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Game 1, Puzzle 7: Doctor Letter

cowpattybill — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 23:16:05 +0000

I couldn’t remember how complex this puzzle was so I had to go back and solve it again before I could write this blog post. I knew that I had inserted some trickery into it but I couldn’t recall exactly what it was. I could have read my notes but sometimes I make last minute changes to puzzles and forget to update my notes. This is the type of puzzle that I would have done this with. So the only solution was to solve it. It took some time but I figured it out.

Players accessed this puzzle by clicking on the piece of paper on the desk in front of the black chair. Upon first look, it appears to be a bunch of gibberish. I’m sure many initially thought they were about to sink their teeth into a substitution cypher. I guess in a way it is. However, if anyone tried any standard methods of solving cyphers I’m sure they quickly found it far more difficult than they expected.

A struggle I have is often I am tempted to make a puzzle so difficult that it will take several days to solve. I had to remind myself on several occasions that the purpose of Game 1 was to attact as many players as possible. If I made it too difficult people would just quit and not continue through the storyline. To prevent this from happening I intentionally added some elements to serve as clues.

The first clue is the names of the doctors mentioned. For some, those names made the solution immediately evident. Others may have had to do some research first. A quick Google search of either name should have given the players what they needed to move forward. Just in case, I added a further clue in the letter by mentioning the phrase “other key board members”.

I can save you some time by telling you that Colemak and Dvorak of names of other types of keyboard layouts. The standard layout used on most compute keyboards is referred to as QWERTY after the first 6 letters on the top row of alpha-keys. Studies have shown that by laying out the keys in a more efficient arrangement one could actually type faster. So other designs such as Dvorak and Colemak have been created.

Now that the players had the key to solving the puzzle they just needed to know which lines of text used the Dvorak layout and which used the Colemak. I provided another clue by listing the doctors in the order they appear. Meaning that the first line is solved using the Colemak keyboard, the next line uses Dvorak, the next line Colemak, and so on.

The puzzle is solved by looking at where the letter is on the associated keyboard and then seeing what the corresponding letter is for the same key on the QWERTY keyboard. However, there’s a catch. As a last attempt to increase the difficulty a little I added two additional bits of confusion. First,once solved the players realized that if they tried to read each sentence in order it made no sense. The correct approach is to read all the Colemak sentences first then the Dvorak ones. Doing so revealed E’s message. Second, each sentence contained an extra letter at the end. By starting at the tap and reading downwards the letters spelled a word that when typed into the answer blank at the bottom was the puzzle’s answer.

It didn’t take players long to solve it. The first person finished it in just under 2 hours (1 hour and 54 minutes). The reward for successful solution was the next number in the series, this time a 2, and a link to the next puzzle, Crossword Puzzle.

There was an element to this puzzle that I added and no one seemed to pick up on it. Although I’m not sure why they would. It was a kind of foreshadow of the last puzzle. It can be found at the top of the letter. No, it’s not the eyball with the world in it. It’s the name of the organization in the letterhead. I’m no English major so I don’t know if it’s called something when a part of a word sounds like a letter of the alphabet. What I mean is, take the words “teach” and “tank”. The first part of Teach sounds like you’re saying the letter T. Again, I don’t know if there is a word that describes this type of thing. Regardless, I chose the organization’s name so that each word followed the example I gave you. So “Peter Able’s Eye-wareness Exploratorium” is actually P-A-I-X in disguise. What is PAIX you ask? Well, that will be revealed later on in the game.

Once players successfully solved the puzzle they were rewarded with the next number in the series, this time a 2, and a link to the next puzzle, Crossword Puzzle.

Now that you know the secrets try your hand at solving the puzzle.

Game 1, Puzzle 5: News Article

cowpattybill — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:00:50 +0000

Back in the Puzzle Master game I had a puzzle that included a fake newspaper called the ClueChaser Intelligencer. I like the idea of newspaper puzzles a lot so I brought it back again for The Missing Mr. E. Unfortunately of all the puzzles I’ve created this is one of my least favorites. It just looks sloppy and cheap to me.

