Several months ago I had created them but hadn’t posted them on the site yet because I wanted to get further along in the design of the Game 3: Chasing Shadows puzzles first. Some time later they disappeared. Over the following few weeks I searched my laptop, home pc, work pc, every flash drive and every email account I had looking for them. I couldn’t find them. And then suddenly, they turned up. I found them quite by chance in a forgotten backup folder that I had uploaded to the Cluechaser server for safe keeping. Buried deep within the folders they lay.

Their loss had greatly discouraged me and the thought of having to recreate them only added to my procrastination over finishing game 3. They were not of paramount importance to the overall game but they helped set the stage for the present day events that occur in game 3. Add to that the fact that I spent several hours on each video and hated to think it was all for nothing.

Now that they are found I have a more energized desire to finish the game. I know dozens of people are patiently (and in some cases impatiently) waiting for me to release it. I do want to finish the story. I’ve put many many hours into it and certainly feel the NEED to conclude it.

Maybe now I can find the time to exercise the gray matter enough to punch out a couple more puzzles and wrap them all up in a nice bow and present it to the faithful Clue Chasers out there. I very much appreciate your patience and dedication.

So without further ado, here are the final two videos that are part of the Game 3: Chasing Shadows pre-game warm-up. Please enjoy them.

With a solve time of 6 days, 17 hours and 45 minutes this was the second most difficult puzzle in the game. I was impressed with the level of complexity I was able to add into it.

I really like the idea of treasure maps. I think it would be really cool to find an old piece of parchment paper somewhere and discover that it has clues that lead to a buried and long forgotten treasure. This is why I enjoy movies like National Treasure, and The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Goonies. What it must feel like find the clue or solve the puzzle and realize you’re one step closer to finding the prize.

In the end, that’s what I was trying to accomplish with this puzzle. It didn’t start out that way though. I was stuck. I still needed one or two more puzzles to finish out the game and I was out of ideas. For some reason I had a date stuck in my head and decided to Google it and see what I came up with. I can’t remember the date but I know that it took me to a website that talked about a group of colonial rangers that existed during the Seven Years War (from 1756-1763) known as Roger’s Rangers.

I was reading about one battle in particular where they had attacked an Indian settlement and then had to high tail it out of there with the enemy in hot pursuit.

I thought that it might be interesting to create a puzzle from the perspective of one of the rangers. I decided to create a journal where he describes what’s going on around him and, knowing that his time may be short, leaves clues to a secret treasure he has hidden somewhere. I chose Charles to be the writer as he was an actual member of Roger’s Rangers.

I scoured the internet looking for some old, worn, stained paper I could use and then found a font style that pleased me. Once those were located it was time to figure out what the treasure was and what clues I would give to locate it.

In my opinion, the actual “treaure” that Charles hid is quite a let down. I don’t know why I decided to use it. I believe at the time I was considering building one myself for fun. I never did get around to building it but I guess this serves as a good example of how current events in my life play a big part in puzzle design.

Poor treasure choice aside, I am impressed with the clues given in the journal, how it was written, and how it looked. However, I am most pleased with where the clues point to. This is the part that makes this puzzle my favorite.

Similar to the Scatter puzzle, this one also requires the use of previous puzzle items. In this case, two of them. And not just clues, but the actual puzzles themselves. I remember being so excited when I came up with the idea. It took a little rework of the previous puzzles but in no time at all I had it set up.

Another bonus that didn’t occur to me until later is that by setting this, the second last puzzle, up this way anyone who may have stumbled upon it by accident, either outside the game or from a player sharing it with others, wouldn’t be able to solve it. They would have had to already seen two previous puzzles to even understand the clues in the journal.

During game play many players tried to determine some kind of pattern with all the numbers in the journal. But eventually the clues began to make sense and by working together they were able to put it all together and discover the answer. They were very smart players.

So read the journal again and see if you can find the clues and see if you can figure out which two previous puzzles they refer to. Once you know that, there are more clues in the journal that tell you what to do with the two puzzles to find the treasure. I can tell you that probably the most overlooked or missed clue was where it says “shift to” in the journal. If you look closely you will see that there are two spaces on either side of it. This was to make it stand out more but I don’t think anyone got that. It’s probably the most important clue (think of “to” as the number 2).

If you’re stumped, I have hidden what the clues were in the journal and what they pointed to. You can unhide it to read it.

I would have preferred this to be the last puzzle and I think I may have even planned it to be until I came up with a better idea for the last one. Another puzzle that required first hand knowlege of the game from the beginning. I’ll discuss that more when I review “To-Do List”

Journal Clues

Clue 1 show

Indicates that other puzzles are involved.

Clue 2 show

One day ago refers to the previous puzzle which was the crossword, also indicated by the square rocks with numbers on them clue.

Clue 3 show

The word scatter refers to the scatter puzzle that was previously solved but also that the answer was scattered about the page.

Clue 4 show

A suggestion to use Microsoft Paint

Clue 5 show

This clue indicates that you should work with the puzzle images in their actual size.

