Category — Solving

I just added a new link for a very interesting site I just discovered called PuzzleWiki. The site’s description is:

PuzzleWiki is a resource built for “paper-based” puzzle solvers and creators, especialy for participants in live puzzle hunt events. This site is built and maintained by the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt team Everyday Heroes.

This site sounds very cool, and given its Wiki-nature, it will only become more awesome.

This post is the first of an N-part series, where N is a number between 0 and infinity.

I have been working on a few puzzles lately that involve letter-to-number mappings of A-1, B-2, C-3, etc. Thanks to many years as a child playing Battleship, I still know that H is 8 and J is 10 … but I can’t remember many of the mappings after that. I know that T is 20, but I can never seem to remember the rest without writing out the entire table … is M 13 or 14? And what’s Q? Or V?

Because I’m extremely lazy (it comes with being a Perl programmer), I created a little mnemonic that saves me from having to write out the entire table every time I need it. I write it like this:

A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y
Z

Written this way, I get a simple visual reminder that the letters at the ends of the rows correspond to the multiples of 5 (E-5, J-10, O-15, T-20, Y-25). It’s easy to just count to the next letter. So Q is 17 and V is 22.

I found a puzzle cache yesterday. I thought you might appreciate the log entry from it. It’s all 100% true, even the entry from 2:35:12.

August 20 by ePeterso2 (580 found)

WEDNESDAY

12:40 pm – Begin work on solving this puzzle with the intent of finding it on the way home

12:55 pm – Puzzle solved. Well, most of the puzzle is solved. I’m only missing one of the words, but I’m so sure about the crossing words that I know I must be right.

4:30 pm – Get ready to skip out early to have enough time to get to the cache. Co-worker walks into cube and asks for “just a minute of my time”.

5:27 pm – One minute of my time ends.

5:28 pm – Give up hope of finding cache today.

THURSDAY

8:30 am – Arrive at work. Plan to leave at noon. Need to be in downtown Fort Lauderdale at 4:00 pm.

10:42 am – Doctor’s office calls. The doctor will be in surgery the rest of the day – all appointments today are canceled. Reschedule for tomorrow!

12:59 pm – Get son to band camp with one minute to spare! Have lunch.

2:30 pm – Arrive at the cache parking lot. Power up GPSr, punch in coordinates, and head in the direction of the arrow. “Battery Low” warning appears on GPSr screen.

2:31:15 pm – GPSr turns self off. Press on in same direction.

2:33 pm – Trail veers sharply away from the direction I know I need to be traveling. Remember signs at trailhead that say “STAY ON TRAIL”. Begin debate with self as to whether heeding that guidance is a good idea or not. If I stay on the trail, I don’t think I’ll find the cache. Ever.

2:34 pm – Debate with self concluded. I must find this cache! Leave trail.

2:34:30 pm – Restart GPSr, hoping to get a few minutes of battery life out of it. Stare at GPSr.

2:35 pm – Walk face-first into a massive spider web across the trail.

2:35:01 pm – Drop GPSr, shake head violently, and hope the spider isn’t in my hair. Frantically swipe at hair in hopes of brushing away any potential spiders.

2:35:05 pm – Consider that if the spider is in my hair, I will have smashed it and spider guts will now be in my hair.

2:35:06 pm – Check hair for spider guts. No spider guts found. Remainder of spider web removed. Pick up GPSr to find that it has died and powered off again.

2:35:12 pm – Grab a stick to use to clear away spider webs in front of me. Look up at remains of spider web. The spider is as large as my outstretched fingers.

2:35:25 pm – Exhale. Press on.

2:36 pm – Avoid spider webs 2, 3, and 4.

2:38 pm – Power up the GPSr again. It stays on just long enough for me to walk around a particular area of interest. Cache must be there.

2:39 pm – It is. Container is in hand!

2:39:01 pm – But I can’t open it. RATS. But I do remember what I need to open it!

2:39:03 pm – What I need is the last bit of the puzzle I wasn’t able to solve. RATS. And my solution to the puzzle is back on my desk at work. 30 miles away.

2:40 pm – Piece together what I think is the correct solution to the puzzle from memory. Ignore insect stings. Ignore pain of being poked by a thorny plant. Keep trying to open the cache. Keep failing.

2:45 pm – Give up squatting. Realize that I need to work on this some more. Decide to take the container with me back to the trailhead and work on it there.

