower 2nd Floor
 * Chapter: 4
 * Picarats: 20

Description: In a quiet town, there's a tower that commands a view of the whole town. Since you can see the whole town from the tower, logic dictates you should be able to see the top of the tower from anywhere in town. However, there's one place in town shown on the map below from which you have clearly no chance of seeing the top of the tower. Find and circle this place.


 * Hint 1: Looking for a place that has its view obscured by another building? Hmm, it doesn't look like there are any places around the town like that.
 * Hint 2: You need to find a place where the tower's top can't be seen. To put it another way, you're looking for a place that doesn't allow you to see the outside of the tower.
 * Hint 3: There's one indoor location from which you definitely won't be able to see the outside of the tower.

Puzzle 077

 * Name: Balancing Ornaments
 * Trigger: Talk to Pavel
 * Location: Mine Machine Room
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 30

Description: Small ornaments dangle from a metal bar, and they've thrown the bar off balance. The five ornament strings are spaced equally apart, and each of the three types of ornaments weighs a different amount. The heaviest ornament weighs the same as three of the lightest ones, while a medium ornament weighs the same as two of the lightest ornaments. Place one of the three ornaments in the rectangle in the space marked with a question mark to restore the bar's balance.


 * Hint 1: The center strand of ornaments won't affect the balance of the bar, so ignore it. Also, the two strands hanging the farthest out on the bar are the same weight, so try comparing the ornaments on the far left to the ornaments on the far right. You might find out something new.
 * Hint 2: Look at the strands on the far left and the far right. While they both contain sun and moon ornaments, only the far right strand has a star. By comparing the ornaments on these two strands, you can probably figure out how many suns and moons it takes to equal the weight of a star.
 * Hint 3: A single star weighs the same as one sun and one moon together. Now that the weight of one star is clear, you should be able to compare the two strands next to the center strand.

Puzzle 078

 * Name: A Maze of Doors
 * Trigger: Inspect the framed grid
 * Location: Mine Room
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 25

Description: All the doors in the maze below only open in one direction. Each door can be opened by pushing from the direction shown below, but when approached from the opposite direction, no amount of pulling or pushing will open it. If you tried to go through the whole maze from the start and passed through every room, you'd never make it to the exit. However, this feat would be possible if one of the doors could open in the opposite direction. Can you find and circle this door?


 * Hint 1: Let's review this puzzle's conditions. You need to make one door open in the opposite direction, and you must pass through every room on your way to the exit. But no one ever said you can only pass through each room once.
 * Hint 2: Starting from the IN sign, you'll soon bump into a door that should open the opposite way. So to proceed, one of the first door you meet will have to open in the opposite direction. The upper door in the first room and the two doors in the room to the immediate right of the first room open in a direction that keeps you from passing through. One of these three doors is the door you'll need to change.
 * Hint 3: The upper door in the first room is fine the way it is.

Puzzle 079

 * Name: The Gear Switch
 * Trigger: Check the door
 * Location: Mine Machine Room
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 20

Description: The button that opens the door in front of you is buried deep within this machine, so you can't push it directly. However, by pulling the knob at the top to the left or right, you can move the various gears and plates in the machine, allowing you to press the button at the bottom. In order to hit the OPEN button, should you pull the knob toward A or B?


 * Hint 1: When one gear rotates with another, the two gears must rotate in opposite directions. Use the Memo function to keep track of the direction of each gear's rotation.
 * Hint 2: The gear at the bottom has to rotate clockwise to hit the switch, so the board of teeth directly above it will need to move to the right. Make sense? Now continue that line of thought as you move up toward the knob.
 * Hint 3: The board of teeth underneath the three gears at the top needs to move to the left. Therefore, the gear directly above it needs to rotate clockwise. Keep going until you reach the knob at the top!

Puzzle 080

 * Name: The Elevator Switch / The Puzzling Lift
 * Trigger: Attempt to use the elevator
 * Location: Mine Lift
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 40

Description: The circuit board for the elevator contains a puzzle. According to the instructions, you need to make the blue and red balls switch places in order to restore power to the elevator. Are you up to the task?


 * Hint 1: There are several ways to go about solving this puzzle. One surefire technique is to work with the L-shaped blocks. You can free up some extra room by moving these blocks so that they fit together neatly with neighbouring blocks.
 * Hint 2: In order to get both of those balls to swap places, you first need to move one ball out of its hole and park it somewhere while you move the other one. To do so, clear up some space by gathering all those L-shaped blocks in either the left or right side of the box.
 * Hint 3: If the method from Hint Two isn't working, here's another technique to try. Create space by slotting L-shaped blocks together to create pairs. In order to do this, move the L-shaped blocks to the opposite edges of the box, then combine them.

Puzzle 081

 * Name: The Old Safe
 * Trigger: Check the safe
 * Location: Mine Safe Room
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 50

Description: Find the four-number code that opens the safe. You can use the numbers zerothrough five in your answer, but each number can be used only once. The small lights next to each row of numbers are the key to finding the code, as they tell you how much in common that row has with the final code. Each white light indicates a number that matches one in the code but it is in a different place within the sequence. An orange light indicates a number that is in the code and in its correct spot. Tap the numbers at the bottom to enter the code.


