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Game 1, Puzzle 3: Iggy’s Memo

cowpattybill — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:00:57 +0000

Puzzle 3. Just like in Puzzle Master, the third turned out to be the most difficult. Looking back on it now I can see why. This didn’t seem that complicated when I first created it but I got lost myself when I reviewed my notes in preparation for this blog entry. Let me see if I can break it down piece by piece so you have a clear understanding of how it was put together.

Players got here by clicking on the blue piece of paper taped to the bookshelf behind the desk in the office photo which was now an active link once the second puzzle was successfully solved.

The puzzle is a message, scrawled on a piece of memo paper by “Iggy”. At this point not much is known about Iggy other than he is a friend of E’s and likely a fellow scientist. The players first learned of Iggy at the beginning of the game. His was the voice heard in the voicemail message. Apparently E had previously asked him to do some analysis for him of which this memo is the result. How Iggy figures into this mystery is at this point unclear.

On the outside this is quite a strange puzzle. It’s clear that the elements mentioned by E’s friend are a clue.
Another clue that seemed to go largely unnoticed, or at least unmentioned in the message board discussion, is the picture. I’m not sure of the exact title but I believe it’s called The “Betsy Ross” flag. The key to the picture is the 13 stars.

As you know, the stars represent the original 13 colonies of the United States. Those states in alphabetical order are:

Connecticut
Delaware
Georgia
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Virginia

If you take the first letter of each state you have CDGMMNNNNPRSV. There was no clue to indicate this but if I gave a clue for every step then the puzzles wouldn’t be that difficult. My hope was that someone would come up with this in the message boards.

Iggy’s memo lists the elements contained in the sample E gave him. I’m not sure what the correct scientific way is to write that but the way Iggy did it revealed an important clue. If you write out the symbols for the elements listed you have:

CD for Cadmium
MN and MN for two Maganese
N and N for two Nitrogen
P for Phosphorus
S for Sulfur

The next step is a biggy. If you take the letters from the elements and apply them to the letters from the 13 states you will be left with 3 letters, G R, and V. Iggy refers to these as the three he wasn’t able to identify. He gives the clue to the next step when he writes,
“… if we get these in the correct order by date, their atomic numbers will reveal which elements they are.”
Here is the part of the puzzle that just amazes me the most. While creating this puzzle I had no idea if the end result would produce anything usable. I was quite surprised when it did.

Following Iggys clue, if you put the left over letters that represent the states of Georgia, Rhode Island, and Virginia in order by the date they joined the union you get G, V, R. When compared to the other states you learn that Georgia was the 4th state to join, Virginia the 10th, and Rhode Island the 13th.

Going back to the periodic table and looking at the 4th, 10th and 13th elements you find BE for Beryllium, NE for Neon, and AL for Aluminum. Iggy’s next clue says,
“Perhaps we can combine them together in some way and see what they become.”
This is another way to say “ANAGRAM”. Rearranging the 6 letters reveals the answer to the puzzle.

Now see if you can solve it yourself:

Of the 10 puzzles in the game this is the only one that took longer than 1 day to solve. In fact it took 1 day, 3 hours, and 44 minutes. Successfully solving it gave the players the next number in the series, which is 72

New T-Shirt Design

cowpattybill — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:24:42 +0000

The ClueChaser logo that I created a few years ago is both sad looking and kind of boring. So I decided to change it. Well sort of. I am still working on a new logo but in the mean time I have a new design for t-shirts and other ClueChaser apparel. This new design is based off something created for ClueChaser by Trillustrations and it looks pretty good on a t-shirt.

Here’s it is.

ClueChaser Puzzle Shirt by ClueChaser

So be quick and run over to Zazzle.com and be first in your area to proudly sport the new look.

Puzzle Master 1 – Cipher

cowpattybill — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 18:44:46 +0000

Let’s get right into this by jumping into our Wayback Machine and traveling back in time to December 2007. First up in our look back at previous Cluechaser puzzles is the cipher puzzle. It didn’t have a title and the original version looked different than the one you see here. The answer originally led players to the next puzzle. I redesigned it later on so as to be a standalone puzzle.

