Tag Archives: puzzle hunt

PuzzleNation Book Review: Kubrick’s Game

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Welcome to another installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PNBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

The subject of today’s book-review post is Derek Taylor Kent’s novel Kubrick’s Game.

Shawn Hagan is a film student at UCLA’s School of Film and Television, a gifted director of photography, cameraman, and lighting designer with aspirations toward directing. He’s probably like many cinephiles you know: obsessive, prone to losing himself in films, with a hard time relating to others.

He’s also a fan of puzzly scavenger hunts, tackling them with his friend Wilson, a former child star with his own directorial ambitions. They also recruit Shawn’s TA (and crush), Samira Singh, to join them. But when Shawn’s film professor asks for Shawn’s help deciphering the contents of a mysterious package, Wilson, Sami, and Shawn will find themselves on a puzzle hunt unlike anything they’ve ever seen.

The package is from visionary director Stanley Kubrick, a man who has been dead for fifteen years. Apparently, he left one last gift to his fans and fellow film lovers: an elaborate puzzle whose endgame could change history.

As Shawn, Wilson, and Sami unravel each clue, delving deep into Kubrick’s life and filmography, they discover they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the solution to Kubrick’s game; not only are students from other film schools also on the hunt, but shadowy forces are also working to solve the puzzle…forces that are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and worse to get what they want.

What could Kubrick have left behind to justify such means? Will Shawn, Sami, and Wilson solve the famous chessmaster’s last gambit?

Kubrick’s Game is a puzzly thriller/adventure piece very much in the vein of The Da Vinci Code, though a far more satisfying read, more akin to the Shakespeare-fueled mystery of Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Interred with Their Bones or Haunt Me Still than the smack-you-in-the-face-with-coincidence style of Mr. Brown. Kent is clearly a fan of Kubrick’s work, and that enthusiasm infuses every page of the story.

Part puzzle hunt, part tribute, and part whodunit, Kubrick’s Game revels in the minutiae of classic films, adding depth and meaning to cinematic quirks and questions that hardcore film geeks have been debating and theorizing about for years.

But Kent goes one step further by including relevant images and frames of film, allowing the reader to follow the narrative. You can’t quite solve the puzzles alongside the protagonists, especially in the later puzzles (unless you’re a serious Kubrick aficionado, that is), but you know enough to avoid any possible frustration.

On the puzzle side, there are really three puzzly narratives to unravel. The first is the puzzle hunt early in the game, which is very straightforward. The second is Kubrick’s game itself. The third is the whodunit of the story, pondering who Shawn and his team can trust and who they’re working against. It’s a multilayered narrative that never bogs down, despite the twists and turns and numerous characters in play.

[Image courtesy of Biography.com.]

Kubrick himself becomes a major player in the story, as his motivations, his choices, and his interests are crucial to the plot. His films as well become intriguing characters — particularly Eyes Wide Shut, often a maligned part of Kubrick’s legacy, though one I have more appreciation for after reading this book.

(And Kent is clearly having some fun with some of the conspiracy theories surrounding Kubrick’s life and works in this novel, but he does so without mocking.)

As for the human characters, Sami and Wilson are amiable support characters; they’re likable and capable, focused and flawed in their own ways, but Shawn is clearly the centerpiece of the novel, so most of Sami and Wilson’s more intriguing character aspects only emerge in reaction to Shawn.

As for Shawn, he’s a little polarizing, because you want to like him, but several of his choices make it hard to do so. Some of this can be attributed to Shawn’s social awkwardness and insensitivity; there are certain character moments that are selfish and border on the emotionally brutal.

(Some characters theorize that Shawn is on the spectrum, but I don’t feel comfortable commenting either way. It isn’t particularly germane to the plot, so long as you can accept that Shawn is fairly tone-deaf socially and has difficulty connecting with others.)

That being said, you cheer when Shawn succeeds and you root for him when he falters, which are signs of a solid protagonist.

Although the antagonists descend a bit into cartoonish villainy, that’s a minor quibble. For the most part, the stakes feel high and the mentality of Shawn, Wilson, and Sami’s team against the world is an easy one to buy into.

Kent has done an impressive job of constructing an elaborate mystery worthy of Kubrick’s labyrinthine storytelling, one that should satisfy thriller fans and puzzle fans alike.

Kubrick’s Game is available on Amazon in hardcover, softcover, audiobook, and ebook.