Clue 6 show

The most important clue in the puzzle. The blank look refers to the answer in the crossword puzzle that didn’t have a number. The “shift to” (notice the extra space on either side of it) is intended to indicate SHIFT 2 on the keyboard, the @ symbol. The red refers specifically to color of the @ symbol. So if you look at the scatter puzzle there is one red @ symbol. Using Paint and the actual image sizes, line up the non-numbered square of the crossword puzzle with the @ symbol in the scatter puzzle.

Clue 7 show

Follow the numbered squares for each crossword puzzle answer. You will see one letter lined up in each of the numbered squares (not every square in the crossword, just the first one in each answer).

Clue 8 show

This clue refers to what the word found by combining the Crossword and Scatter puzzle is. It’s a large object and has something to do with launching.

You should be able to figure the rest out yourself. If you think you have it, go to the actual puzzle page and type your answer in the blank in the bottom and it will tell you if you’re right or not.

What puzzle game would be complete without a crossword puzzle? Not this one, that’s for sure. I knew I wanted to include one but wasn’t sure how I could turn it into something useful. Obviously I had to bury a clue or an answer somewhere but how? There were some obvious choices but finally I had a moment of inspiration and came up with what I thought at the time was a brilliant idea. Looking back on it 3 years later I see it as more lame than brilliant. But still, it is a clever trick if I do say so myself.

The first thing one probably notices upon first looking at the crossword is that the numbering of the boxes is not in order and that one has no number at all. In the clues you see that there is no number 9 but there is a clue with no number. For the most part, that is all a diversion, a red herring as it’s called. My hope was that players would think those were clues and waste time pursuing that assumption.

I also figured that a players first instinct would be to solve the crossword and then use the answers in an attempt to ascertain the puzzle’s solution. So I wanted to do the complete opposite. I decided the solution wouldn’t be contained within the crossword answers at all. It can however, be found in the clues themselves.

I created this puzzle by working backwards. I wanted to continue to have players travel to different websites, like they are on a hunt or an exploration. I wanted the solution to point to an outside website, much like “The Office” and the “Social Network” puzzles. Up to this point I was unsuccessful in finding companies that would pay me to incorporate their website into the game so again I decided to have my own site for players to find. But first, I had to figure out where to send them.

My plan was to use the clue number to point to the letter needed. For example, in clue 3 across, the letter needed is the third one in, the “o” in “Quote”. For 3 down it was the “E” in “SEED”. Each clue containing one letter needed for the answer. Spaces and punctuation were included. Before I decided the answer would be contained within the crossword clues I already had them written down. So instead of starting over I forced some of the clues I had to point to the necessary letter either by changing the clue number or by rewording it. By doing this I established the “.com” part of the answer. For the remaining clues I assigned numbers at random, took the random letters they pointed to, and plugged them into Andy’s Anagram Solver to see if there were any recognizable words. I wasn’t surprised to see that there wasn’t anything useful. So I tried eliminating a letter. Eventually I found the right combination of letters and came up with ITFELT. So the solution to the puzzle became itfelt.com. I was pleased to see that the URL was not already taken so I purchased it for use in the game. I have since let it go and is now dead.

But I had a small problem. I had an answer that was 10 letters (including the period) but the crossword had 11 clues. What I came up with worked out better than I could have possibly imagined at the time. My solution was to just remove the number. This would prove clever not only because of the added confusion it would give the players, but also because it would allow the crossword to be used again later on in what I consider to be my greatest puzzle EVER. You’ll read all about it when we look at Historical Documents.

The part I like best about this puzzle was that it isn’t even necessary to solve the crossword puzzle. The answer lies completely within the clues. I don’t think any player realized this. All of them solved the crossword first. It took 5 days, 7 hours and 8 minutes to solve it and move onto the next one.

I did add the sentence at the top so that players might recognize the answer when they saw it since the web address itself is fairly obscure.

For the redesign, all I did was add the answer blank at the bottom and asked players to just type in the URL instead of going to the website itself since I no longer own it.

You can solve the puzzle by clicking on the Play button below. See if you can solve it yourself. Otherwise you can unhide the solution here:

I like this puzzle because it was my first non-independant puzzle. In other words, this puzzle can’t be solv ed on it’s own. You need something else in order to solve it. In the puzzle “Social Network” there was a lot of misdirection on the site. However, not all of it was intended to fool you. Located among the extraneous material were some pictures.One of them was a picture of a fairly simple maze with the solution already outlined (exactly like the one on the right here). This was what was needed to solve the mystery of the scatter puzzle.

It took longer to solve this puzzle than any other the others in Puzzle Master, a whopping 7 days, 10 hours, and 29 minutes. Most of that time was spent trying figure out if there was any pattern to the data scattered about the puzzle.

I don’t recall how someone eventually figured out that the maze was needed. I believe I had to drop a hint that the scatter puzzle was the lock and they needed a key to unlock it. At some point a player realized that the sizes of the scatter and the maze were the same and if you used a program like MS Paint and pasted one image over the other, the black line solution to the maze ran through a series of letters on the scatter puzzle. Those letters spelled out a question. Once the players figured out the answer to the question, they had the answer to the puzzle as well.

