Tag Archives: Puzzle to solve

Puzzle Vandalism!

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[Image courtesy of Milliande.com.]

It’s hard to know sometimes what qualifies as art.

Artists and entrepreneurs are constantly pushing the boundaries of visual and intellectual expression. Everything from paint and stone to light and shadow are used to realize artistic visions. Christo wraps buildings and calls it art.

That can make it tough for those who are less familiar with the fluid definition of art.

There was a famous incident back in May when a seventeen-year-old left his glasses on the floor of an art gallery and many patrons mistook them for an art installation.

This has only grown more complicated with the advent of interactive art pieces. Some works of art can only be viewed from a specific vantage point, while others actively engage patrons.

Recently a woman unintentionally vandalized a piece of art when she mistook it for part of an interactive exhibit.

And wouldn’t you know, that piece of art was based on a crossword puzzle.

[Image courtesy of Thoibao.today.]

The 91-year-old woman was visiting the Neues Museum in Nuremberg with a senior citizens group when she found the piece, “Reading-work-piece” by artist Arthur Koepcke, and began filling in the empty grid.

These days, you can understand her confusion and sympathize with her mistake. I mean, the exhibit did say “insert words,” after all. Those sound like instructions to me.

Plus the grid has remained incomplete since its creation in 1965. It’s about time somebody finished the puzzle.

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Tougher than 99% of solvers? I think not.

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A friend on Facebook sent me this link to a quiz that claims being able to solve the following brain puzzles puts your IQ in the Top 1%.

The Top 1% of what, I have no idea. But I digress.

I can’t resist a brain teaser, especially one with such a lofty premise, so I clicked the link and accepted the challenge.

And I feel confident saying that, except for one question, I firmly believe every PuzzleNationer in the audience could conquer these “brain puzzles” effortlessly.

To be fair, I have good reason to feel confident going into this challenge, because the example was the parking lot puzzle we featured on the Blog years ago.

And thus, I clicked and ventured forth into the realm of supposed geniuses.

The first question asked that we count the number of Fs in a sentence, counting on the tendency of people to miss Fs in small words like “of.” No problem here.

The second question offered a brain teaser classic, asking us to count how many squares are in this grid:

[I’m sure you’ve seen this one before.]

The third was a brain teaser, one of those calendar-based ones like “If today is Thursday’s yesterday’s yesterday’s yesterday, how many days away is Friday?” No sweat.

Then there were some optical illusions, visual manipulation, and spacial awareness puzzles, like what would such-and-such look like if this happened. That sort of thing. Easy-peasy.

But then the quiz took a strange turn. It asked what you saw first in a picture containing with several images. (It’s like that picture of the old woman and the young woman, asking which you saw first. It’s a really odd question under the circumstances.)

Then, as advertised, the parking lot puzzle showed up.

The last one was the only real challenge. You were given a six-by-six grid full of symbols — black clubs and spades from playing cards, plus red hearts, diamonds, and squares, some upright, some upside-down — with one square empty. And you had to pick which symbol fit the empty space.

I confess, I haven’t yet cracked this one, but apparently my guess — upside-down spade — was good enough to merit the following response:

Based on this assessment, your intelligence is extremely advanced. You are a genius with a near-perfect IQ. You have an incredible mastery of both analytical AND abstract thought processes. You are very number-orientated and have strong mathematical and logic skills.

And on the other hand, you have a avid imagination and the keen ability to think outside of the box. Your core capacities include mental imagery, spatial reasoning, image manipulation, and strong artistic skills. As evident by this test, you are excellent at solving puzzles. You will most likely succeed in technical, scientific, or mathematical fields.

Now, I understand that most of these quizzes exist to make you feel smart and/or give you something positive to post on Facebook and share with friends and family.

That being said, this is hardly a challenge that would exclude 99% of solvers. In fact, my fellow PuzzleNationers, considering some of the brain teasers we’ve tackled together, I think we’re all justified in posting that victory text on Facebook. I have no doubt that we’ve all earned it.

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Solve this puzzle and you’re off to San Diego Comic-Con! UPDATE: *SOLVED*

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Time is of the essence, so we’re doing a special Sunday post!

The biggest film, TV, comics, and geek culture convention in the world is undoubtedly San Diego Comic-Con, and as you’d expect, tickets can be pretty hard to come by.

But guess what, puzzle fans and PuzzleNationers! Two 2016 San Diego Comic-Con 4-day passes are up for grabs, and only puzzly types have a chance to win them!

You need to solve the following puzzle:

It’s certainly a challenge, but I have absolute faith in the PuzzleNation audience’s solving skills.

From the Geek and Sundry announcement:

Once you have it figured out, you’ll know what to do next. Everything you need to know is in the puzzle. The first person to follow the instructions encoded in the correct answer will win the badges and be the envy of their friends.

So get to work on cracking that code and we hope to see you in San Diego. In case you miss out on these tickets, make sure you check out their Facebook page in case any other puzzles drop out of the sky.