Another puzzle idea used in the previous game was an overlay requiring the players to lay the solution to a maze from a previous puzzle on top of a picture with letters and symbols scattered all over it. Players observed that the line passed over specific letters that formed a sentence.

This was the idea that I tried to use again in the News Article puzzle.

Players reached this puzzle by locating the pile of newspapers on the floor at the far left of the office picture and clicked on the link which was now active.

When designing this I knew that I wanted the picture to be the key. I needed something that was inconspicuous but when layed on top of the news article in a particular way it would somehow reveal the answer. I scoured the internet for literally hours looking for the right picture. I just couldn’t find anything I liked. The trouble was, I either had to find something that would line up with the text I had or design the text to line up with the picture. Neither was easy to do. Finally I decided to just create my own picture. With this in mind I set out to create the news articles intending to make the picture later. So with a strong feeling of nostalgia I headed once again over to The Newspaper Clipping Generator website to create the clippings I would need.

First I wanted to use the main article as an opportunity to add some detail to the story and tie it in to the winning T-shirt design which featured a wanted poster displaying a shadowed image of Edward Fletcher. I also wanted the players to know that although the office in his home was in neat order, his basement lab was a shambles as though someone were looking for something. I decided to throw some other stuff at the players. Like the names of the people mentioned in the article; police chief D.K Raight and officer Theo Riess. Like Mr. E’s name, these are homonyms for other words or phrases.

The Personals had two purposes. The first was to add a bit of humor to the game. My favorite is “Got Shovel. Will dig Holes. Please call”. It’s just so simple and yet… I don’t know…desperate? The second purpose can be found with the odd use of capitalization within each of the ads. If you look closely you will see that in addition to the first letter of each sentence being capitalized there is also one other word with a capital letter. It seems the purpose of this has escaped me after all this time. I believe it was a clue to use the picture as an overlay. The letters are UPLAAHFL but now I’m not sure what I was trying to spell. When I type that into an anagram solver the most interesting solution I get is HULA FLAP. I checked my notes and nowhere did I explain what I was doing here. I must have come up with it at the last minute. Oh well, moving on.

The next step was for me to figure out what I wanted the puzzle answer to be. This may sound easy but since I wanted each answer to be a clue to the mystery, I had to put some thought into this. Once I had that determined I then selected the necessary letters from within the articles. I recall that I had to re-word some of it to get the letter I needed.

Now it was time to create the picture that would be used to locate the letters. As I drew the circles and the dots I thought they looked like a constellation. Figuring this would be the best and easiest solution I conducted a brief search of the internet but failed to produce anything even remotely close to what I had. I then looked at the circles and let my imagination drift. It occured to me then that if I joined a few of them with straight lines it kind of looked like a stick person holding a kite. Something I child might draw. That was when I decided that is exactly what it would be and the Constellation Contest was born. I created a news article to explain it.

The final step was to create the reference point the players would need to correctly align the picture with the articles. After considering several options I decided on bullet holes in the paper. I found a couple splat images on the internet that I liked and modified them to suit my needs. I placed them in various places around the newspaper, each of them a different shape and size. Except for two of them. The hole in the picture is identical to one of the holes elsewhere on the newspaper. These are what the players needed to line up. Once that was done it was a simple matter of following the alphabet in the picture and writing down the letters that red dots within the circles touched.

Now, do you think you’ve got enough information now to finish it yourself? It took the lead player 4 hours and 20 minutes to solve this one. Can you do it faster?

I should also mention that the puzzle solution also revealed the next number in the series which was 27.

Game 1, Puzzle 4: The Matrix

cowpattybill — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:00:35 +0000

If you look closely at the office picture, which is the access point for all the puzzles in The Missing Mr. E game, you will see the large lamp on the far left side. Above that lamp, scrawled into the wood frame around the window is the phrase “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT”. This is where the players found the link the fourth puzzle.

I call it The Matrix.

I got the idea from the movie by the same name (obviously). Originally I intended this to look much cooler than it ended up as. I wanted it to look something like this:

But that’s okay, it served it’s purpose.
So where do you go with this puzzle? I can tell you that it didn’t take players very long to figure that out because this puzzle was solved the fastest at 1 hour and 4 minutes.

