Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box/Layton's Challenges

Layton's Challenges is a set of puzzles only accessible from the Bonus tab and has special requirements to be unlocked. These puzzles are harder than anything else in the game, so you will need every bit of your puzzle-solving skills to find the solution.

Caution! This guide contains information about each puzzle including all three hints and the correct answer. If you do not want to see the solution to a puzzle and spoil the fun of figuring it out, scroll down carefully. The answers are hidden within the spoiler tags, so don't peek in them unless you're really stuck!

The Musician's House
This House will be unlocked once you collected all 10 Camera Parts and build it together, then you need to take 9 Photos and find every differences.

Puzzle 139

 * Name: Coast to Coast
 * Picarats: 70

Description: A woman boards a nonstop flight leaving Los Angeles at noon and arrives in New York City at 8 p.m. The next day, the same woman leaves New York at noon and flies back to Los Angeles. The flight is unaffected by jet streams and takes the same amount of time to reach its destination as it did the previous day. The time difference means it is always three hours earlier in New York than in Los Angeles. Can you figure out what time the plane arrives back in Los Angeles? Give your answer in 24-hour notation.


 * Hint 1: Think about the rotation of the earth. The time in locations farther to the east is ahead of that of more western locales. Therefore, given a three-hour time difference, when it's noon in Los Angeles, it must be 15:00 in New York.
 * Hint 2: Taking into account the time difference, the plane left Los Angeles at 15:00 New York Time and landed at 20:00. Therefore, the flight itself must have taken five hours.
 * Hint 3: The time difference has a reverse effect on the flight returning to Los Angeles. If the plane to Los Angeles left New York at noon New York time, you could also say it left New York at 9 a. m. Los Angeles time.

Puzzle 140

 * Name: One Extra Block
 * Picarats: 70

Description: The diagram below shows a structure made of 28 blocks. Of these blocks, 27 form a neat larger cube, and on top of that sits a single block poking out above the rest. Below this diagram sit those same 28 blocks, but this time the cube had been separated into five chunks. Tap the chunk, A through E, that contains the single block that sat on top of all the others. Assume that all five chunks fit together as shown and can't be rotated from their current orientation.


 * Hint 1: If the top block on chunk D were the block you're searching for, then the block on the bottom-left corner would stick out of the cube. D must not be the correct answer. Remember, each chunk is locked in its current orientation and can't be rotated.
 * Hint 2: If the block you seek was at the top of C, then D would be forced out of the structure when all the chunks were put back together. Chunk C must not be the answer either.
 * Hint 3: Chunk D forms a part of the front-left side of the large cube. Use that information to start reconstructing the structure in your head. As the pieces come together, the answer should be clear.

Puzzle 141

 * Name: Disappearing Act 6
 * Picarats: 99

Description: Just as before, you can move any ball in the board below just as long as it satisfies the following conditions: OK enough rules, start getting rid of those balls!
 * To move, jump your selected ball over an adjacent space occupied by another ball into an empty space on the other side. You can't jump diagonally.
 * Once you've made the jump, the ball you jumped over disappears from the board.
 * To complete the puzzle, you must remove all balls from the board except for one.


 * Hint 1: You have quite a few balls to get rid of, so you'll have to do a lot of jumping. Just make sure you aren't choosing your moves at random, or you'll end up getting stuck before you finish. Plan out your jumps so that you never leave any balls out away from the group where you won't be able to reach them later.
 * Hint 2: As you reduce the number of balls on the board, those remaining take on a configuration that you've previously solved. If you've made it this far, this puzzle is in the bag for you.
 * Hint 3: Sorry, there are no more hints to be had for this puzzle, You may have heard that proper peg solitaire players don't consider these puzzles complete unless the remaining ball ends up in the center space. One step at a time, though. Let's finish this puzzle first.

The Tea Master's House
You need to give Tea to 26 people to unlock this house.

Puzzle 142

 * Name: The Scholar's Life
 * Picarats: 60

Description: The following words are written on a famous mathematician's grave. "Following the 1/6th of my life I spent as a child, I spent 1/12th of my life as a young man. Then, 1/7th of my life later, I got married. Five years after I was wed, I was blessed with a child, but sadly, he only lived half the time I was alive before passing away. Today, four years after his death, I too will depart from this world." Can you use these words to figure out how many years the mathematician lived?


