Two of the puzzles from Midnight Madness X.

[angledge]

OK, chaosvizier already wrote out a long, chronological description of our Midnight Madness adventures. So I figured that rather than telling you all a different version of the same story, I'd explain two of the puzzles that we did during the course of the game.

The Statements Puzzle

We were given an envelope by one of the GameControl staffers. In it, we found an 8.5"x11" piece of paper. At the top, a centered title read "STATEMENTS". The rest of the paper was covered with three columns of short phrases, broken into groups. Here's an example:

Never
How cool
Crazy
I could
It is ok
Count it
Showy

Team Heliotrope went down a LOT of wrong paths on this puzzle. Here's how it actually worked. The main clue to solving this puzzle was in the title, "STATEMENTS". Each phrase contained a state abbreviation somewhere in it. So the example grouping was decoded like this:

Never = NE = Nebraska
How cool = CO = Colorado
Crazy = AZ = Arizona
I could = CO = Colorado
It is ok = OK = Oklahoma
Count it = CO = Colorado
Showy = WY = Wyoming

While we were working out the states for all 94 phrases on the page, hotpantsgalore noticed that the groups seemed to consist of states in regional areas. marasca had brought her laptop to the game & quickly called up a map. Then I started reading out the names, while chaosvizier pointed to them.

angledge: "Nebraska...Colorado...Arizona...Colorado...Oklahoma...Colorado...Wyoming. Any ideas?"
chaosvizier: "That made an X."

And so it did.



Eventually, all of the clusters were transformed into letters, & those letters spelled out "ESSEX + BROOME". A portion of Team Heliotrope headed for the intersection of Essex Street and Broome Street. After searching around for a while, one of them finally looked up to a ledge on one of the buildings near the intersection & saw...

The Animals Puzzle

The underlined word GROW was part of the game; I texted that to GameControl along with our team password so they would know we had completed a puzzle (i.e., we had worked out the Statements puzzle & made it to the next clue). But what was up with the animals?

Since it's hard to see in the video (keep in mind this video was shot pretty early in the morning), the animal order from left to right is frog, zebra, frog, elephant, bear, elephant, zebra, bear, camel, giraffe, lion, squirrel, camel, squirrel, giraffe, lion.

This puzzle hinged on the fact that each animal appeared twice & only twice. The frogs were separated by one animal, the zebras were separated by four animals, etc. Once you figured out the number of animals separating each pair, you counted off that number to take a letter out of each animal's name:

FROG = 1 = F
ZEBRA = 4 = R
ELEPHANT = 1 = E
BEAR = 2 = E
CAMEL = 3 = M
GIRAFFE = 4 = A
LION = 4 = N
SQUIRREL = 1 = S

chaosvizier said, "Free Mans?" Then katieledge gasped & said, "Freeman's Alley! That's where we got drunk at New Year's!" hotpantsgalore & I said, "Oh yeah..." We grabbed a map, located the alley, & were off to our next clue.

Anyway, that's how we spent our weekend.

Comments

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

To add to this post, someone on the MMX board posted his MMX photos on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/orin/sets/72157601715811078/

There's a few of us in Sara Roosevelt Park, getting clues on the Statements puzzle and coordinating our next moves.