This was my first attempt at designing puzzles. The picture you see had a lot to do with the key for solving the puzzle. However, I quickly discovered that the players were much smarter than me (not that it’s difficult) and the majority solved it by “brute force”, meaning that they looked for commonly repeated letters and exchanged them for commonly used letters in the alphabet and then used what they had to figure out the rest.

What amazed me the most was that I anticipated this and therefor reversed the order of the key for the part below the picture and used very few letters so the answer couldn’t be guessed without the key. I was still wrong. There are some pretty smart folks out there. It took just 2 hours and 6 minutes to be solved by the first person.

Now I will explain how to solve the puzzle (the way I intended for it to be solved). If you want to try it on your own, don’t read the next part.

If you’re like me and terrible at solving ciphers I will tell you that the picture is a graphical representation of the popular pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. A pangram is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once. So if you remove the repeated letters you are left with 26 letters. If you then write the alphabet below that in alphabetical order you have just created the key for solving the cipher. I don’t remember if you substitute up or down but for the part of the cipher below the picture, you do the opposite.

I recall being very proud of myself when I created that and sad when no one seemed to figure that part out.

So have fun with it. Print it out, challenge your friends and family. Try creating your own cipher. But don’t send them to me. I love creating puzzles but I’m no good at solving them. Enjoy.

Solve the puzzle and check your answer by typing it into the field at them bottom.

Puzzled by all the videos?

cowpattybill — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:53:37 +0000

Yes, there have been a couple videos released lately and I can tell you that there are at least 3 more on the way. So that you don’t get confused I wanted to sort it all out for you.

Pre-game videos

There are two of these. The purpose of these videos is to help set the stage for the game by describing the alternate present that players will be immersed in. The first video is out now, the second will come out in a few weeks. Be sure to watch them.

Downfall Parodies

These are fun videos. Hitler considers himself a puzzle master and is desperate to prove it by getting his name in the Cluechaser Hall of Fame (which will be back up shortly). Through the three video series he (and you) will learn about some of the new twists to Game 3: Chasing Shadows. Hopefully you get a laugh or two out of them.
If you haven’t heard of or seen any Downfall parodies they are all over Youtube. People are taking clips of the German movie “Der Untergang” (Downfall) and adding their own subtitles; often with quite hilarious results.

Pre-launch puzzles

These aren’t videos but will provide you with the all important key to gaining access to the start of game 3. I will provide plenty of time for people to solve them and they won’t be difficult. They’re intended to be a little warm-up before the game.

Hopefully that will help clear up any confusion.

Game 3 will have a heavy emphasis on videos, the reason for which will be clear during the game. Also, because I like making them.

If you’ve got questions feel free to shoot me an email.

Cowpatty Bill

Game 3 Build Up Puzzles

cowpattybill — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:33:40 +0000

Things are progressing smoothly toward the exciting launch of the long awaited, eagerly anticipated Game 3: Chasing Shadows.
I wanted to give you a quick update and notify you of some upcoming items.

First of all, Game 3 is still on schedule to be launched sometime this summer. It will be the last game in the Mr. E series but not the final ClueChaser game. I’m already working on ideas for the next one.

Secondly, since some time has passed since the events of Game 2: Puzzle PiEces I will be giving everyone a brief refresher in what has happened and where we are in the story. I will be doing this in the form of some small build-up puzzles. They will be fairly easy puzzles that once solved, will reveal a portion of events that have happened over the past two games. They are also a nice way to get you back in the groove since ClueChaser puzzles seem to have their own “style” of puzzlery.

And finally. I thought it would be fun to add a little twist and include a “key” in each build-up puzzle. In addition to the plot summary you get with each correctly solved puzzle you will also get a word or a number (or some such thing, I haven’t decided yet) that will be needed to start Game 3. Without all of them you won’t be able to begin. I will provide a discussion area where you can discuss the puzzles with others but any posting of the answer will be removed.

Incidentally. the comment board will be different in game 3. It will be located at a different site. I found that having a comment board within ClueChaser made it much easier to be hacked.

So stay tuned. The build up puzzles will begin soon and will show up intermittently between now and the game start date.

Good luck and happy chasing!