 * Hint 1: Try rigging up a linear equation where this mathematician's life in years equals x.
 * Hint 2: Would you rather not use hard math to solve this puzzle? Have no fear--you can also solve this puzzle without using a linear equation. By adding together 1/6, 1/12, 1/7, and 1/2 of this man's life, you can express the length of the mathematician's life as fractions, minus the parts that were five and four years long. You can find the answer using only this information.
 * Hint 3: The lowest common denominator of 2, 6, 7, and 12 seems to be the same as the length of the mathematician's life expressed in years.

Puzzle 143

 * Name: Letter Calculations
 * Picarats: 60

Description: If you take the problem 11*11=121, and replace the 1s with As and the 2s with Bs, you get AA*AA=ABA. Using that same replacement idea, you can also generate AA*AA=BBCC. New values may or may not have been assigned for each letter. Can you figure out what A, B, and C equal in the above equation?


 * Hint 1: Each letter is represented by a single-digit number, so the possibilities for what number represents each letter are fairly limited.
 * Hint 2: If you start by subbing in 1 for A and work your way through all the other numerical possibilities for A, you'll find your answer before long. What's more, if you use a calculator, trying out every possibility will only take a minute or two. But if you can, try to solve it just using your head.
 * Hint 3: As detailed in Hint Two, if you substitute every digit for A and work your way up, you'll find the answer in the last half of your search.

Puzzle 144

 * Name: Super Pancakes
 * Picarats: 99

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: The method for solving pancake puzzles has been described in many other hints. Move the smallest pancake over to the middle plate, then move the next-smallest pancake to the right plate. Then stack the smallest cake on top of the one on the right. Next, take a new, slightly larger pancake from the stack on the left and move it onto the open middle plate. Read more on what to do next in Hint Two.
 * Hint 2: From where Hint One left off, put the smallest pancake on the pancake sitting on the middle plate. Then move the pancake on the right plate over to the stack on the left. Bring the smallest pancake you have over to sit on top of the stack of pancakes on the left plate. You can solve this puzzle by repeating the process outlined in Hints One and Two while introducing bigger and bigger pancakes, but it's not very efficient.
 * Hint 3: Aim to limit the number of moves you make to keep yourself from getting confused along the way.

The Animal Lover's House
You need to train the Hamster down to Level 0 to unlock the house.

Puzzle 145

 * Name: 500 Pearls
 * Picarats: 70

Description: A magician charges a traveler with a task. "Take a certain number of pearls out of a bag of 500. This number, when divided by any number two through seven, always produces a whole number if you remove one pearl before dividing. Bring me this number, and all the pearls are yours." The number of pearls the traveler takes from the bag doesn't produce a whole number when one pearl is removed and the remaining pearls are divided by four. But his number meets the other conditions. How many pearls did he take from the bag?


 * Hint 1: Let's see if we can't simplify this one. The magician wants a number that can be divided neatly by a whole number when one pearl is taken away from the total. To get the number of pearls he's looking for, you need to find a number that can be neatly divided by all numbers two through seven, and then add one to the total.
 * Hint 2: Now let's think about what the traveler actually brought back. To get his number, you must find a number that can be divided by two, three, five, six, and seven, but not four. Then add a single pearl to that number.
 * Hint 3: The number the magician was after is greater than 400, but the number of pearls the adventurer brought back was actually in the range of 200 to 300 pearls. Remember, you're out to find the number of pearls the adventurer decided to bring back.

Puzzle 146

 * Name: Angles in a Box
 * Picarats: 70

Description: In the cube below, in the center of three sides of the cube are the dots A, B, and C. Lines connect the dots. How many degrees is the angle ABC at the point where AB and BC meet? This refers to the internal angle, of course.


 * Hint 1: There's no need to do any complicated calculations. Visualization is the important part. The three points are each in the center of the sides of a regular cube.
 * Hint 2: The three points are each in the middle of a side on a regular cube. Think about the other center points. What would happen if you continued connecting center points in this fashion?
 * Hint 3: Think about the regular geometric figures you can create with points A, B, and C. You could create a regular hexagon, couldn't you? And the internal angles of regular hexagons are always 120 degrees.

Puzzle 147

 * Name: Sliding Labyrinth
 * Picarats: 80

Description: This map depicts an underground labyrinth, but it's all scrambled, so it's up to you to put it in the proper order again. Tunnel segments of each piece must meet up with tunnel edges of adjoining pieces. The only times tunnel segments can lead outward without touching other segments are when they're the start and goal. Tunnels can't dead-end at walls otherwise. Slide the pieces around, and see if you can solve the puzzle!


