Day 5: Princeton to* New York

*Disclaimer: No actual puzzle-hunting was actually endured on the trip to New York.

We start our morning with a short drive to downtown Princeton (motto: "We're so awesome that we can get away with being in New Jersey") where we find a significant lack of restaurants that are open before the hunt start time of 10am.

If you're going to win credit card roulette, win big.

But we eventually find a small snack bar open in the Princeton Public Library and I win my first game of Credit Card Roulette, placing a highest-ever record until I fall down the chart at supper.

Not pictured: Our team; Rachel's Mom.  Pictured: all the other teams not in this picture.

The hunt starts and we see GC (Joshua) and the other teams.  We go back to the library, get a town map, and start researching.

Generally the past legs (unless the other guys were pulling mine) gave out all the clues in no particular geographical order.  This means that the best strategy is to sit in one position, determine as many clue locations as you can, and then map out all the clue locations and find a Hamiltonian Path.  At around the third clue we started to suspect that the clues were given in order, along an actual Hamiltonian path.  That was helped by Joshua suggesting at some point that this leg was actually written by some friends of his.  This suspicion slowly became more and more confirming until we reached the end.  Then we realized it was dead.  More on that later.

After a while, we think we have locations for all the clues except clues #5 and #7.  So we make a mental note to keep on the lookout for the salient features.

Jonathan tries to not pay attention to what Rich is doing to the front of that cat.

On the way to Clue #1, we see a "tiger's tail" and lots of data on the ground.  But the tiger's tail, in an amazing form of non-Darwinian evolution, eventually becomes a red herring.

Think we'll need to index the 1777th letter of something?

Clue #1.

The oldest building on campus is Nassau Hall.  The poem eventually leads us to a sejant tiger statue.  ("Sejant"?  Who the heck says "sejant"?  Nobody says "sejant".  Unless you're reading this blog out loud, in which case someone has just said "sejant" four times.) 

Don't use bronze ink when writing.  It gets runny in just a few decades.

Anyway, the tiger's sitting in front of a plaque, that has a bunch of text but includes the word "BEHOLD", which seems to suggest that the text after that is what "our fathers say you should behold".

The Code, however, is mysterious.  It looks kind of coordinate-based but trying row/word/first letter or row/index letter was unsuccessful. 

"Maybe we need to count the digits on the tiger's paws."

Eventually someone remembers that in a previous leg, letters were placed into a grid... and the lion says "79" on it.  I plot out a 7 by 9 grid and we get "WHO WAS DECAPITATED HEREIN"?  Answer.

Whew!  I was worried about not calling the zebra a cheating bastard.

Clue #2.

Princeton students who died on 9/11, on the other hand, get nothing.

This starts out simple -- there's a 9/11 memorial between Chancellor green and East Pyne Hall. 

"Why did they make a shrine to Super Mario Galaxy?"

 There are 13 bronze stars on the ground, labeled with the names of 13 alumni who died in the Twin Towers attack that day. 

"Wish I was on Hollywood Boulevard."

The stars have their graduation years.

In retrospect, guessing that the message started with 'OOK' was probably not the smartest idea.

Sorting their graduation years in order resulting in us getting the same message Jonathan got hours ago in the library: "SEEK BY WITHERSPOON FOR TOP BOOK".

Dude is so smart, he poops philosophy.

We go to the statue of Witherspoon, look at the back of the statue where there are a pile of books, and note that the top book was "CICERO", which fits nicely into the answer grid.

But just in case, Dan calls GC to confirm.  In the meantime, we look at Clue #3:

You need a pretty strong NJ accent to rhyme "installed" with "code."

We knew from research that this was referring to the same statue.  Looking on the back, under "CICERO", and between "HUME" and "LOCKE", we find the title "PAISLEY".  Using that as a Vigenere shift gets us text: "THEANSWERISAWILSONPRIME".  Of the Wilson Primes that we are able to calculate, only one of them had eight letters, so we think that's it.

'Lectern'?  I thought you said 'Black tern'!