I liked the idea of having a puzzle with seemingly random letters and numbers scattered across a page. I added different colors and symbols to add to the confusion. I also intentionally put some letters close together to add some red herrings to the mix. I knew players would separate the data by colors trying to make some sense of it. I like that it didn’t occur to them until days later and a hint from me that perhaps something else was needed.

In the redesign of this puzzle I added some clues in the sentences at the top. There is one clue in each sentence. The clue in the first sentence is the word “amazingly” referring to the maze. I will leave the second clue for you to figure out but I will tell you that it points to the location of the maze. Or more precisely, where you can find a clue as to its location.

If you can’t figure it out unhind the answer to the maze’s location.
show

If you would like to solve the puzzle yourself click the Play button.
Stumped? Or maybe just want the answer? You can unhide it.
The question:
show

The answer:
show

I love the simplicity of this puzzle. By itself, there is no way that you could solve it. And “by itself” I mean if you were to print the picture out and hand it to someone the answer would elude them forever. This is a perfect internet style puzzle. A fairly decent comprehension of the internet is needed to solve it. Many of the players must have had this level of comprehension because it only took 1 day, 11 hours, and 4 minutes to figure it out. I was hoping players might think this was similar to “The Office” puzzle . This did happen in the beginning but it didn’t take long for someone to see deeper into the puzzle.

In the original game play there was no sentence at the top of the puzzle to shed some light on what you were looking for. It was interesting to watch some players spend time determining that the building was the Watergate Hotel. To be honest, I had no idea what hotel it was and as they would soon learn, it doesn’t matter. Just the fact that it was a hotel is all that’s important. One player noted that the balconies at the top looked like bars similar to those in the AT&T wireless commercials that were going on then so time was wasted trying to establish some kind of mathematical relationship between the balconies and applying it to the Watergate scandal in some way. All useless directions.

It wasn’t until someone realized the the picture’s file name was 1.jpg that the ball started rolling and suddenly other images were discovered. They were found by changing the 1.jpg to 2.jpg and then 3.jpg, and so on. Soon the players had eight images to work with.

I’m not sure who came up with it first but one person said he realized the connection between the pictures when he was communicating his drivers license number to someone over the phone. For the letters he used the phonetic alphabet. That’s when it hit him. Once that clue was discovered the puzzle was quickly solved. It was a little tricky figuring out which phonetic letter some of the pictures represented but either they were eventually determined or they had enough letters figured out to be able to guess the rest. A quick check over at Andy’s Anagram Solver (Google it, it’s a great tool for puzzle solving) produced the correct answer.

Now that you know how to get to the images, see if you can solve it the rest of the way. When you think you have the answer, type it into the answer blank at the bottom of the puzzle page and see if you’re right.

If you’re stumped you can unhide the answer here:

I suppose it couldn’t be helped. I put alot of useless information in here. Some of it was intended to misdirect but most of it was just filler to make the page look more authentic. I created the page weeks before the Puzzle Master game started and periodically logged in and added more info to give it more history. I guess it worked because it took players 4 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes to solve it. During that time many wrong paths were taken, many wrong ideas explored. Enough red herrings were found to fill small pond.

All in all, I would say that I liked this puzzle the least of all of them. I’m not sure why. I certainly put the most work into it. I guess I felt the players had to reach to far to get the answer. Maybe just the answer itself was just really weak. Clever, but not interesting. I don’t know. It’s what YOU think that matters more I suppose.

Although many players got lost travelling down the side roads, a few caught on that an important clue was the newspaper clipping picture. They realized there was something special about it. The headlines contained palindromes. Know what those are? They’re words or sentences that are the same forward and backward, like “mom” or “level”.

And that was my intent. I wanted a puzzle about panlindromes. I researched websites that listed palindromes looking for something I could use. I got really excited when I found one that I could actually use as a web address and even more excited when I found out the URL was available. So I bought it. Then I came across a few that more that I liked and that could be used as news headlines.

My intent was for the headlines to indicate to the players that palindromes were important. As they read the rest of the stuff on the site I thought the players might just find one particular post to be just odd enough to be important. And many did.

I wish I could remember all the different theories people came up. It was really quite interesting. Someone even tried to make some kind of sense out of pangaea_joe’s birthday and state. I chose Oxford, NJ because I used to live there once when I was a young boy.

In the end though, someone found the final palindrome buried within one of the posts and realized what it’s true nature was. A web address. So off they went taking a few others with them to the next puzzle.

Here is the text from one of the posts. The palindrome is buried inside of it. See if you can find it. Check your answer by unhiding it below. You can’t go to the website indicated by the answer though as it is no longer active.

About me

There. That’s enough about me.

The answer is hidden above. Find it and check your answer by unhiding it below.

You can also click on the picture at the top to get a better view of the newspaper article. I think it’s quite good.