2:50 pm – Return to trailhead after avoiding spiders 4, 3, 2, and 1 successfully. Fail to open container.

3:00 pm – Make notes about the container. Return container to hiding spot. Return to car and leave the area to try to find a nearby WiFi spot to cross-check my puzzle solution.

3:10 pm – Find WiFi spot. Order frozen lemonade which is awesome relief for being outside in the afternoon heat. Check answers. Discover potential solution that I totally overlooked.

3:35 pm – Return to the cache site. Apply solution – SUCCESS! Sign log, leave Red Otter pathtag for next finder.

3:45 pm – Return to the car. Miraculously hit a lucky combination of green lights. Make it to my meeting on time.

Thanks for the cache!

-eP

I saw an interesting query in the statistics gizmo used to run this web site. Someone entered the following search string: “how to solve music puzzles”.

Well, here’s your answer. This article is somewhat spoilerific. While it doesn’t tell you how to solve any specific puzzle, the information it contains is derived from puzzles I’ve solved in the past. I’ve tried to supply enough hints to get moving in the right direction without totally spoiling any particular puzzle.

Solving a music puzzle requires some understanding of music theory, which is the study of the language and the notation of music. Musical notation is any system which uses written symbols to represent aurally perceived music. Many types of notation systems have been created throughout history, but most written music you are likely to encounter will use only  modern musical symbols.

The topic of music theory is vast – far too big to include in a single article here. But the links presented so far will take you to a great set of resources to understand how music works so that you can get started in cracking puzzles that use music.

Here are just a few of the many possible ways in which music could be used to conceal information (such as a secret message or the coordinates of a geocache):

Note Names

Notes have letter names, from A to G. A puzzle constructor might begin with a word that uses only those letters, such as BAG, ACE, BADGE, or CABBAGE, then replace each letter in the word with a corresponding note.

Intervals

An interval is the difference in pitch between two notes, played either at the same time or played successively. An interval of a single half step is called a minor second, two half steps is a major second, three half steps is minor third, and so forth. A puzzle constructor might encode a series of numbers as a series of intervals.

Rhythms

A beat is a pulse that constitutes the fundamental unit of time in a piece of music. A measure is a segment of time, and the number and note value of beats in a measure is called the time signature. For instance, a measure of four beats in which a quarter note gets the beat is said to be in 4/4 time. A measure of six beats in which an eight note gets the beat is said to be in 6/8 time. Patterns of beats can be used to encode just about any kind of information, including letters, numbers, symbols, and more.

That should be enough to get you going. Good luck!

Beyond the shuffling of architectural air ducts, if you have the tenacity to rearrange the letters of this post’s title by hand you may have the good fortune of discovering the hidden words – INTERNET ANAGRAM SERVER – but it would be much easier if you simply went to the Internet Anagram Server at www.wordsmith.org/anagram and let the interweb do the work for you. It’s a great tool to test seemingly nonsensical strings of words in a puzzle, hiding your own clues in rearranged letters or simply discovering that GATOR PEED IN ONE CORRAL is an anagram for your full name – well at least mine.

Stuck on a puzzle that requires you to become a codebreaker? The Secret Code Breaker can help. The site provides a number of free codebreaking tools that I’ve found far more useful in some circumstances than many other online tools.

One of the most useful ones is the Monoalphabetic Substitution Cipher Solver – while there are many cryptogram solvers available on the web already, this one has the ability to solve cryptograms when the spaces are removed.

There is a wonderful library of tools useful in cracking classical ciphers available at rumkin.com. This is typically the first place I go when trying to solve a puzzle that involves cracking a cipher.

If you enjoy wordplay (and, frankly, who doesn’t?), then you’ll love the National Puzzlers League. The NPL is a self-described eclectic crowd who enjoy all forms of wordplay and are continuing the traditions of “The World’s Oldest Puzzlers’ Organization”.

I am often asked how I go about solving puzzles. As I’m interested in geocaching, I decided to create a series of geocaches that teach people how to solve some of the most common types of puzzles as well as to give them the skills to solve other types of puzzles.

The result of this effort is the Puzzle Solving 101 Series of geocaches. Each cache in the series offers a lesson on a particular topic of puzzle solving. The description of each cache offers a description of the topic as well as solving tips. Each lesson also contains an example to solve using the tips presented in the lesson – the solution to each example puzzle is the location of a geocache in Broward County, Florida.