Too Many Secrets
Marleen's 40th birthday puzzle hunt
My sister made me this amazing birthday gift - least I could do was to write a report on it and make it look kinda of awesome to do the experience justice. So that's what I did. I didn't have time, however, to create a version that displays beautifully on small screens. So this report is only available on tablets, laptops, desktop PCs and TVs.
You can try turning your mobile device sideways (for landscape mode) - or otherwise, find a slightly larger screen and then come back!
Thank you.
- Marleen
Tool Kit
The Map
Again I was given two new paths to take!
I did spot something on the "Take a Break" website - but it didn't lead to anything, so I decided to circle back to it later. I do love word searches, so I was excited about that. However...
Word Search my Ass
"What a weird word search puzzle..." is the title of this website and indeed, this didn't look like any word search I'd done before. I found the word "bed" and that's about it.
Difficulty level: approachable. You can do it. If I'd recommend any puzzle at all to try for yourself, this would be it.
It was clear that there weren't any longer words to be found, let alone instructions on what to do next, who to call, or where to go.
It was also odd that when you clicked a letter, a black square appeared. Click it again, and the letter vanished completely.
The grid looked like it was algorithmically created - each pair of letters was consecutive. So each letter was either one higher or one lower in the alphabet than the last. I thought, maybe 0s for lower and 1s for higher? Will this turn into meaningful binary code? But the 19 by 19 grid size would have been an odd choice for that.
And then it clicked. I had to color each square either black or white, depending on whether the letter was higher or lower than the last. But which way around? Well, the symbol on the map was the final clue! Can you find it?
Armed with the new insights, I went and coloured in the word search, and was rewarded with...
A QR code. So clever!
The QR reader that comes with the iPhone couldn't read it (apparently, they can't parse aztec codes, who knew?) but I downloaded a random free QR reader app and that did the trick.
And that let me to...