Good luck, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

Well, it turns out I was late to the game with this post. It’s already been solved.

For anyone interested, here’s the solution:

The three digit numbers are zip code prefixes. The number before them corresponds to the position of the letter in the name of the zip code’s city. The message reads “send to prizesatcomicdashcondotorg the word fortyseven in the subject line to win.”

Pretty impressive solving right there. Congrats to whoever cracked it first!

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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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The Mystery of the Kryptos Sculpture

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[Image courtesy of Kryptos.arcticus.com.]

If I told you that one of the most famous unsolved encrypted messages in the world isn’t lurking in the works of Da Vinci or in some vast government warehouse like the Ark of the Covenant, but rather as part of a sculpture only twenty-five years old, you might be surprised.

You’d probably be less surprised to discover that said sculpture is located in front of the headquarters of the CIA, though.

Kryptos, a flowing sculpture made of petrified wood and copper plating over a small pool of water, was revealed to the world in 1990. Masterminded by artist Jim Sanborn, it was apparently designed to both challenge and honor the Central Intelligence Agency. And for decades now, it has proven to be a top-flight brain teaser for codebreakers both professional and amateur.

From an article on Wired.com:

It all began in 1988 when the CIA Fine Arts Commission commissioned local artist James Sanborn to create a cryptographic sculpture for a courtyard on the CIA campus. Sanborn completed the two-part sculpture in 1990, which included stones laid out in International Morse code near the front entrance of the CIA campus, and a 12-foot-high, verdigrised copper, granite and petrified wood sculpture. The latter, which is the more famous part of Kryptos, was inscribed with four encrypted messages composed from some 1,800 letters carved out of the copper plate.

[Image courtesy of The Magazine.org.]

There are four distinct sections, utilizing different forms of encryption. And amazingly, the fourth section continues to elude codecrackers to this very day.

It took nearly a decade before anyone announced a solution to the first three encryptions. A computer scientist named Jim Gillogly announced in 1999 that he had cracked passages 1, 2, and 3 with computer assistance.

The CIA, not to be one-upped, then revealed that one of their own employees, an analyst named David Stein, had solved those same three passages the year before, using only pencil, paper, and lunchtime man-hours.

But a 2013 Freedom of Information Act request into records of the National Security Agency revealed that an NSA team actually cracked those same three passages back in 1993 as part of a friendly rivalry between the NSA and CIA, provoked by former NSA director and then-deputy CIA director William O. Studeman.

[Image courtesy of G.A. Matiasz.]

Passage 1 employs a Vigenère cipher, a letter-shifting cipher that has been used for centuries, also known as a periodic polyalphabetic substitution cipher, if you want to get fancy with it.

The message, penned by Sanborn himself, reads Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion. [Iqlusion is an intentional misspelling of “illusion.”]

Passage 2 also employs a Vigenère cipher, but utilizes a different keyword than Passage 1. The message, also composed by Sanborn, points toward something hidden nearby:

It was totally invisible. How’s that possible? They used the earth’s magnetic field. x The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location. x Does Langley know about this? They should: it’s buried out there somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? Only WW. This was his last message. x Thirty eight degrees fifty seven minutes six point five seconds north, seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west. x Layer two. [Again, there’s an intentional misspelling here with “undergruund.”]

Passage 3 uses a transposition cipher, which relies on the positioning of given letters in order to properly spell out a message. The message is inspired by the words of Howard Carter, the archaeologist who opened King Tut’s tomb:

Slowly, desparatly slowly, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. x Can you see anything? q [Again, there’s an intentional misspelling with “desparatly.”]

[Image courtesy of Unmuseum.org.]

Although some codebreakers believe the misspellings of “iqlusion,” “undergruund,” and “desparatly” are simply Sanborn’s crafty attempts at misdirection, others believe they are clues hinting at how to crack Passage 4, which is only 97 characters long.

Sanborn has even offered hints to help frustrated solvers in their efforts to unravel the mystery of Passage 4. In 2006, he revealed that letters 64 through 69 in the passage, NYPVTT, decrypt to “Berlin.”

And in 2014, Sanborn revealed that letters 70 through 74, MZFPK, decrypt to “clock.” So the message has something to do with the Berlin Clock, although Sanborn has stated “there are several really interesting clocks in Berlin.”

[Image of the Berlin Clock courtesy of Secret City Travel.com.]

Amazingly, even if someone does crack Passage 4 someday, that’s not the end of the journey. All four passages are part of a riddle to unravel to truly solve the Kryptos puzzle, and apparently, doing so requires you to be on CIA property. That’s no small feat.

Jim Sanborn has truly created a beautiful, diabolical puzzle for the ages here. I wonder who will step up to finally solve this masterpiece.

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Unraveling the Riddle of Math Puzzles!

