Lucky... okay, so straining the bounds of probability...
A change of chef at Raffles results in Percival and Shenton Thomas getting food poisoning and being invalided back to Blighty in 1940. Brooke-Popham succeeds the latter. After a particularly scathing remark causes offence at Horse Guards' , Bernard Montgomery is banished to the backwater of GOC Malaya.
HMS Formidable avoids a rock.
After being fired from Raffles, the wayward cook ends up a club in Manila, where his fondness for inappropriate fungi strikes down MacArthrur and his chief of staff.
When the war warning is issued, Kimmel and Short ask Layton and Rochefort where Kido Butai is, are told "we don't know", and, worried, have a think about Taranto and Port Arthur.
Short establishes permanent phone lines between the radar stations and the air control room, and conducts daily small-scale air intercept exercises with a large one on Dec 4th.
Britain invades Thailand in early December.
The Kota Bharu landings are struck by the RAF, and several transports are sunk still mostly-loaded.
While not going to a full wartime patrol schedule, on Sunday morning the PBYs range out looking for Nagumo, and the pursuit squadrons muster at dawn. While the Catalinas don't find him, they find Fuchida's airstrike. With the warning of the doomed PBY received, the radar stations are manned and not confused about B-17s, and the Pearl attack is not successful - the first wave is mauled and the second aborts. There are no blue-on-blue incidents with B-17s or planes from Enterprise.
Brererton launches an early-morning air attack on the Japanese airfields on Formosa. The fog that has shrouded the airfields all morning just burns off as the B-17s make their final turns, and most IJA bombers on the island are still taxiing, fully loaded, when the bombs start going off. In 5 minutes more than half the IJA bomber strength is destroyed still on the ground.
The remainder of the G3M force gets into the air and trails the B-17s back to Manila. However, they are intercepted by three pursuit squadrons and take terrible losses, though they do damage Clark field and a number of re-arming B-17s are lost.
The US Army in the Philippines begins its planned withdrawal to the Bataan redoubt.
The Indian Army forces in Thailand begin their withdrawal in good order under pressure from the IJA 5th Division.
The US Navy sends a relief convoy to Wake Island, including one of General Short's precious mobile radar stations.
Action off Kuantan - Aerial reconnaissance from Force Z identifies that there are no transports unloading; however, Admiral Ozawa's covering force is spotted, and Force Z turns into the wind. The Albacores strike at night - Haruna and a cruiser are hit, though not mortally, and Ozawa sends them northwest. The covering force remains at alert for more air attacks, but is completely surprised when Kongo is straddled by Prince of Wales's first salvo. In the morning, Phillips has withdrawn south, and between Formidable's fighters and the RAAF, fends off the air attacks; Ozawa has lost two cruisers and a battleship with a third cruiser and second battleship slowly headed for Cam Ranh Bay with aerial torpedo damage.
Battle of Jitra - lacking support from the delayed 5th Division, the IJA forces are stopped at Jitra by the completed network of bunkers, trenches, and anti-tank obstacles. A second infantry advance in appalling rain leads to hand-to-hand combat with the 11th Indian division. Colonel Murray-Lyon is awarded the MC - while rallying the HQ unit when IJA troops appeared out of the rain, he duelled an IJA officer with his dress sword, receiving a wound before killing his opponent and leading a counter-charge.
First Naval Battle of Wake Island - the USN convoy is unloaded and the SCR-70 is running when it picks up an airstrike from due West. The reinforced Marine detachment takes off as Wake transmits the details of the attack. Even before the opposing forces had merged, Scouting Six off Enterprise was getting airborne to hunt for a carrier force that could be its origin as Halsey ordered an air strike armed, fuelled, and spotted despite the risk should Saratoga and Enterprise come under air attack. Facilities on the island are damaged, but the majority of fixed defences are still functional. An Enterprise SBD spots Hiryu and the USN launches its first carrier strike of the war, which arrives as the last attackers are being struck below. The two torpedo squadrons and the mix of Buffalo and Wildcat escorts are met by the CAP - no torpedo hits are scored, but Hiryu takes three bomb hits and Soryu two - neither is able to conduct flight operations and both retreat to the northwest. The IJN force withdraws, but not before Fletcher is able to land a second strike at the invasion force, sinking a destroyer and a transport, with the loss of several hundred soldiers.
I'm running out of steam here, but basically Yamashita is stopped in Northern Malaya and the Coral Sea - Midway - Eastern Solomons carrier battles happen around Wake and the counterinvasion of Guam without ever getting as far as Lae & Salamua, and the US wins them all. Singapore never falls and its land-based air makes the DEI campaign a long-drawn out stalemate (and gives ABDACOM a victory in the Java Sea when Phillips challenges one force).
Allied submarines, retaining forward basing in Malaya and the DEI reveal the US torpedo problem by New Year. Japanese operations in Malaya are continually hamstrung by the inability to regularly get supplies either past the submarine cordon or down the single rail line in Thailand and the follow-up thrust into Burma is stopped at the Sittang River. Burma and Malaya then stop in the monsoon.
At this point we are so butterflied that the crystal ball becomes foggy - the US, regardless of luck, really isn't going forward with an ur-Watchtower before August anyway, though the UK might just be able to get tanks enough into Singapore to head north when the rains ease off if their Malayan contingent doesn't surrender.
The night-surface actions are not in the Solomons but in the South China Sea, and they go worse for the IJN against the night-ops trained and Med-experienced RN if they don't just get wiped out as OTL.