Christmas Adventures

Christmas adventures have an advantage nothing else in the year does: the whole family is in one house with nowhere to be. That is the only time of year you can reliably get a nine year old, a fifteen year old and a grandparent playing the same game, and it is worth building something that actually uses all three.

Which means the clues have to be different kinds of job. A color match for the youngest, a code for the middle one, a piece of reasoning for whoever likes that, and something that needs a mirror or a window for the adult who claims not to be joining in. If one clever child can finish it alone, they will, and everyone else watched.

Christmas Eve is the slot most of these are for, when the evening is long and nobody is sleeping. A present hunt turns one gift into an hour. A mystery about swapped name tags turns the tree into the game board. Print in the week before, not on the day, because on the day the printer will be out of ink.