Move Seven>Cast an explosive fireball at the door (who knows, maybe our character has magic :P)You screw up your eyes and your power. You sacrifice a third-level spell slot! Instantaneously a bright streak of light flashes from your pointing finger to the door. It strikes, then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Ha! Fear your wizardy prowess!
...Except when you open your eyes, absolutely nothing has happened, because you do not have verbal, somatic, or material components. Magic not existing also puts a damper on hypothetical flames.
>Place candle (from cupboard) in left holeThe cupboard candle has eight (8) notches in its side, each a centimetre apart. You place the candle in the far left hole. Nothing appears to happen.
>Place candle in right holeYou place candle eight (8) in the right hole. Nothing appears to happen.
> Remove all candles and examine the underside of the candles and the slots in which they were placed.Since holding all five candles simultaneously is a handful you end up sitting on the rug like a young child, the candles laid before you. All five candles are a dull white in colour and match the diameter of a bottle cap.
The underside of each candle are unmarked, other than a few dings and dents from being handled. Some marks are likely from the rough slots they'd been left in. Each had been drilled and the owner of the house forgot to sand them down. However, there doesn't appear to be a pattern in the drilled slots.
As with the cupboard's candle, each has a number of helpful notches in their sides. From left to right, the candles were arranged in the following order: six (6), five (5), ten (10), and seven (7).
> Place the candles back in the slots in order of ascending height, smallest on the left and tallest on the right.From left to right, you replace the candles in the following order: five (5), six (6), seven (7), eight (8), and ten (10). The far right hole remains empty. Nothing appears to happen.
> Attempt to move the couch to look behind it.You push the couch away from the wall with some difficultly. You push it about a foot away, look behind it, and find a blank wall just like the rest of the wall around it. And dust.
> Look inside the shoes.You peer inside the ski boots and can't see anything.
> Sift through the ashes.You aren't sure if you should be grateful the ashes are cold. Your hands aren't burnt, but warm ones would both warm you and hint that someone else was nearby. All you find among the ashes are more ashes.
> Pull on the hooks in the fireplace.You start pulling at each of the hooks. Thankfully each hook is long and large enough to grip in your palm. It appears that the leftmost hook is looser than the others. The rest are securely fastened and don't even superficially budge.
When you examined the shirts, did you examine all the shirts, or just the shirts underneath the skis? There was one on the carpet, some under the skis, and one under the couch right?
You examined the pile of shirts under the skis (shirts 1-4) and then discovered shirt five (5) under the couch.
Regarding the second question... looking back, I think I was a bit ambiguous. I should have said something to specify that the four shirts were from by the skis. To clear that up: you've examined the shirts under the ski boots, and not the ones scattered about the room. Sorry for any confusion! 