Meanwhile, Dan is having a very strange conversation with GC.  They seemed to confirm that it was right... but then started talking about a whole lot of other stuff, like how the statue was holding a book in his hand, which is actually the Bible but you can't really tell because no spine is visible.  On the book, that is.  (Well, Mr. Witherspoon's spine isn't visible either, but you'd expect that.)  At this point we remembered we hadn't used any of the hand-written stuff on the back of the sheet.

First we noticed that some of the text in the middle was kind of weird, and was actually written in two different inks.  A bunch of text seemed to say "ABLE READ BUT TOP +TOP OK NOT HEAT", which lined up with the hole at the bottom of the page.

MESSAGE NOT OK SENSE MAKE

Then we thought, well, looks like the text is magic heat-sensitive text.  So we used a lighter to heat the paper up, and that revealed another message: "IT MEANS NO IF THING NOT IN SQUARE."

We are now totally confused.  Did we solve this puzzle or not?

Eventually we pieced together what probably happened.  We'd gotten the last few steps in the wrong order!  We were first supposed to get the "IT MEANS NO" message, which tells us to only use the hole ("SQUARE") with the bottom of the page, which would get us to "HEAT", which was supposed to tell us to heat the page, which would get us to "OK, NOT +TOP TOP BUT READABLE", which was telling is to ignore the top-top book (the Bible) but rather the top readable book (Cicero).

Speculation on whether this was something that another team had trouble with and GC decided to make a last-minute addition to the puzzle to clarify which book was the "top" book ensued.  But we had more puzzles to do.

Wait, isn't there supposed to be a code at the bottom?

Clue #4.

We figured out that this clue was probably talking about the chapel. 

You'll just have to take my word that the plaque says that Cram built this abbey and invented Prilosec.

After going around it multiple times without really finding any "iron gates", we found a plaque inside the chapel proclaiming it was designed by a man named Cram.  Okay, that gets us to the second paragraph...

Rev. Bright is so bright he preaches to the outside of the chapel!

Then we found a plaque on the south side of the chapel mentioning a William Bright, thereby suggesting that we were in the correct neighborhood for the third paragraph.

The rest of the poem made no sense though.  It was at this point that we split up and started looking around more.

Eventually, I decide to hang out with one of the many tour groups that was wandering the area, and then hear about the story of the chapel bulldog.

On the other side there's a gargoyle shaped like Spider-Man.

Yup, there it is.  I call the rest of the team over, tell them the story, and we convince ourselves that we must be in the right place... but what should we do next?

After a few more minutes of fruitless searching, we call GC and he tells us to use the blacklight.  Oh.  That seems unexpected, but behold, there's a message on the back:

"Confucius say: This fortune cookie too tough to eat."

LOOK UNDER ROCK.  Oh.  Look, there's a rock and is that something under it?

But WHO OWNS THE ZEBRA?

Ah, another riddle.  Fortunately, this one's easy -- the answer is  IMAGINATION.

There are easier ways to leave a guy your phone number, you know.

Clue #5

Well, uh.  We had no idea what this clue was talking about.  So, let's move onto Clue #6:

Six figures on both sides... so, we're looking for a millionaire, right?

Our initial thought, before we set out on our travels, was that "glass of color" was probably a reference to stained glass, and hence we'd be looking for something near the campus chapel.  Well, since Clue #3 and #4 were already around the chapel, we felt less confident about that.  Also us having walked around the chapel around three times probably also undermined our confidence about Clue #6 being near the chapel.

So, to increase our chances of finding something useful, we detoured south of Dickinson Hall and turned west.  We also give Clue #7 an extra look:

I'm sure it's important that the first letters of each line anagram to 'BEAUTY BASICS.'

At that exact moment, a cart driven by a food services person drove past and we decided to ask him if he knew anything about stained glass.  He pointed to the University Art Museum and said there's an information desk inside.

The information desk turned out to me the Museum gift shop, with a young girl staffer and an older lady on the phone.  We asked the young girl and she said that Clue #6 looked like maybe it was the Chapel and Clue #7 was probably about Nassau Hall.  Er, thanks.  Three of us then walked outside.  Jonathan notices that the fodder at the bottom of Clue #7 has a lot of typewriter patterns: QWERTY, EDCRFV, stuff like that.  We eventually decide that GC used those letters as fillers and it wouldn't be that useful (or fun) to try to backsolve that way.