At first glance it appears to be a series of zeros and ones. Binary language perhaps? I hoped that might slow players down a bit as they pursued that angle (I was wrong). How about the different colors of black, blue, red, and green? Surely that must mean something. Sorry, another red herring. A clever deception that apparently didn’t fool anyone either.

Maybe the phrase “What hath God wrought” means something. Yes, now you’re on the right track. Typing this into a search engine and a short amount of investigation reveals that, among other things, this was the first message sent by morse code on May 24th, 1844 by Samuel Morse (see pic on left) marking the official opening of the telegraph system.

If you know morse code then you know that it is a series of dashes and dots that when combined together in certain patterns represent the alphabet. This could also be sent electrically by telgraph as a series of audible “dits” (dots) and “dahs” (dashes).

Now that you know this, if you look at the puzzle again it’s solution is perhaps more clear. In this case rotating the puzzle 90 degrees counter-clockwise reveals that the 1’s now look like dashes and the 0’s now dots. All you need is a handy dandy translation key (see right) and you can begin to solve the puzzle.

Soon you may notice that although you’re translating the code into actual words, together they don’t make much sense. Here is the second last stumbling block I threw in there. I coded the sentence in reverse order. I guess my hope was that players wouldn’t be able to understand the sentence until you completely solved it instead of solving half of it and guessing what the last half would be or something like that.

So once solved the solution now poses the player with a question. A riddle to be more precise. My last attempt to increase the complexity of the puzzle. And what is the riddle? Well, you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself. I have to leave some mystery and challenge for you. I can tell you that the correct answer reveals the next number in the sequence which is 19.

Do you have the skills to finish solving it? Let’s see:

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

Game 1, Puzzle 2: License Plates

cowpattybill — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:04:47 +0000

Ah yes, the license plate puzzle. This is among my favorite puzzles. In this game it was important to create ways to reveal information about the story line as well as offer a puzzle to be solved. This puzzle provides both. The players got here by clicking on the license plate on the wall in the office which had now become an active link.

I’ve always been impressed by vanity plates on cars. I think some are quite original and I especially enjoy ones that make use letters and numbers together to spell something. I recall in my youth toying with the idea of getting a vanity plate that said…

This particular puzzle is multi-layered. First the players needs to decode the words on the plates to understand the message E is giving them. It’s important to the story line. Here is where they learn that there are coded documents that need to located and sent to someone to be decoded. The plates also tell them that there are clues hidden in the puzzles. I don’t think that was new information to anyone but since a lot of the players were new I thought it would be good to let them know that there was more to this puzzle than what meets the eye. One thing I hoped they would notice was that the hyphens on the plates meant the end of a sentence as opposed to each row being a sentence.

Using the message board to communicate with each other it wasn’t too long before someone mentioned that the alignment of the plates as well as the states represented were interesting things to consider. Shortly thereafter the realization that the two letter abbreviations for the states spelled out an entirely different message sparked a flurry of conversation as they raced to learn what the message said.

I think the fact that I made the first sentence short helped immensely in getting people going in the right direction. Another help was that the plates were laid out in way that each row of plates was a single word. All they had to do was unscramble the letters.

Creating a hidden message using only two letter state abbreviations is not easy to do although it didn’t take me as long as it could have. I kind of did it backwards. First I figured out what words could spelled and then used those words to make up a clue. It was bit awkward. For example, I could spell “a password” but had to leave out an “s”. I figured players could still figure it out. Similary, I could spell out “Christmas” but without the “t”. Once I discovered I could also spell “island” I then looked for a way to use them all together. Imagine my surprise when I learned that there was a “Christmas Island” in the world.

One thing I very much like to do is to insert clues in other puzzles. In this case, the sharpest of players recalled the previous puzzle (Letter from E) where it mentioned a pet bird from E’s uncle who worked on an island and the bird’s name was Goldy. This info plus the clues from the license plates that mentioned “flag” and “animal” helped steer the players to the answer they needed.

I also like to create puzzles that take a little research to answer. I don’t think there are too many people in the world that know off the top of their head what kind of bird is on the Christmas Island flag. But a few minutes with Google and the answer became clear.