 * Hint 1: Just moving pieces around randomly probably wouldn't help much. Think about the position of pieces on the grid as dictated by where their tunnel segments are placed.
 * Hint 2: The piece connected to START! is the straight horizontal tunnel. Leave the bottom-right square on the map open.
 * Hint 3: The pool is below the start section. The cross-shaped tunnel goes in the center of the map.

The Sweethearts' House
The House will be unlocked once you beat the game and saved the game after the credit.

Puzzle 148

 * Name: Eight Cards
 * Picarats: 70

Description: These cards, numbered one through eight, can be used to make two multiplication equations. One is given here, but can you think of the second one?


 * Hint 1: The product has four digits, the first of which is one.
 * Hint 2: The last digit of the product is six.
 * Hint 3: The single-digit multiplier is three.

Puzzle 149

 * Name: Number Cycle
 * Picarats: 70

Description: There's a pattern to this cycle of numbers. What number should go into the space with a question mark?


 * Hint 1: Try treating each digit of a number as a separate entity.
 * Hint 2: Try to find a rule that uses the digits from one number to create the next number in the cycle.
 * Hint 3: Try squaring the individual digits of each number first.

Puzzle 150

 * Name: The Knight's Tour 4
 * Picarats: 99

Description: Lead a knight on a trip around the board below. Chess knights move two squares forward and one square perpendicular on each turn. The initial direction can be up, down, left, or right. Move this knight around the entire board, landing on each square only once.


 * Hint 1: The board is eight spaces by eight spaces, just like a regular chessboard. That means this puzzle is just like the original knight's tour. There are no hints to be had here! Just work it out on your own.
 * Hint 2: The knight's tour usually involves returning the knight to the starting space at the end of the tour. If you're trying to accomplish this, then choosing the correct starting space is very important. Why not use the Memo function to help you?
 * Hint 3: There are many avid chess researchers in Europe and the U.S. who write detailed papers with elegant solutions to chess puzzles. Looking through resources is one more way of enjoying a chess puzzle.

The Puzzle Doctor's House
Once you've solved all 150 puzzles in the game, then this last house will be unlocked.

Puzzle 151

 * Name: Colin's Score (US), John's Score (UK)
 * Picarats: 99

Description: Four students took a test where every question had two possible answers, A or B. Each question was worth 10 points, for a total of 100 points. The students' test results were posted as seen below, but the teacher forgot to tally Colin's score. Colin was heading to the teacher's office when Mary called him back, saying they could figure out his score using the results from the other tests. Can you figure out Colin's score?


 * Hint 1: This is a hard puzzle, so maybe this hint will help. The first thing you need to do is create an answer key based on the three scored tests. Since Mary got the highest score, try creating a key that compares her answers to everyone else's.
 * Hint 2: The three graded tests agree on four questions. However, you know that not all four of these are correct because Lisa only got a score of 30. You also know that not all of these "agreed" answers are incorrect because Mary had a score of 70.
 * Hint 3: You can make multiple answer keys that will all yield the same results. As long as you find one of these keys, you can solve this puzzle.

Puzzle 152

 * Name: The Card Tournament
 * Picarats: 80

Description: Some people meet for a round-robin card tournament, where every person plays every other person once. Wallace has to leave after only a few hands, sitting out the remainder of the tournament. A total of 59 hands are played at the tournament. How many hands did Wallace play before leaving? The card game in question is a two-player game, and no person played with the same opponent more than once. No one sat out any hands beside Wallace.


 * Hint 1: Mock up an equation with the number of people and the number of matches played as a variable. That would be a good place to start.
 * Hint 2: In order to create the equation for the number of hands, you would need to multiply the number of players by the number of players minus one, then divide this product by two. If there were three people, there would have been three hands. If there were four people, there would have been six hands. You can assume from the conditions given that if no one left, the minimum number of hands would still have to be at least 60.
 * Hint 3: There were 12 people at the tournament. Now think it through!

Puzzle 153

 * Name: The Diabolical Box (US) / Ultimate Escape (UK)
 * Picarats: 99

Description: This last puzzle is an escape game where you need to move the pink gem to the circle outline at the bottom. Beware though, because this diabolical box won't let you escape so easily!


 * Hint 1: The difficulty of this puzzle is truly diabolical! There is no easy-to-find solution. You just have to find ways to fit the blocks together to open up a little bit of space at a time.
 * Hint 2: You can't move the gem at all at first. You should focus initially on making room for the gem to move. Here's one small hint: move the yellow vertical bar to the top half of the puzzle.
 * Hint 3: Here's your last hint. You never have to move the cross-shaped piece any farther right than the center of the puzzle. In other words, the gem has to move clockwise through the puzzle. Stick with it!