Then we noticed one of us was missing. One of us went inside to look for the fourth one just as the fourth one came outside, then we sent another one to go back in to find the guy who went inside, and after about three repetitions of this, the older lady got off the phone so we asked her about the clues because why not. 

She said, in an apparently much more helpful manner, there's a very nice stained glass window of St. Catherine near here, and pointed out the door and around the building.  So we head out.

We were still incapable of not splitting up into groups of three, and, unbeknownst to us, there was no actual stained glass window of St. Catherine outside the building.  This led to us wandering around south of the Art Museum, half-looking for clues, half-looking for stained glass, and half-looking for other team members.

"Don't come over here!  I'm peeing in the bush!"

This was at the point when Rich found Luke's hat.

Your hat's so heavy you can't lift it?  Use the Force, Luke.

Turns out "Luke" is short for "Louis R. Roth", and his hat is made out of copper.  On the other side of the bench is a plaque that matched the pattern on our cluesheet rather nicely.  More than one of us put the words onto the pattern, then took the numbers as indexes, then realized that we were just getting the last letter of every word.

Since we knew that Ian Tullis wasn't writing this puzzle, we immediately rejected the idea that GC had managed to find a plaque where the last letter of each word spelled a phrase. 

The next thought was that the number triplets were a simple index: first number was a row, second number told you which word in the row, third number told you which letter to take in the word.  This ran into problems at the third number, where we ended up needing to take the third letter of a two-letter word.

Triangle, man.  Triangle, man.  Doing whatever.  A triangle.  Can.

Eventually we figured out the extraction rule, getting the answer: THIS GAMER OCKS.  We didn't know any gamer named Ocks but it fit in the meta grid so that was fine.

At this point, with no idea where to find clues #6 and #7, we decide we might as well make our way to clue #8.  For our Hamiltonian path theory to still be alive, we should expect those two to be on the way.  Rich can't handle the fact that we're all travelling together, so he volunteers to go back to the Art Museum and get some better information about the stained glass of St. Catherine.

We walk north along Elm Drive.  Rich returns with some negative news -- the stained glass is of Saint Cecilia, is inside the museum, and is of no help to Clue #6 whatsoever. 

Jonathan does a pattern match based on the letters from the metapuzzle and hypothesizes that the answer to Clue #7 is AUGUSTUS VAN WINKLE.  Fits the pattern, and we're reasonably confident that it's correct, but we'd still like to "forward-solve" Clue #7 if we can.

We speculate on whether our theory is bad and maybe Clue #7 is referring to the year plaques around Nassau Hall.  So we detour back to the Hall, look at the plaques with no inspiration, and three of us go into the Hall, leaving Dan sitting on the steps, who is still working on Clue #6.

The inside of Nassau Hall is filled with text fodder, about Princeton alumni who have died in the wars, but is of no apparent help to the clue.  We come out to find Dan making progress on Clue #6.  He's discovered that it's referring to a bas-relief sculpture on the south end of Alexander Hall, and is trying to fill out what he can from Internet searches.

I propose, since we're making no progress on #7, why not walk towards #8 and pass by Alexander Hall on the way?

We walk past Alexander Hall, and Clue #6 becomes instantly obvious:

I think I beat a Final Fantasy boss here once.

But also useless because Dan has pretty much solved the puzzle by now, decoding to "WHO HAS A LYRE" (if you assume that ARCHITECTURE and BELLES-LETRES have 13 characters each).  That would be the fourth figure from the left, so we'll fill in MUSIC for the answer.

'KCTITMAW'?  What kind of crappy acrostic is this?

At this point, we've made enough progress on the Answer Sheet to get the message: "SEEK?NOVERFLO?INGKIOSKONNASSAUNEARTH?ATRE".  We're guessing that this means we should look for an overflowing kiosk on Nassau street near a theatre. 

Since the only theatre we can find on a map is east and #8 is west, we decide to do the meta before doing #8.

The sad part is, the actual kiosk is two blocks beyond this one.

