Escape Academy (EP)

A few general tips before we get to the puzzles:
- Use LB to run as much as possible!
- The rooms and their general layout is always the same, so familiarize yourself in the first run to know where to go. The puzzles and their locations however are random, so there is a bit of luck going into this achievement.
- You can pick up the object after solving a puzzle through the containers, if you know where the item will be, so just spam A in the general location, where you think the cards, keys etc. will be after solving a puzzle that rewards you an item and mash B as soon as you picked up the item/s.
- In the same vein, it is useful to remember or write down certain aspects of puzzles that never change. Examples would be the custom key solutions and the ballerina moves.
- You can press X after using A to inspect the puzzle to see the puzzle rules, this can help with figuring the puzzle out.
- If you can't remember a solution or symbols, you can pause the game to make notes, time stops as long as the game is paused, you can't see the screen however, so you have to look, pause and then write it down.
- Just spam A when going to a door to insert the keys/ cards/ sticks quickly.
- It may be a good idea to restart a run, if there are hard puzzles directly at the beginning.

Edit: I was under the impression, that this needs to be done in Escape race. That was my mistake, so to make it easier do it in either Tic-Tac-Toe or Scavenger hunt. I personally think Tic-Tac-Toe is the quicker mode.
If you have a coop partner to boost this online that is the optimal way to do it, but even local coop is quicker, even though you have a smaller screen.
Additionally, always hit the power boxes in multiplayer, to get a chance of a master key/ usb stick or card.

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This applies only to escape race:
As a note, I never changed the track, just so that I wouldn't need to get used to another layout, I'd suggest sticking to one layout. I always used the default, which in this case is "Business or treasure".
The layout for this is as follows: You start in a round room with 3 puzzles, you go though the door, not the gate, after solving these 3. The second room contains 2 puzzles after which you go through another door. In this third room will be an additional 3 puzzles which need to be solved before entering the fourth room with the last puzzle that needs to be solved. When done with that, you run back to the first room and can open the gate, behind which you find the throphy to complete the level.
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Now on to the puzzles. I'll order them from easiest to hardest/ most time consuming in my opinion, you could very well find some of these a lot easier than I did.

Searching item puzzles: By far the easiest and most of the time quickest puzzles to complete, there are three different ones in this course.
- Jackal statue:
It's a statue of a jackal/ dog head, just find the ruby and insert it to get the item inside. You can pick the key up while it opens if you move a little towards the bottom of the chest.
- Torture chamber:
There's an iron maiden standing in the room, find the key, open it and take the key of the hand of the skeleton.
- Pole with platform:
Just find the whinch with which you can let the platform down on some spikes and get the key.

- Black and white symbol box.
Extremly easy and quick. Just hit the button of the corresponding color as many times as the symbol has sides. You need to go from left to right. So if you have for example a white square, black triangle, white triangle and black pentagon you need to hit 4xwhite, 3x black, 3x white and 5x black. As some more tips, you can just spam the last button, and just continue spamming A to get the key as soon as the puzzle completes.

- Weapon rack puzzle:
This one is really simple and also pretty quick. First find the field notes in the room. Go into the puzzle, press Y and then Y again on the field notes to pin them. Read how many rings need to show combined on the left and right of the rack. You can push the various weapons in and out. Just shuffle them around until you have the appropiate number of ring and "press" the lever to solve this.

- Find the difference puzzle:
There will be a cabinet with a picture of a crocodile god (Sobek?). You need to find the ancient illustration in the room then go to the cabinet and inspect it. Then you press Y to go to your inventory and press Y on the illustration to pin it. Now you can start looking for the differences, they are mostly pretty obvious, but some can be a little tricky, like the little snakes on the hat, or the eyes.

- Scarab and gems wall decoration and rotation disc tomb:
You will see a tomb with a disc containing 3 rings in the colors green, blue and white. On a wall in the same room will be a disc with some scarabs and gems in these same colors, just count how many of each color there are and for the missing you have to look which color the scarabs have. If for example a scarab under a blue gem has black wings and a white body, and you see one that has the same colors under a missing gem slot, you count another blue gem. As soon as you counted the gems you just turn the rings of the corresponding color to the number of gems you counted, the numbers here are represented by lines, with the dot being 0.

- Sliding blocks puzzle (Rush Hour):
This can be the bane of some people, but I find this one of the better puzzles to run into here. They are really small and not too complex. Not much on tips I can give on this. just try to clear the board from the left to the right to make a path for you block along the way.

- Sliding block puzzle (Wall mounted):
For this you need to rotate the board either clockwise or counterclockwise to move your cyan colored block over the field until you can let it fall out of the opening which is located at the top before you start the puzzle. The block falls the whole way until it is stopped by the walls or other blocks, which will never move. The best way to do this is to look, what the end position, before falling into the exit should be and try to go backwards from there to find a way to it. The board will turn 90 degrees to the right when spinning clockwise, and 90 degrees to the left when spinning counter clockwise. This will be an easy puzzle most of the time, but can have some more tricky layouts. Spam A when getting the key, since the puzzle controls will overlay the key.

