Looks like the show is 12 episodes long. Here is the solution for end puzzle 11 (note there is none for episode 12).
So anyway, the story puzzle for episode 11/12 was about as convoluted as the story puzzle for 9/10. I don't think I need to cover that.
Anyway, here's my feelings about the puzzles in this anime:
- The puzzles in this anime (6 in the story and 11 in the credits) all have wordplay in them, sometimes mixing both Japanese and English. The amount of language-independent stuff is few and far between. They range from easy (if you know Japanese) to downright "how would anyone know how to solve this".
- The ED puzzles are generally easier, since they are designed to be solvable by a viewer in a somewhat reasonable time and entered at the
the official site (at the bottom) for a congratulations image. The story puzzles are unfair and no context is given in a lot of cases, which I think is a very bad design. For example:
-- The very first puzzle (story puzzle for 1/2) doesn't even explain the rules. In particular, the solution is in the form of a "secret word". The descriptions underneath the pictures, critical to understanding the problem, are never shown clearly before Tokine goes and solves it.
-- Story puzzle 3/4 again is confusing and the rail diagram which is crucial to the problem is again hardly readable and appears for one second. (It is based off one of the rail lines for
Tama Monorail.) Also, because things are never explained before they are solved, one can easily go off the wrong track. For example, does the order in which the people say the station names matter? (No.)
-- Story puzzle 5/6 throws in the requirement of knowing to put English names of animals in the boxes. This has never been discussed before so its sudden use here seems almost wrong.
-- Given that the show now likes to use random English, story puzzle 7/8 is actually easier than it looks (but you'd have to be familiar with English and rhyming words). The hard part is cutting through all the red herrings; I think they put half-naked girls in colorful bathing towels on purpose just to distract everyone from the actual clues which are right there.
-- Story puzzles 9/10 and 11/12 are just the writers of this show getting ahead of themselves. When making a puzzle, the last thing you want to do is increase the complexity of a puzzle just to make the anime, your puzzle-solving MC, or yourself, look "smart".
- My favorite puzzle is ED 11 because of the diamond shapes where the key is the corner overlap, making it look hard until you spot that and then it becomes easy. None of the others were this creative (ST 7/8 with the fanservice distraction and ED 6 with the "ta-cross" pun comes close) and some were lazy (ED 8 was so easy, with clues that were already explained in the story that same episode, and the secret message being the answer itself rather than a question for answering, that you could solve this puzzle without knowing any English or Japanese). ED 2 was unfair because the answer was on a hard-to-read thrown-away coffee cup that appears for 3 frames back in episode 1.
- I'd rank the puzzles from best to worst as follows:
-- ED11 > ED4 > ED10 > ED6 > ED7 > ST7/8 > ED3 = ED5 > ED1 > ED9 > ST1/2 > ED8 > ST5/6 > ST3/4 > ED2 >>>>>>>> ST9/10 = ST11/12.
I don't have anything to say about the other aspects of this show (plot, animation, etc.), but I don't think there is anything to say about them anyway.