It took players 2 hours and 46 minutes to come up with the correct answer. The correct answer provided the players with the next number. In this case it was 53.

Challenge yourself to see if you can solve it faster.

I fought the law and the law LOST!

cowpattybill — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 18:02:38 +0000

Surely by now you must have heard of Downfall parody videos. They are all over Youtube. If not, here’s a brief history….
There is a German movie called Downfall. It’s about Hitler’s last few days during World War II. There is a scene in the movie when he and his officers are in a bunker and has learned that he is losing the war. He goes into a tirade and starts yelling at everyone around him. Of course, to understand this you’d have to be able to speak German. Or you’d have to read the English subtitles. And this is where the fun comes in.

It has become tremendously popular to exchange the subtitles for other more comical ones and have Hitler ranting about any current event under the sun. Nothing is overlooked. There are clips about what Hitler thinks about Obama, about the new Iphone, about Microsoft, about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift during the grammy’s, and just about anything else you can think of. There are hundreds of these videos all over Youtube and other video sites.

I myself have made a few of these parodies. All of mine suggest that Hitler fancies himself a puzzle solving master and is upset that he can’t win any of the Cluechaser puzzle games. It’s all in good fun and in not meant as any kind of commmentary on Nazi’s, Jews, or the Holocaust.

As mentioned yesterday, one of the videos that I had lost and then found was a Downfall parody video. I happily posted it to Dailymotion.com to join the other two in the series that were already there (and have been for some time).

The other day I got an email from Dailymotion.com stating that my video was blocked because they had been notified that it included copyrighted material. They were of course referring to the Downfall movie.

In the last year or so, Constantin Films, the makers of the Downfall movie have been working to have all parody clips removed. I don’t want to get into the legalities of it all except to say that the movie is probably more well known now because of the parodies that it would ever have been without them.

The email I received from Dailymotion included a link to their terms. So I read them. It mentioned that if someone felt that they were the victim of copyright infringement that they had to follow a series of steps including identifying the url of the video in question, explain part of it was copyrighted, and some other stuff.

I’m pretty sure that my video was flagged through the use of this fairly new technique known as video fingerprinting. A whole other issue we could get into is whether these parody videos fall under the protection of a legal term known as “fair use” (which I believe it does).

I decided to challenge the accusation. I sent an email to Dailymotion asking them to provide me with copies of the information that the accuser should have sent to them as per their guidelines. I said that if I determined that the procedure was correctly followed and agreed that the video was a copyright infringement then I would promptly remove it. Otherwise I expected it to be restored immediately.

A few minutes later I received another email asking for the exact url of the video in question. I sent them the requested information. A few minutes after that I received another email saying that the matter was resolved and my video had been restored.

SUCCESS! So now all my Downfall parodies are available to be seen. Here they are for you to see. The first is the original bunker scene and the other 3 are from other parts of the movie. I decided it might be kind of fun to make them into a kind of sitcom called Adolf. Enjoy!

Side note- If you watch part 3 of 3 you might find that it looks vaguely familiar to the Hitler’s a player video. Well that’s because it is. I took a portion of the clip and flipped it. So it’s a mirror image. I think it looks pretty cool.

Hitler’s a player (Downfall movie parody)

Hitler’s gets some bad news (part 1 of 3)

www.cluechaser.com – Adolf and Game 3: Chasing Shadows-pt 1

Hitler’s gets some bad news (part 2 of 3)

www.cluechaser.com – Adolf and Game 3: Chasing Shadows-pt 2

Hitler’s gets some bad news (part 3 of 3)

www.cluechaser.com – Adolf and Game 3: Chasing Shadows-pt 3

Review of Game 1: The Missing Mr. E

cowpattybill — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:32:17 +0000

Now that we’ve walked through each of the puzzles in the first Cluechaser puzzle contest, Puzzle Master, it’s time to turn our attention to the second puzzle game.

I realize that some of you are probably saying “Wait, if this is game 2 then why is it called Game 1?” Great question. Although it’s true that this is the second contest, it is the first game in a three part game series called the Mr. E Series.

