Scarlet Envelope: Christmas Postcards | Review

Merry and bright puzzle cards! Each of our Christmas cards is a mini-game of family-friendly & brain-teasing gameplay. Decipher Santa’s wish, solve multi-layered puzzles with Rudolf, THINK, and HAVE FUN!

Note: All photos in this (besides the one with my hand in them!) are (c) Scarlet Envelope.

Date Played: December 2024
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 10-15 minutes per card
Difficulty: Mixed easy and medium

Nope… You’re not seeing double! We have reviewed holiday greeting cards by Scarlet Envelope before, and you can read that review here. But brand new for 2024 and hot off the presses from a successful Kickstarter, the team have released a new set of cards and they’re even better than ever.

You can buy the Christmas cards individually, or in sets of 5 from the Scarlet Envelope website and they work as follows: each of this set comes as a postcard, and on the front side of each card is a beautiful festive illustration that contains the bulk of the puzzle inside it. On the reverse (where you write your message!) you’ll get a little bit of clue text and a nudge as to where your recipient (or you!) can pick up clues. There isn’t a huge amount of space to write your message on (unless you want to get creative). As such, I’d probably recommend sending multiple, or popping these in an envelope where you can add an extra note if you need to.

Unlike the previous set of puzzle cards we covered last time, these ones are designed to be a little easier! This hopefully makes them more bitesize, and perfect for even the puggles (puzzle muggles) in your life. Each took me somewhere in the region of 10 minutes to solve, with the occasional clue here and there – which I might not have normally needed but HEY it’s Christmas, and you know I’ve been on the mulled wine and bucks fizz since 10am.

When I received mine, I received them with a message split over all five cards. Perhaps I’m a little biased here, but the message that was written on it was so fantastically wonderful – and being able to then solve a set of puzzles for a little bonus festive message was just the icing on the cake.

Holiday Mail

In “Holiday Mail”, the player is presented with a series of peculiar looking stamps, and instructions on how to convert those stamps into a secret festive message. This was one of the easier puzzles in the lot, but by far my favourite. I’m a big fan of all things postal service. It’s just an odd little quirk of mine, and I’m sure if I weren’t collecting “escape rooms played” I’d be collecting stamps.

Et voilà! We hope you enjoyed this cute postcard with a 2/5 puzzle difficulty. May your holiday mail be filled with nothing but cheer and joy!

Snow Much Fun

The second festive card I tackled was named “Snow Much Fun” and featured a scene of elves gathered around a snowman. Whilst this one is “technically” the easiest, it took me about as much time as the others – but the puzzle it centred around was a very satisfying bit of logical deduction and looking really, really closely. Which, speaking of, made me appreciate the artwork on this one the most. The illustrator has created a really lovely wintery scene and I’m a big fan of the illustration here!

We hope our silly little elves are enjoying warming up after all that chilly fun! Thanks for playing—this card’s difficulty level is 1/5. Now you’re ready to explore our more challenging puzzles!

Elf on the Shelf

Ahh, good old “elf on the shelf”. Not something we actually have here in the UK, but I’m always amused by seeing it on the social media accounts of my Northern American friends. In this puzzle, you’re up against a mischievous elf who has rearranged books on the shelf. This puzzle has multiple steps, and I really enjoyed them. It’s also one of the only ones I needed a bonus pencil and paper, which was a fun detail to make it a very satisfying solve. Bravo!

On a personal level, this one took me one of the longest as I was convinced there was a secret bonus puzzle in there. But then again I can’t help but see morse code everywhere.

Wishing you the jolliest Christmas ever! Congrats on solving this 3/5 difficulty puzzle!

Gift Shop

In other “absolutely gorgeous artwork” comes the fourth card in the series, set at a gift shop laden with delightful looking toys and gifts for the festive season. This puzzle is also all about thinking outside of the box, with a clever hint as to how to solve, but a trickier series of steps to actually act on that solve. I used a clue here, but only to confirm something which I quickly realised to be true. Overall, an enjoyable one and definitely well worth sending to the puzzlier folks in your life.

What a sweet wish, lucky you! Great job, this was our second-most challenging postcard at 4/5 difficulty. We hope this puzzle added a little extra joy to your holidays.

Christmas in Tune

Last but not least, the most difficult puzzle in the lot! This was a cipher-based puzzle, and thankfully I had someone with me who really, really loves ciphers who spotted what to do fairly early onand gave me a nudge before I had to look at the clues. That aside, I still had a blast solving this one. There’s something very satsifying about seeing a cipher come together and uncovering the secret message underneath.

Whew! You’ve cracked our toughest puzzle yet—what a TREEmendous feat! Now go forth and have the most pine-tastic Christmas ever!

Scarlet Envelope’s Christmas Cards – The Verdict

With cards like these, why would you ever send anything else to your puzzle friends at Christmas?

No, but seriously. I really, really enjoyed playing through these! By chance (or by a carefully cultivated reputation of just being really, really into puzzles) I received a lot of puzzled-adjacent festive cards this year, but Scarlet Envelope’s really shone out as my very favourite set.

From the gorgeous illustration, to the satisfying solves, to simply how pretty they look sitting on my shelf, I adored these. Plus since I put them out in pride of place on my shelf, I’ve had so many friends visit and pick them up with a smile on their face. Either from admiring the art, to sitting down and solving a card or two themselves.

I’d recommend these for just about anyone, and I’m quietly hoping the team release even more of these next year.

If you’re interested in your own, you can purchase them from Scarlet Envelope here.