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Math puzzles are among the most intimidating in the world of puzzles. Many people will happily dive into a crossword or tackle a word seek at a moment’s notice, but drop some numbers into a puzzle, and they hesitate.

But there’s no reason to fear!

Math puzzles are certainly a different form of puzzling, but like all puzzles, there’s always a way in, if you know how to look for it. Today, we’re going to solve two math puzzles together in the hopes of demystifying this style of puzzle.

Let’s take a look at our first math puzzle, “Count the Votes.”

A problem developed at a recent election where 5,219 votes were cast for four candidates. The victor exceeded his opponents by 22, 30, and 73 votes, yet not one of them knew how to figure out the exact number of votes received by each. Can you?

Okay, where do we begin?

Let’s start with what we know. We know the total number of votes, 5,219. That will be one side of our equation.

We also know that the winner beat his three opponents by 22 votes, 30 votes, and 73 votes, respectively. Which means that the number of votes the winner received is the key to solving this puzzle. Let’s call that number of votes “x.”

The winner beat one opponent by 22 votes (x – 22), another by 30 votes (x – 30), and the last by 73 votes (x – 73).

We can build our simple equation from that information:

x + (x – 22) + (x – 30) + (x – 73) = 5219

Still a little daunting, but we can simplify it, because it doesn’t matter in which order we add or subtract things. So let’s look at that formula without the parentheses:

x + x – 22 + x – 30 + x – 73 = 5219

Now let’s reorganize it, putting the addition parts together and the subtraction parts together:

x + x + x + x – 22 – 30 – 73 = 5219

Subtracting those three numbers separately is the same as subtracting their total, so let’s simplify again:

x + x + x + x – 125 = 5219

Adding four x’s together is the same as multiplying one x by 4, so let’s express that:

4x – 125 = 5219

Now we’re getting somewhere.

And subtracting 125 from 4x is the same as adding 125 to 5219, so let’s do that:

4x = 5344

Finally, we divide 5344 by 4 to give us the value of x:

x = 1336

Which means that our victor got 1336 votes, one opponent got 1314 (x – 22), another opponent got 1306 (x – 30), and the last got 1263 (x – 73), totalling 5129 votes.

Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Let’s try another that’s a little bit harder.

This one is called “The Mathematical Cop.”

“Top of the mornin’ to you, officer,” said Mr. McGuire. “Can you tell me what time it is?”

“I can do that same,” replied Officer Clancy, who was known on the force as the mathematical cop. “Just add one quarter of the time from midnight until now to half the time from now until midnight, and it will give you the correct time.”

Can you figure out the exact time when this puzzling conversation took place?

Okay, this one isn’t as obvious about providing us with information, but the info is there if you look.

Since everything relates to the time “now,” we’ll make “now” our x.

Then we take each part of Officer Clancy’s statement in turn. “Just add one quarter of the time from midnight until now.”

“The time from midnight until now” is the same as “now,” x, so one quarter of that time is x/4.

And we’re meant to add that to “half the time from now until midnight.”

That’s a little bit tougher. After all, “the time from midnight to now” was easy, but “the time from now until midnight” covers the rest of a 24-hour day. So, if x covers the time from midnight to now, then “1440 – x” covers the time from now until midnight.

(There are 1440 minutes in a day, 60 minutes times 24 hours, and it’s easier to do all this in minutes, rather than hours and minutes.)

So “half the time from now until midnight” is (1440 – x)/2.

Okay, so what does our equation look like?

x/4 + (1440 – x)/2 = x

That’s pretty daunting, but we know what our goal is: to combine all those x’s and get them on the same side of the equal sign. And like the equation we built for “Count the Votes,” we can simplify it with some careful applied math.

The first step is to get rid of those pesky fractions.

Let’s multiply everything by 2 in order to remove the “/2” below “(1440 – x),” which gives us:

2x/4 + (1440 – x) = 2x

We can use the same trick to remove the “/4” below 2x:

2x + 4(1440 – x) = 8x

Now we’re getting somewhere! Let’s get rid of that 2x on the left by subtracting 2x from both sides:

4(1440 – x) = 6x

Let’s go a step further by multiplying both 1440 and x by 4:

5760 – 4x = 6x

One more step, and we’ve got all of those x’s combined on one side of the equation, as we’d hoped:

5760 = 10x

Divide 5760 by 10 and we’ve got x:

576 = x

If you recall, x represented the time “now,” but it’s still in minutes. To get the actual time, divide 576 by 60 to get the number of hours. 540 minutes = 9 hours, so 576 is 9 hours, 36 minutes.

It’s 9:36 AM, Officer, though to be honest, if you tell everyone the time this way, I imagine people stop asking you the time after a while.

I realize these are only two examples, and math puzzles come in all shapes and sizes, but hopefully, they don’t seem quite so intimidating, now that you know how to pick them apart for the important information.

Good luck! And if you find any math puzzles you need help with, send them our way! They could end up the subject of a future blog post!

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