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
Rickrolled
... yep. She got me good!
And in a normal world, that would have been a worthy end to a puzzle hunt.
Alas... I had a few more anagrams up my sleeve.
Seriously, go and rent Sneakers, it's so good.
Anyway, let's try this...
No? Maybe montereyscoast.surge.sh ?
How about mysocratesnote.surge.sh ?
Surely not cootysratsemen.surge.sh...
... I was ready for something to pop up and say "congratulations"!
The Bamboo
But wait, there's more!
Ranking highly in the category "least expected"... How about some Lorem Ipsum text in a monospace typeface on bamboo background?
Difficulty level: If I can do it, you can do it. But it's a gooder
The thing about Lorem Ipsum is that, much like Setec Astronomy, it doesn't mean anything.
On this page, if you hover over individual letters, they turn into little rings. These are all the characters that are special in that way:
lo fnuariuprquocderl am .o drt ece e,m idu lortrqUntertcredo
Alright, we've all learnt a lot about riddles. So let's go through our arsenal of tools!
Is it a caesar cipher? No luck there.
Convert qwerty to dvorak? Nope.
Convert dvorak to qwerty? Nothing.
I was really, REALLY hoping it wasn’t a full-sentence anagram, because those are A LOT OF WORK, but the consonant to vowel ratio, the single capital letter, the single comma and period, and enough us to go with the qs made it look like a distinct possibility.
My only hope was the suspicious monospace typeface. I thought that if I resize the window, maybe the special letters will line up to read top to bottom, or it will create a QR code, or big, pixelated letters. And it did none of those things, BUT…
(I cheated by going into developer mode [shift + ctrl + i] and changing the css on the fly to highlight the special characters, a cheeky shortcut which ended up earning me a respectful chin nod from my sister.)
See for yourself:
It was braille!! Brilliant!
YOU MADE IT
CHECK UNDER THE BAMBOO
Looking back at the map, I had been wondering what the 3-eyed yin-yang was all about, and now I knew. Three black dots on a yellow background, in Germany, are a sign for the visually impaired to be used in traffic.
By the way, "Lorem Ipsum" is also called a "Blindtext" in German...
I went out into our backyard and checked under the bamboo, and sure enough, there was my treasure (...which for the last several weeks Jeff had placed there each morning just in case I solve the final puzzle on that day - oh man!)
The treasure consisted of EXIT Forgotten Island (an escape room board game) and a book about Seven Steps to Mercy: the Shakespeare puzzle hunt conspiracy.
This has been a crazy ride, some of the most creative puzzles I’ve ever seen anywhere, and pretty sure the best birthday present anybody ever got. I’m really sorry y’all don’t have my sister for a sister! And also of course a big, big thank-you to everybody else who contributed - Jeff, our Mama, Errol, Melissa, Dani and Dave. I loved this so much, and it made me feel so loved as well.
And thank YOU for reading this to the end. 