This puzzle references a children's video game titled The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. Each of the Zambonis we are presented with has four characteristics (hair, eye, nose and feet) that come from those used in Zoombinis.
In each part of the puzzle, there are 16 unique Zambonis with characteristics and names, including one mystery Zamboni. The arrangement of the Zambonis is reminiscent of different levels in the game. Furthermore, each of the levels in one part all belong to the same difficulty in the game. We can infer this in part by the placement of Zoombinis in Ferryboat and Stone Rise. We can use the position of the Zoombinis and some of the other artifacts to deduce these levels:
We use the rules in each of these levels to deduce the identity of the missing Zambonis.
First name: ponytail, open eyes, red nose, pink shoes
Middle name: ponytail, cyclops, yellow nose, pink shoes
Last name: flattop, orange eyes, red nose, propeller
Finally, the characteristics of each Zambonis provide rules for their names. In each level, these rules are represented by the final image of the Zamboni.
| Zamboni | Characteristic | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| First name | Hair | Length |
| Eyes | Starts with one of the letters in the set | |
| Nose | Number of vowels | |
| Shoes | Number of holes in the word | |
| Middle name | Hair | Absolute difference between the first and last letters |
| Eyes | Identity of the second letter, which is always a vowel | |
| Nose | Ends with RPYGB, depending on the color of the nose | |
| Shoes | Position of the S | |
| Last name | Hair | Number of curvy letters |
| Eyes | Position of the double letters | |
| Nose | Ends with one of the letters in the set | |
| Shoes | Contains a halogen symbol |
Using the characteristics from the missing Zambonis, we can attempt to identify their names. The characteristic rules aren't enough to uniquely identify the name, but we can use the flavor and the “first name”, “middle name”, “last name” to realize we are looking for actual names, rather than just any word, and that the final answer will probably be the name of a single person. This uniquely gives us SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON.
We know from Allergic Cliffs that the Zamboni does not have a flattop, and from Lion's Lair that the second feature must be sunglasses or orange eyes.
From the Ferryboat, the missing Zamboni must have at least one feature in common with both WAHOO and ORTHODOX.
From the Fleens! level, we know that three Zambonis must share the same hair and shoes, and therefore one of them must be the missing Zamboni. From the constraints above, the only choice is the set of three that contains UNITED and SUMMER, which restricts the Zamboni to having a ponytail and pink shoes.
In order to match with ORTHODOX and fulfill the Fleens constraints,the remaining two traits are open eyes and red nose.
Since this is the hard version of Allergic Cliffs, the Cliffs must be allergic to two traits within a characteristic. In this case, we split the group by eye type, so the mystery Zamboni can't have sunglasses or open eyes. From the Stone Cold Caves, we deduce that it cannot have half-open eyes and must have pink shoes.
Zambonis on the Ferryboat can only be placed so that TUSCANY andWALESRAILWAY are on either side of the mystery one. Therefore, it must at least have an yellow nose to match both of WALESRAILWAY andBUDAPESTHUNGARY.
Finally, HEADSTRONG and TAXSHELTER must be adjacent to the mystery Zamboni in Stone Rise, which determines both cyclops eyes and ponytail.
In Stone Cold Caves, the fact that NARRATED and BLIZZARD are in diagonal caves means that we are looking for eyes and shoes. The mystery Zamboni cannot have cyclops eyes, and must have either pink shoes, propellers, or cleats.
In Fleens!, one of the four Fleen characteristics must correspond to the same Zamboni characteristic in Very Hard. We can deduce that Fleen shoes map to Zamboni hair. There are only two other spiky hair Zambonis,BETTYBARCLAY and SUFFERED that can map to high-heeled Fleens. Furthermore, these Zambonis share the same eye, so Fleen hair maps to Zamboni eyes. Then we know that the shared characteristic is nose color. Since there are five nose colors represented in the Fleens, but only four in our given Zambonis, the mystery Zamboni must have a red nose.
In Hotel Dimensia, we know that the two relevant dimensions are hair and eye color. There are two solutions that allow us to place every Zamboni in this grid. In both cases, the mystery Zamboni must have orange eyes and a flattop.
Finally, in order to match with BEYONDDEATH in Stone Rise, the mystery Zamboni must have a propeller.