[Full disclosure: I received a free copy of today’s book in exchange for a review.]

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The Gravity Falls Cipher Hunt!

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It’s sad when your favorite show goes away, particularly when it feels like there could have been so much more to enjoy. As someone who routinely seems to discover hidden gems on TV, only for them to vanish a season or two into promising runs, I know this better than most. (Alas, Brimstone, Now and Again, Twin Peaks, Better Off Ted, and others…)

The fans of the Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls endured similar sadness when the show wrapped up its two-season run earlier this year. (Although it was the decision of the showrunner to end the show and not the network in this case, it was still a sad day for fans.)

From the Wikipedia article on this Twin Peaks-fueled program:

For their summer vacation, 12-year-old twins Dipper and Mabel Pines are dropped off from their home in Piedmont, California to the fictitious town of Gravity Falls, Roadkill County, Oregon to live with their Great Uncle Stan Pines (often shortened to Grunkle Stan), who runs a tourist trap called Mystery Shack. Things are not what they seem in this small town, and with the help of a mysterious journal that Dipper finds in the forest, they begin unraveling the local mysteries.

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The show was big on supernatural storytelling and puzzles to unravel, even including ciphers at the end of each episode that incorporated classic encryption techniques like Caesar ciphers, Vigenere ciphers, and others. This is pretty high-level stuff for a show that’s supposedly for kids. (Then again, plenty of adults enjoy a quality animated show, and Gravity Falls was critically acclaimed for good reason.)

In the series finale of the show, there was a brief shot of a statue of the show’s villain Bill Cipher, but it appeared to be a photograph rather than an animated image.

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Speculation immediately ran rampant as fans wondered if there was really a Bill Cipher statue somewhere.

And there was.

Cue the Gravity Falls Cipher Hunt, a world-spanning puzzle hunt launched on July 20, 2016, where fans teamed up to crack clues offered by show creator Alex Hirsch, all in the hopes of tracking down this mysterious statue.

Although the main thrust of the hunt was centered around the United States, clues appeared in places as far-flung as Russia and Japan, requiring a truly global effort of cooperative fandom to crack each mystery.

And the creator himself was astonished when the entire hunt was solved in just two weeks, as fans pieced together the last fragment of the puzzle on August 2: a missing section of parchment that corresponded to a map of a forest in Reedsport, Oregon.

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[Click here for a rundown of the entire puzzly saga.]

Awaiting the intrepid solvers was not only did the statue of Bill Cipher, but a treasure chest with messages that could only be read under black light. Also, in a truly brilliant bit of fan service, there was a sash and crown inside the chest that would anoint the wearer as the mayor of Gravity Falls! (Hirsch even went on to say that this appointment is now canon for the show!)

And, as it turns out, they found the statue just in time, as a property dispute between neighbors has led the statue to be taken in by police until the situation is resolved!

This is not only an outstanding example of real-world puzzling in its own right, but a wonderful thank you from a creator to his fans, providing one last challenge, one last story, to the people who’d most appreciate it. Nicely done, Mr. Hirsch, and nicely done, Gravity Falls fans!

[Also, nicely done to Owen, and his mom, friend of the blog Chris Begley, for bringing this story to my attention.]

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The Great Puzzle Pursuit: Puzzle Hunting Across the U.S.!

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Puzzle hunts are interactive solving experiences that often have you wandering around a certain area as you crack codes, unravel riddles, and conquer puzzles.

Whether you’re working alone or you’ve recruited a team to help with the hunt — perhaps solvers whose skills complement your own or fill a gap in your puzzling ability — it takes puzzles a step further, often making for a memorable puzzle experience, akin to Escape the Room challenges.

We’ve covered some puzzle hunts in the past, like BAPHL or the Trials Evolution hunt. We’ve also explored puzzle hunts that combine aspects of scavenger hunts and physical challenges to create a more physically demanding solving experience, like the Great Urban Race.

But I don’t know that we’ve ever covered something quite on the scale of The Great Puzzle Pursuit.

Instead of one city, you have 15 possible cities to test you. Instead of racing other teams over the course of a day or a weekend, you have a seven-month window of opportunity to test your puzzly mettle.

Intrigued yet? I certainly was, so I reached out to the team behind The Great Puzzle Pursuit to find out more about this ambitious solving experience. Co-creator Jason was kind enough to answer my questions about the event.

