Bread and butter

     That part is clear enough. The question remains however: how many cupcakes should you provide per suit? That’s when you turn towards the weighing scales. The only metric that you have available is the objects’ weight. In addition, the room’s name is ‘Balance’...

     You believe that you understand the challenge.

     You cautiously pick up and place the Club Sandwich on the scales and you note that it weighs 250g. You remove it, and place one of the club cupcakes on the metal plate. Each of the round delicacies weighs 25g. That means that, if your theory is correct, you need ten cupcakes to make up the total weight of the sandwich. Secondly, you place the Chocolate Heart on the scales, which weighs 100g, while the heart cupcakes weigh 20g each. This corresponds to five theoretical cupcakes. Next, you weigh the Diamond Ring Cookie whose weight is 150g and the diamond cupcakes are 15g, thus another ten cupcakes in the mix. Lastly, you place the Mint Chocolate Spike Ball Candy. It weighs 40g and its spade cupcake counterpart is 20g. That’s the last value, two more cupcakes are required, for a total of twenty seven cupcakes required to do…something. You still have no idea what to expect.

     One by one, you pick up and drop each cupcake through the hollow opening of the arrow. First, ten club cupcakes fall down the tube. Nothing happens. Each cupcake makes a slight damp sound when it hits the bottom of the arrow. You continue with the five heart and ten diamond cupcakes. You notice that the arrow has now started to weigh down on the table. It is pressing into a hidden square area on the table that wasn’t visible before. The outline of this newly formed button is slightly darker and debosses the surface of the table. You let the last two spade cupcakes trickle down the hollow arrow and as soon as they reach the end, the apparatus submerges further into the button, and, with a click, a hidden compartment opens revealing a key.

     You pick up the key from the drawer and glance up to the available doors at the back. The door on the left is labelled ‘Odd’, with the same metallic plaque as you saw in the previous room, while the door on the right has the name ‘Even’. To your shock, both doors lack a keyhole. Their surface is smooth and they also lack a knob. How are you supposed to unlock them?

     In your frustration, you kick the table. This causes the half-filled transparent arrow to tilt and fall backwards, towards the location of the four baked goods earlier. Its pointy end directs to a spot on the wall behind you. You follow its trajectory with the key in hand. On the other side of the room you find the second counter with the blender on top. You look around the furniture for any hints. You check underneath the blender and inside the drawers without any luck. Then, using all your force, you push away the counter. The task is easy enough as it didn’t weigh as much as you thought it would. You check behind, in the now empty spot and, to your surprise, you see a hole carved into the wall in the shape of the key. You hastily insert it, turn clockwise and with a whooshing sound, the door on the left which is labelled ‘Odd’ rises upwards and disappears into the ceiling.

     You rush to enter the third and hopefully final room. You need to keep going for your friend. Whoever came up with this ploy certainly has a sweet taste for the cryptic, though.

     If the second room seemed empty to you, the third room is even more bare. The white, pristine walls around you with the white bright lighting on the ceiling and a single table in the middle of the room, give the impression of an apocalyptic hospital ward. At the back of the room, there is a single door which at least might signify that you are nearing the end.

     You approach the table to start working on your next challenge but all you see is chaos. The table has a huge assortment of baked goods, arranged in four rows. Each row consists of four edible items. Sixteen items are meticulously placed in an orderly chaos and from afar it looks like a perfect square.

     You place yourself at the front of the table, so that you see the assortment from the front and start looking at the items, detailing their every aspect, from left to right. The first row includes a Rainbow Doughnut, a Chocolate Cream Biscuit, a Chocolate Chip Cookie and a Strawberry Shortcake. The second row consists of a Minty Eyrie Cookie, a Lime Chomby Cake, a Thistleberry Pie and a Gooseberry Mousse. The third row has a Blueberry Skeith Cookie, an Extra Spicy Chilli Cake, a Starry Chocolate Usul Cake and an Asparagus Gateaux. Finally, the fourth row contains an Iced Christmas Cake, a Pretzel, a Vegetarian Sausage Roll and an Orange Scorchio Cookie.

     By this point, you know that all the hints have been right in front of you. From the letter you received yesterday, to the labels on the door. This doesn’t feel like a malicious situation, it feels more like a light-hearted escape room scenario. Someone wants you to solve these puzzles, and their latest hint must be the name of this room, ‘Odd’.

     Are you supposed to take every other item, starting from the first, thus each odd numbered object? You discard that idea when you approach the only door in the room and you check the keyhole. It’s not much of a keyhole, rather it’s a screen with four red squares. Tapping on each one, you rotate through different colours. This gives you two more hints. You should be focusing on each row, given that there are four rows and four squares on the screen. You also assume that, once you have the correct colour combination, the door will slide open.

     With that in mind, you return to the items and stare at the first row, taking in the beautiful sight of freshly baked goods. Slowly, you realise that the first row consists of round edible items, except the Chocolate Cream Biscuit.

     “That one has a different shape, it’s a rectangle,” you think out loud and press on to test your theory on the next row. In the second row you see a line of green, green, red and green. That’s it, the Thistleberry Pie is out of place! You become overzealous and quickly scan the third row. It is a piece of cake by now, pun intended. Three of the items tower over the fourth one - the Blueberry Skeith Cookie is much smaller compared to the rest of the tall cakes and doesn’t belong with them. Overconfident, you check the final row, eyes concentrated, to quickly find the odd one out.

     But you stumble. All four items feel like they could be the odd one out. You don’t have a clear idea of why each item doesn’t belong. You remember that the Breadmaster made the Iced Christmas Cake only that one year, when it became the talk of the town. The Pretzel he had recently retired, as he came up with a new and more salivating recipe. The Vegetarian Sausage Roll was created specifically for an Earth Faerie who stopped buying it and thus your friend stopped providing it in his shop as well.

     Something clicks. The only item that the Breadmaster keeps producing using the original recipe is the Orange Scorchio Cookie, the rest are now retired items. Now onto the colour part of the challenge.

     You zoom to the door and start tapping the screen. You change the first square to brown after two taps. You leave the second square red as is and you quickly change the third square to blue. Lastly, you tap the fourth one three times to change it to orange. The door doesn’t barge.

     You had anticipated a last minute plot twist, though. Up to now, despite all the hints being in front of you, the final solution was always slightly more convoluted. You consider, instead of using the colour of the odd item as it appears in its respective row - thus the first row corresponding to the first square, so on and so forth - you believe that the location of the item within the row corresponds to a square.

     Thus, you quickly change the first colour to blue, the second one to brown, you tap back to red for the third one and leave the fourth untouched as orange. With a hiss and a bit of disturbed flour, the door slides sideways and you rush to pass through.

     “YECH!” you hear a familiar voice shout, as you pass the threshold and enter back into the entrance hall where you started.

     “Congratulations on finishing my Bakescape Room,” he grins and puts his hands on his hips looking at you.

     “How..Why..” you utter, trying to form a sentence. Even though you had a feeling that this was all a setup, you couldn’t fully shake away the feeling of an evil act.

     “My dear friend, think about what you told me last time we met for coffee,” he continues, now audibly laughing.

     “You talked so much about your love for puzzles, for the cryptic, for an adventure!”, he adds, as he pours you a cup of coffee.

     “I thought I would prepare a challenging experience for you,” he concludes, handing you the warm cup. He gestures at the porch outside, where he is inviting you to go, sit and catch up.

     “After all, this is your bread and butter.”

     The End.