After the success of Puzzle Master I was eager to get going on another contest. I decided it would be fun if the puzzle answers themselves were clues that helped solve a larger puzzle. I thought that it would be more exciting for the players. That way they could feel like detectives solving a crime.

In addition to this I designed the game so that each correct answer gave the players a number. These would be need later in the game in order to solve the mystery.

I’m not sure how the Mr. E story line got into my head but I spent several days just writing down all my ideas. Eventually they all sort of came together into an international mystery involving a scientist, his associates, and an ultra-secret department of the US government.

My intent was to create a conspiracy theory. I wanted it to be plausible and contain some elements of truth. I even named the character Fletcher, giving a nod to the Mel Gibson character in the movie “Conspiracy Theory”. I used Edwards as the last name because I needed something that started with an E, to go along with Mr. E (which most of you realize I’m sure is a homonym for “mystery”).

I decided that I wanted to promote this game somehow and get as many people interested as I could. I posted on puzzle message boards, I wrote a press release, and also took my first steps into videography. I discovered that Windows Movie Maker, a video editing software was free and already installed on my PC. So I learned how to use it. I scoured the internet looking for pictures and sound that I could use to convey the mystery of the game. Considering it was my first video ever, I’m still pleased with it today although I think the ones I’ve made for the games since then are MUCH better.

Overall, I really love the storyline. To me it’s exciting. A scientist, fearing for his life because of a secret he’s stumbled across. He doesn’t know exactly what it means but he knows that others have been killed in an effort to keep it from becoming public. He disappears and goes into hiding but leaves clues hidden in puzzles for someone to solve, gathering bit by bit the knowlege that would be needed to discover what the secret is. I think it would make for a pretty good movie or at least a book.

The game started on April 1st, 2008 at 8AM PST. It would turn out to be the shortest Cluechaser game ever. The last puzzle was solved by two players named towerofbabel and e8 working together a mere 3 days 6 hours and 22 minutes after it began. This was about 1/10th the amount of time as the previous game. I didn’t mind the short play time too much. I had designed it to be easier because I wanted more people to play it, finish it, get drawn into the storyline, and be eagerly awaiting the next game. It worked pretty well because more people did play than before.

Now that you know the history, join me for the next few weeks as I tear apart Game 1: The Missing Mr. E and explain each puzzle, how it works, how it was created, and share any stories behind it. You will also have the opportunity to try and solve it on your own and experience for yourself the excitement of unlocking the first few tantalizing clues to the mystery.

Let’s start by watching the trailer video:

First, some notes about this video. The warning at the beginning was not originally there. I added it later at the request of my wife. You see, during the creation of Game 1 a couple of strange things happened. After I started uploading the puzzles to the web and putting the game together I added a hit counter to each page so I would know when a player started on the next puzzle. This way I could track everyone’s progress. Since the game hadn’t started I had all the counters set to zero. Imagine my surprise when one day I see that there was one hit on several of the pages.

Luckily one feature at my disposal was the ability to see on a map where the visitor came from. I zoomed in and discovered that the visitor was from somewhere within Washington, DC. Since the game was about things like government coverups and conspiracy theories and secrets between USA and China this “visitor” caused some hairs to stand up on the back of my neck. Of even greater concern to me was the fact that all the puzzle pages were in a password protected area. No one should have been able to access the puzzles unless they had the password or knew how to hack their way in. Was this the FBI or CIA checking me out? Needless to say, I was concerned.

Then, the very next day three guys came into the office where I worked and started looking around. They said they were with the fire department and just doing a routine check. It struck me as very odd. I thought about my Washington DC visitor and this got me even more worried. I told my wife about it and she tried to convince me to stop working on Cluechaser. I refused but compromised by adding the warning to the video.

In the end, nothing came of my mysterious visitors. Just coincidences I guess. I decided perhaps my DC visitor was really just myself. I may never know.

The second note regarding the video is that it begins to set the stage for an alternate reality that I needed to create for the players. It hints at things to come. Little of this is revealed in this game but it is in the following game, Puzzle PiEces.