- Gem pedestal:
This is just Sudoku, but really simple in a 4x4 and with symbols instead of numbers. The symbols on a black background can't be changed, so look for those to deduce, where the others need to be placed. So if you have no clue how to play Sudoku, you need to have only one type of symbol in each row and column (and the four squares, but really, you're good with just trying to get only one symbol in the rows and columns). So just start with looking for two of the same symbol with black background, look in which rows and colums the symbol can't fit because of these. See what remains, there should be a position in a row or column, that can be the only fit, because there are so many non changeable symbols already. You can take the key here through the door after solving it.

- Jackal tomb puzzle:
This one is a statue of a sitting jackal/ dog on a tomb, on the front is a 3x3 grid with white and black lines on either side of the tomb are parts of this grid in either black or white. You just need to turn the corresponding lines the same color. You can turn to the sides of the tomb while inspecting the puzzle when clicking the arrows to the left and right, but I find it actually faster, to just back out, walk to the side and then inspect the puzzle again.

- Rotating symbol click puzzle:
You find this hanging on a wall. it has three rings with four symbols each. You need to press the symbols in the order shown on the right, but you can only spin the rings ten times and you can only press the symbols that are not behind the cage. This one is pretty easy, no need to be extremly strategic with it, just look where the symbol you need to press next is located and move it with the least possible moves. You get a highlight which rings will rotate how, when hovering over the levers. Remember, that you can spin clockwise, when on the left of a handle and counterclockwise, when on the right of a handle. As you click more symbols, the only real advice I would give is, that you should just shuffle another inactive symbol when going for the next you need, since you always rotate 2 rings. So it makes sense to rotate inactive symbols away if one is present.

- Papyrus and Urn riddle:
First you need to find the papyrus and some of the urns in the room and place the urns next to the others, then you pin the papyrus on which gives you clues on how to position the urns. This is what is usually known as an Einstein's riddle. Just place the urns following the logic clues from the papyrus, nothing more to this. The only clue I can give here is to look for a definite clue first and work through it from there, for example something like "Horus and Toth each have one neighbor". That clue tells you that they have to be in each of the corners, you just need to find out which goes in which corner using the other clues. Sometimes the clues can be very straightforward, like "Anubis is on the far left".

- Lantern pyramid and symbol wheels:
This puzzle contains a few steps, first you need to find the matches. Use these to light the pyramid. As soon as it's lit you'll see symbols glowing on it, you need to trace a way from the down arrow through the labyrinth making note of the three symbols on the way to the up arrow, which is the end of the labyrinth. After remembering them or writing them down go over to the blue disc on a pedestal and change the rings to the symbols you noted to solve this puzzle.

- Hand statues and wheel puzzle:
For this one you need to locate 5 hand figures in the room, they hold fingers up from 1 to 5, go to them in order and press the little square red button on the pedastal, make note if they start spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. You don't need to watch them any further than that. After you looked at all 5 you should have noted or remembered a combination of clockwise and counterclockwise inputs, like for example 1 counter, 2 clock, 3 clock, 4 counter, 5 counter. After you have the combination go to the wheel on the pedestal and spin it in the directions the hands gave you, using the left side to spin it clockwise and the right side to spin it counterclockwise. You can pick the key up before the lid opens.

- Sun, moon and star puzzle:
First you need to find the sun, moon and star item in the room after which you can attach it to the pyramid. On the walls will be red scrolls showing positions, you have to look at the stones of your pyramid and look where the same pattern on these scrolls appear to get the right location for each piece. In particular you need to look at the front of your pyramid, there will be three rows of stones, for example 1 big stone on the bottom, above it 2 stones and at the third row one little stone. That is what you need to check for on the scrolls, the three rows of stones on the front of your pyramid. Each scroll will always only have one of the positions you need for your pyramid. You should just look to get two positions correctly and then just brute force the third by moving it from left to right, since that is faster than looking for and at the third scroll, the puzzle will atomatically complete as soon as you hit the position, so no need to be accurate.

- Translation puzzle:
This one stumped me the first time I saw it, and I still find it pretty stupid. So this puzzle consists of three parts, a papyrus you need to find in the room, a translation table somewhere in the room and a tomb with six pictures, showing a cat, dog, bull, owl, snake and pig. What you need to do is take the papyrus to the translation table on the wall, pinning it from inventory with Y and looking for the symbols you see on the papyrus. The thing is, the symbols can appear multiple times on different letters. I would concentrate espacially on doubles, reading from up to down on the papyrus. When you translate these you will get something like for example: oink, hiss, moo, moo. You see were this is going, they translate to animal sounds, specifically to those pictured on the tomb. The sounds will be Miau (cat, although I'm not sure it is spelled this way), Woof (dog), hoot (owl), hiss (snake), moo (bull) and oink (pig). So you can save some time if you see only three symbols, it will always be the bull. And by translating the first symbol, you will always know the other animals.
So this puzzle can actually be pretty easy and quick, if you know what you are doing, but I didn't knew all this when I did the achievement, so this one was one of the hardest for me.

- Light reflection puzzle:
This is my hate puzzle and an instant restart recommendation for me. First you need to find the solar crystals to activate the puzzle. Light reflection puzzles are nothing new in games and usually pretty easy, but for some reason the developers of this game thought it would be great to have angles, that are smaller and wider than 90 degrees...on a grid based puzzle... For me these were nothing more than trial and error, because I couldn't predict were the rays would go. I really can't give you any help with this one, except restart or, if you are far in a run, try your best and pray, or be better than I am at these.

These should be all the puzzles encountered in the tomb level. Please tell me if I forgot any and I welcome any feedback to improve this solution.