What inspired the Great Puzzle Pursuit?

A little background about us first. My wife Amy and I have been frequent participants in events like Warrior Dash, Urban Dare, and various scavenger hunts for the last 10 years. Now that I am older I can tell you that breaking both of my ankles previously ensured that I just cannot run like I used to.

So my wife and I, who are enormous fans of puzzles and the outdoors, tried various geocaching activities. Which we loved, but that is more just hide and seek. Then we went on to try various scavenger hunts and found the challenges to generally be silly tasks as opposed to actual puzzles.

After much research, we just couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for so we decided to make it ourselves, launching in Pittsburgh, PA.

You have 15 cities listed as possible points of entry into this puzzle hunt. What are the logistics involved in creating something of this scope? How many team members do you have running GPP?

The logistics in running multiple simultaneous hunts is somewhat of a challenge. In each city, we choose 7 locations — generally monuments, statues, or unique features — and then weave puzzle elements into these locations. Essentially you will need to solve 7 location puzzles and 7 on-site puzzles to complete your city.

[Glenn’s note: Location puzzles lead you to a location, while on-site puzzles can only be solved once you reach a given location.]

The locations are different but the puzzle elements are identical between cities so we can ensure it is a fair competition. Assuming a team bests their city challenge, all teams across the country share one last Meta puzzle. To date only 4 teams have unlocked this final challenge and now qualify for the cash prize nearing $1,200.

My wife and I are the owners and operators and we have a team of 8 that helps us create the challenges, scope out future locations, etc.

How many groups/competitors are involved right now?

We are nearing 300 teams now, with 4 total finishers [people who have completed a city challenge and the meta puzzle]. Two for Pittsburgh, one from Buffalo, and one from Hartford. All teams have until September 15 to finish so we expect to see a few more by then.

What lessons did you learn from season 1 that have informed this season’s event?

What we learned from season 1 is that people want to be challenged. In season 1 we made a puzzle hunt that was difficult but 50% of all teams completed it.

The vast majority said they wanted it to be even harder! So this year we added that 15th and final national puzzle that only the best of the best will be able to unlock.

Thank you to Jason and Amy for taking the time out to talk to us today! You can find out more about the Great Puzzle Pursuit on their website here and on Twitter here!

And remember, there are 15 possible cities to conquer:

  • Austin, Texas
  • Baltimore, Maryland
  • Boise, Idaho
  • Buffalo, New York
  • Cleveland, Ohio
  • Columbus, Ohio
  • Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
  • Hartford, Connecticut
  • Indianapolis, Indiana
  • New York, New York
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • St. Augustine, Florida
  • Springfield, Massachusetts
  • Washington, D.C.

Let us know if you’re going to accept the Great Puzzle Pursuit challenge in the comments below!

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A crossword like you’ve never seen before

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When someone sends me a link, claiming they’ve uncovered the most difficult crossword they’ve ever seen, I’m usually skeptical.

I mean, I’ve seen some diabolical crosswords in my day. From puzzle 5 at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and the meta-puzzles lurking in Matt Gaffney‘s Weekly Crossword Contests to the Diagramless and Double Trouble crosswords offered by our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles, it’s hardly tough to find challenging crosswords these days.

But this puzzle, originally created for the 2013 MIT Mystery Puzzle Hunt and made solvable (and rotatable!) online by Greg Grothaus, might just take the cake:

As you can see, there are clues across three sides of the hexagonal grid: the across clues, the down-to-the-left clues, and the up-to-the-left clues.

But these clues are unlike anything I’ve seen before.

It turns out that these are regexps, or regular expressions, sequences of characters and symbols that represent search commands in computer science.

Now, anyone who has used graphing features in Excel or crossword-solving aids on websites like XWordInfo, Crossword Tracker, or OneLook is probably familiar with simple versions of regexp. For instance, if you search C?S?B?, you’ll probably end up with CASABA as the likely top answer.

Of course, the ones in this puzzle are far more complicated, but the overlapping clues in three directions make this something of a logic puzzle as well, since you’ll be able to disregard certain answers because they won’t fit the other clues (as you do in crosswords with the across and down crossings in the grid).

But if, like me, you don’t know much about reading regexp, well then, you’ve got yourself a grid full of Naticks.

If anyone out there is savvy with regexp, let me know how taxing this puzzle is. Because, for me right now, it’s like doing a crossword in a foreign language.