And now, on with the video:

Game 1: The Missing Mr. E

Intro video

Puzzle Master 10 – To-Do List

cowpattybill — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:52:16 +0000

And now we arrive at the final puzzle in the Puzzle Master game series. By this time the players had been playing just 15 minutes shy of 32 full days and successfully solved 9 puzzles, each one completely different from the next. A wide range of knowledge and skills were required to get this far. I think it’s safe to say that no player could have made it this far on their own without help from the message board. And that is exactly what I hoped for. I thought the idea of competing players having to work together was a fantastic one and was so excited to see it work out just as I had envisioned. Now the moment of truth was fast approaching. Someone was just one puzzle away from finishing the first ever Cluechaser puzzle competition. It turns out it would take that person 7 hours and 43 minutes to figure it out.

I wanted the last puzzle to be pretty easy. I figured by this time I had put the players through a pretty rigorous workout and although they were probably expecting the last to be the most difficult, I decided to throw a curve ball and make it relatively easy. Though solving the puzzle was easy, finding what you needed to finish it could only be done by someone who had been playing since the beginning. How did I do that? Well, it wasn’t easy.

I decided that the best way to finish the game and determine a clear winner was to have them email me something. That way, the first email with the correct answer was the winner. I could have done it by IP address or something but I had no way to prove whose IP address was whose. Email seemed to be the best. But, what to email. I considered requesting a simple email to say they were done but what if someone had stumbled across the puzzle by accident and solved it? That wouldn’t do. I wanted to make sure the winner was someone who had weathered the storm and fought the good fight. To do that I needed them to send me something that proved that. I toyed with the idea of using the first letter of each puzzle answer but eventually my brain spit forth a beautiful and elegant solution.

Something I haven’t mentioned in discussing the previous puzzles is that occasionally I come up with an idea that requires me to go back and modify a previously completed puzzle. So it was in this case. I decided to modify the first puzzle, Cipher, to include a dead end or “red herring” as it’s called in the puzzle world. That dead end would be discovered by anyone who solved the cipher but did not solve the part beneath the picture of the fox jumping over the dog. Solving the top portion of that puzzle alone took the players to a site where they saw this picture on the right. Solving both the top and bottom parts of the cipher took the players to the correct location of the second puzzle. (Note – later on when making the puzzle suitable as a standalone puzzle I removed the red herring and created a different answer so the wrong path no longer exists)

I set the dead end page up so that it was clear to players that this was the wrong direction. What they didn’t realize, and wouldn’t until the end of the game, was that this page had an secondary purpose. It was the key to the solution of the final puzzle. For what they didn’t know was that this picture was actually 4 separate pictures that were arranged on the screen to look like one.

Actually, one person did notice this and they described it in considerable detail on the message board. In addition to noticing that there were four separate pictures, that clever player also noticed that the individual pieces were named clue1.JPG, clue2.JPG, clue3.JPG, and clue4.JPG. Thankfully there was seemingly no purpose to this so it was overlooked and ignored by everyone. This was truly a relief to me because I suddenly feared that someone would remember that information and the final puzzle would be solved in mere minutes. Despite my fears this didn’t happen.

The next step was to design the final puzzle to direct the players specifically to the clue1 and clue 2 images. I wanted them to find those two images and email them to me. What they spelled would pretty much be a guarantee to the player that they found the right images. So the puzzle told them what they were looking for but it was up to them to recall where they might have seen it.

It worked. It took only minutes for players to see the clue that was spelled out by the first letter of each item on the to-do list. It would take quite a bit longer to actually locate the images.

There were some wrong answers. Some players went in a completely wrong direction but as I’ve said before, it’s interesting what unintentional clues people find when they play. Such as one player. I asked him in an email how he came up with his wrong answer and here’s what he said:

LOL well there was the obvious CLUE 1 AND 2 JPG in the to do list, so I took the decryption key for Puzzle #1 and applied it to the letters with arrows pointing to them on the box in Puzzle #2 and came up with RE_US. ‘B’ wasn’t used in the original encryption, so I figured that must be it, especially since it appears that is the name for ‘Picture Puzzles’:

So you can see why I was so sure…

LOL, if that’s truely got nothing to do with it, it’s a fantastic red herring. I thought for sure I had to go back through all the images from previous puzzles for a ‘Rebus’

That was quite some impressive work he did. Even though it was wrong.

