Great - thank you for your response!
Just another quick follow up (and, yes, another newbie question... sorry!), when casting pine box (or any spell for that matter), if the caster doesn't make the TN (ie in this case 10), even if the duel total for the caster is higher than the target's total (9 vs 5 for example), then I assume that the spell fails anyway (unless the caster chooses to cheat, of course).
Thanks again!