But I’m not the only one who feels this way. When I first checked out the post on Gizmodo, they titled it “Can You Solve This Beautifully Nerdy Crossword Puzzle?” and I laughed out loud when the very first comment simply read “Nope.”

Glad to see I’m not alone here.

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Puzzles at Sea with Jonathan Coulton!

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Fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers, I’ve got something special in store for you today. Friend of the blog and Penny Press puzzle editor Jason Keeley is guest-blogging for me today, sharing his experience tackling an impressive puzzle hunt aboard a cruise ship earlier this month.

So, without further ado, take it away, Jason!

[Jonathan Coulton, your host for the next eight days…]

I just got back from JoCo Cruise Crazy 5, an 8-day excursion to the Caribbean on a massive ship. In brief, Jonathan Coulton is a musician famous on the internet for his songs about robots, zombies, and disaffected mad scientists. Five years ago, JoCo (as his fans sometimes refer to him) decided to invite a bunch of his fans onto a cruise ship, take them to some tropical destinations, and entertain them along the way.

He also brought a number of other performers with him, from stand-up comedians to TV personalities to other musicians. Guests such as singer Aimee Mann, Grant Imahara of Mythbusters, and Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation have all been a part of previous JoCo Cruises.

[A few of the guests from this year’s JoCo Cruise: Wil Wheaton,
author Patrick Rothfuss, and author John Scalzi]

Curtis Chen isn’t here just for a vacation or to listen to his favorite musician perform, though. Oh no, he, and his group of talented puzzle writers, are here to bend your brain.

Curtis, believing that many of his fellow passengers probably shared his love of puzzles, volunteered his time to put together a “Puzzle Hunt”: a series of puzzles, often unified by an overarching theme. Once on the ship, he released a couple of puzzles each day, all of which eventually feed into a final “meta” puzzle.

There were no prizes, except for a large button and bragging rights, but the Puzzle Hunt has been quite successful over the past five years. It hasn’t been uncommon to see a handful of people clustered around a nearby table after each day’s puzzles have been released, helping each other out.

[A group gathered around a table, except they’re tackling a few games
from our friends at Looney Labs instead of the Puzzle Hunt…]

This year’s Puzzle Hunt was titled “Number Five is Alive,” and the puzzles were themed around helping a self-aware computer come to terms with its new-found sentience. It begins quite innocently, with a page of knock-knock jokes, except some of the words were replaced with pictures.

Then it ramps up to an acrostic and a Star Trek-themed Sudoku. Then, they put out a modified clock with flashing LED lights. As they flash and spin, I realize that they are spelling out words in semaphore. Luckily, Curtis supplied solvers with a handy cheat sheet for that particular alphabet.

But halfway through the decoding process, something hits me: I should have been turning the clock at certain times so that the 12 was in different positions. Otherwise, most of the message is gibberish!

That sort of thing represents the two-step nature of many of the Puzzle Hunt puzzles. It’s often not enough to be see that “debase sing sin laugh far furry” is a broken speech-recognition software’s way of interpreting the familiar saying “the best things in life are free.” You’ll also have to extract certain highlighted letters from that phrase (and all the others) to build a final quote, which is the information you’ll need for the meta puzzle.

And this year’s meta puzzle was a doozy.

Once I had the keywords from the previous 12 puzzles, I entered specific letters from them into three different grids that appeared to be a random collection of circles and lines. These connected circles spelled out encouraging phrases (such as “Thanks for helping me!”), but I knew I wasn’t finished.

Another sheet gave me instructions for folding these three grids, origami-style, until I had three shapes which had to somehow be fitted together in a certain way to form one three-dimensional object. I struggled with it all throughout lunch, but when I finally figured it out, it was a moment of triumph. The connected circles on the outside now spelled a question that led me to a final keyword, earning me a special sticker to put on my button. Success!

[A huge assortment of games available for guests to play…]

While there were no shortage of concerts and events to attend on the cruise ship, I went out of my way to participate in this enjoyable and challenging event. Curtis and his team of puzzlers (John, Josh, Sean, Corby, and DeeAnn) put together a series of puzzles that taxed my intellect and facilitated conversation with the other passengers. Kudos to them all!

Thank you to Jason for his outstanding writeup of Number 5 is Alive and the JoCo Cruise in general!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!