 * Hint 1: Start by figuring out which numbers belong in the code, regardless of order.
 * Hint 2: You may have already noticed, but every number in the code is in the very top row of numbers. Two of the numbers in 4150 are even in the correct spot relative to where they should be in the code.
 * Hint 3: Take a look at the third row of numbers. You can see that two numbers match ones in the code and are in the correct position. Since you know the code uses 4, 1, 5, and 0, you can assume the 0 and 1 from this row are part of the code and in their appropriate spots. Now just figure out where 4 and 5 go.

Puzzle 082

 * Name: Restarting the Lift
 * Trigger: Attempt to use the elevator
 * Location: Mine Safe Room
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 30

Description: The wires connecting the elevator to the buttons controlling it have somehow been severed. However, if you can connect the negative (-) and positive (+) wires on the top to the wires carrying the same charge below, you can fix the elevator. To do this, you need to draw lines between sets of X-shaped terminals. Draw two lines to connect each positive and negative terminal to its counterpart and get the elevator running again.


 * Hint 1: You need to connect wires with the same symbol together. So + goes with + and - with another -. If you examine the tangle of wires, finding the solution should be simple enough.
 * Hint 2: To make things simpler, identify the wires that are connected to some other area offscreen, and eliminate them as possible answers. In the top row of wires, the rightmost wire and the one third from the right run offscreen.
 * Hint 3: The leftmost terminal in the upper set of four is connected to the wire carrying a (-) current. Now it's up to you to figure out the other three terminals you need to use.

Puzzle 083

 * Name: Pancake Stacks 2 / Piles of Pancakes 2
 * Trigger: Talk to Gertie
 * Location: Northeast Alley
 * Chapter: 5
 * Picarats: 30

Description: Now here's a tasty puzzle for you. You task is to take that big stack of pancakes on the left plate and move them to the plate on the far right. In doing so, however, You need to follow these rules: Feel free to shift things around as much as you like and to use the middle plate in completing the puzzle.
 * You can move only one pancake at a time.
 * A pancake can never rest on another pancake smaller than itself.


 * Hint 1: While you may have been able to solve the first Pancake Stacks puzzle by just moving around the pancakes randomly, you'll need to think harder if you wish to find a solution this time around. See if you can't come up with a rule for effectively shifting pancakes around.
 * Hint 2: Developing an effective way of moving the smallest pancake is key, because you can't place anything on top of it. Think about a series of moves you can repeat to keep that littlest pancake out of your way.
 * Hint 3: Move the smallest pancake to the middle plate, and place the second-smallest pancake on the far-right plate. Next, move the smallest pancake on top of the pancake on the right, and bring a new pancake over to fill the middle plate. After that, take the smallest pancake and move it to the left plate. if you repeat this pattern, as you move the other pancakes around, you'll solve the problem in no time flat.

Puzzle 084

 * Name: Pancake Stacks 3 / Pile of Pancakes 3
 * Trigger: Talk to Gertie
 * Location: Northeast Allley
 * Chapter: 6
 * Picarats: 40

Description: Now here's a tasty puzzle for you. Your task is to take that big stack of pancakes on the left plate and move them to the plate on the far right. In doing so, however, you need to follow these rules: Feel free to shift things about as much as you like and use the middle plate in completing the puzzle.
 * You can only move one pancake at a time.
 * A pancake can never rest on another pancake smaller than itself.


 * Hint 1: Having trouble? Just follow the hints given to you in Pancake Stacks 2. This is the last hint you're going to get for this kind of puzzle, so it would be a waste to spend another hint coin here.
 * Hint 2: Looks like you went and spent that hint coin anyway. Must be nice having hint coins to burn. OK then, here's a little fun fact for you. These puzzle pancakes are based on a puzzle called the Tower of Hanoi, which can be solved using a basic concept in computer science known as recursion. Sure, it's not much of a hint, but it is interesting stuff, isn't it?
 * Hint 3: Well, look at that, you spent yet another hint coin. All right, moneybags, time for more fun facts. Eduard Lucas, the man who thought up the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, introduced the puzzle saying that it was based on an Indian myth detailing the creation and destruction of the world. Though the myth is quite fascinating, many people believe Lucas fabricated it.

Puzzle 085

 * Name: The Missing Shape
 * Trigger: Talk to Olsen
 * Location: Western Path
 * Chapter: 5
 * Picarats: 30

Description: Five shapes are arranged in a sequence, but the fourth shape is missing. Use the four available shapes to determine whether A, B, or C should be inserted as the fourth shape in the sequence.


 * Hint 1: Rotate each shape 90 degrees to get a fresh perspective on the puzzle.
 * Hint 2: If you look closely, you might notice that there's a number visible within each of the shapes.
 * Hint 3: Once you rotate the shapes, you'll be able to see a number hidden within them.