Photo by Deb Gau Ashley McGrath helps Zeke Carrasco try out the party blower he made at the Marshall-Lyon County Library’s Noon Year’s Eve event Saturday.

MARSHALL — The fireplace at the Marshall-Lyon County wasn’t just a cozy place to read this weekend. It was also where groups of amateur sleuths were puzzling over an invisible-ink message.

Eli, Lilly and Holli Roszel found a seemingly blank sheet of paper, and pens with special UV lights on them.

“That’s how you read it,” Eli Roszel said.

Using the light, Lilly and Holli looked for numbers in the message that Eli could use to open a combination lock on a box by the fireplace.

The escape room-style challenge was part of the Noon Year’s Eve event at the Marshall-Lyon County Library on Saturday. For the past few years, the library has gotten an early start on New Year festivities with a variety of games and crafts that visitors could take part in during the day.

The library has hosted escape room puzzles in the past, but assistant librarian Emily Spieker said this year was her first time coming up with the challenge.

“I decided to go with a little narrative,” Spieker said. People trying the puzzle challenge would follow along with messages from a grumpy gnome who had locked the New Year away somewhere in the library. Each puzzle took participants closer to freeing the New Year.

Spieker said she did research and used resources for building an escape room to help put together the New Year challenge.

“Work from the goal backwards is what I learned,” she said.

Holli Roszel said the New Year challenge was a fun surprise when she brought her family to the library on Saturday. Lilly and Eli said they were also having fun deciphering the clues.

“We watch a lot of mysteries,” Lilly said.

“It’s pretty exciting,” Eli said of doing the challenge.

If you weren’t into solving puzzles, there was still plenty to do at Noon Year’s Eve. In the children’s department, kids and families were decorating paper crowns to wear for New Year’s, and making brightly-colored party blowers out of cardboard tubes.

Gluing tissue paper streamers on the blowers was a little tricky,

“But I’m really good at it,” Zeke Carrasco said.

Out in the main library, kids and families were also challenging themselves with a mini-golf course that wound between the shelves. Olive and Mira Dvorak took turns trying to putt the ball through the obstacles — although it was harder than it looked.

The girls’ parents, Matt and Kelly Dvorak, said it was good to have family-oriented New Year activities in the community.

“It’s nice to have something for kids, instead of just adults,” Kelly Dvorak said.