To make this puzzle suitable as a standalone puzzle I redesigned it so there is a link hidden in the picture that takes you to the four piece picture. See if you can find the link and figure out what clue 1 and clue 2 spell and type them into the answer blank at the bottom.

Puzzle Master 9 – Historical Documents

cowpattybill — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:00:43 +0000

We have just about finished our journey back through time to revisit the puzzles that made up the first ever Cluechaser puzzle game, Puzzle Master. We now take a look at my favorite puzzle of all, Historical Documents.

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.

Puzzle Master 3 – Good Luck

cowpattybill — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:00:51 +0000

Next up in our review and breakdown of previous Cluechaser puzzles is the one titled Good Luck. Hands down this puzzle was the most confusing for players. The difficult part it seems was not coming up with the pieces you needed to solve the puzzle but rather in putting them together in the right order and understanding what they meant. Although it only took 2 days, 17 hours and 17 minutes solve no other puzzle has generated more discussion on the message board than this one.

The original puzzle differs slightly from the one you see now. It had two directions. During the redesign I changed the answer into something less obscure but to do so I had to add another directional arrow so now there are three.

It didn’t take long for the majority of the players to figure out that you had to click on the pictures of the thermometer, feet, and ruler to get to the meat of the puzzle. There they realized that irritating and frustrating math problems awaited them. The math wasn’t particularly difficult but I tried to make it as confusing as possible. I knew most people would just copy and past the numbers into a spreadsheet so I made them bitmaps instead. Players were forced to read the numbers and enter them by hand into something. I’m sure it was the cause of many incorrect answers due to fat fingered data entry errors.
A funny side-note, one player didn’t realize you needed to click on the pictures so they were trying to translate the read-out on the thermometer, the 2 feet, and the distance on the ruler into something. I believe that a friendly hint from a fellow player got that person back on the right track.

Once players came up with the answers to the math problems it was pretty obvious that the purpose of the color coding was to put all the answers together by color. Not too much time after that someone mentioned that feet and inches is another way to represent minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude coordinates. From there it was just a matter of plugging these coordinates into Google Maps or Google Earth and seeing what was there.

Players quickly understood that the image they zoomed into at each of the coordinates was a building that was shaped like a letter. Soon the players had the 5 letters they needed. But now what? That proved to be the most difficult question to answer.

One thing I like about this puzzle is the multiple steps needed to get to the answer. There was quite a lot of work involved. I think the reason it was so hard to come up with the answer is that aside form the letter shaped buildings, there was no other clue as to what the answer was. Had I been a player, I would have immediately recognized what they represented and solved it right away. I find it interesting that no one came up with it on their own. I had to give A LOT of hints on the message board to nudge people in the right direction. I didn’t like having to do that and have since designed puzzles with enough clues in them that they can be solved without hints from me. This however, makes the puzzles easier to solve and that’s why Cluechaser games now take 3 or 4 days to finish instead of 31 days.

Eventually, after many hints, someone finally figured it out and then dropped a couple hints of their own on the message board and so after more than 7 days of chipping away at it, the puzzle was solved and most of the players were onto the next one.

What was the answer? Well, the letters indicated by the building shapes were E, I, O, X, and Y. I was hoping that players might recognize that the letters were an English alphabet representations of similar looking Greek letters. Realizing that I thought they might come up with IXOYE which is something I have seen on many bumper stickers and vanity plates and it represents JESUS, which was the correct answer. No one got that on their own although one player said that he unknowingly said the answer out loud when he first saw the math problems. I thought that was pretty funny.

For the redesigned version of the puzzle, the answer is much easier to figure out and the sentence at the top gives a pretty good clue to assist you.

Challenge yourself. Solve the math problems to find the coordinates, plug them into Google Maps (or Earth), see the alphabet shaped buildings and take a stab at the answer by typing it in the answer blank at the bottom.

If you get stuck or just want the answer you can unhide it here:

show
The answer is… EPOXY