Man, this kiosk is far away.

"Have you seen this cat?"  "Well, I have now!"

Really far away.

Not the best photo to be putting on Craigslist.

Eventually we get there and look for anything odd-looking on the kiosk.  We immediately spot something on it. 

Jonathan is not impressed.

Seriously, though, the team is very amused that GC has taken our running gag and incorporated into the hunt.  Although we have no idea how GC learned about it.  Turns out that Todd is a traitor who has violated the sanctity of this blog's privacy.  You will be dealt with appropriately, Etter!

On the photo of McKayla there is more blacklight text.  We can't read it, so instead we look behind McKayla and find a rebus that looks like it came straight from the opening shot of Star Wars:

That's the shadow of the Millenium Falcon on the bottom.

It's a simple rebus that we decode quickly, except that we can't tell what that record-music-looking thing is supposed to be.  RECORD doesn't work (and there's already a RECORD in the rebus), nor does MUSIC or DISC. 

Check out the ICE in the lower left.  No, there's no CREAM in it.

Eventually we realize it has to be a CD.

1 = Luke's hat.

Well, we've been zigzagging around the campus more than enough times, so it's time to decree the Hamiltonian path theory totally dead -- killed by Aaron Burr.

They told me Rock is Dead, but I didn't believe it until now.

We head north to Princeton Cemetery, "The Westminster Abbey of the United States", to find the gravesite of Aaron Burr.

And they can't even print their letters the right way.

We quickly get turned around in the Cemetery.  Fortunately we find some maps of the place hidden in a small box marked "SPAM."

It's in a plot especially reserved for dead presidents, like Samuel Davies and Ashbel Green.

With this map, we find Aaron's grave.   

Puzzler's claim to fame: starting and ending with doubled letters.

Burr's headstone is weatherworn and hard to read, so fortunately later people have added a plaque underneath to translate fuzzy text into ITC Bookman Demi.

Oh wait, what's this?

Ah, it's just rolled-up blank pieces of yellow paper.

How appropriate for a Vice President.  (The plot is for dead presidents of Princeton, in case you haven't figure that out yet.)

Ink fades faster than stone engraving.

The blank piece has... more blacklight writing on it.

"The answer is H0DEIB-F0IA!  Submit it!"

Calling the phone number yields a poem that is hard to hear (you can try it yourself if it's still up), but we eventually figure out that it's leading us on a scavenger hunt through the cemetery.

Avant-garde gravestones are awesome.

"Seek a bird upon a spiral,"

This happened a lot.

"to a pole known to all..."

I think the angel's name is Mark Johnson.

"An angel of a child waits glowing light for all.  Past the Mark of Johnson,"

Don't ask, don't tell.

"to a Celtic cross of Dykes,"

"What does a sheep do, Alex?"

"Bahcall holds a nice refraction to lut such a lovely site."

Told you.

Moving past his marker to the iron dog;

This is where the Blue Ball Machine starts.

An angel in the distance marks a heartfelt metal log.

Yes, it really does say "Barker" under that finger.

From here two pillars stand aside for that man barking tough,

Bet you're surprised.

And past the bonnie lass get closer to the sum.

Rich's phone is just a little bit faster.

For here you seek nine pillars tall to five night quite and dig,

Isn't Millicent a woman's name?

And here you find a signal that old Burley helps to give.

Math class is hard.

Three times the day he was born, minus one or two;

Physics class is harder.

shall help you hear a message to solve this final clue. Good luck!"

"Wait, you mean radio signals haven't gone digital yet?"

The little AM/FM radio (the only unused item in our goodie bag from the start of the hunt), when tuned correctly, has a (thankfully) much shorter repeating message:  "Well done indeed!  Your answer is I LOVE NEW YORK."  We call GC to confirm.  Yay!  We're off the clock.


Clue #8

They were sent back to remedial pirate school because of their mediocre chant.

Well, to get a perfect score we need to solve this.  We pick up our van and drive to the location, ...

George Washington Crossing His Eyes

Where we see George Washington looking at ...

"Ring it.  You know you want to."

A bell memorializing the sinking of the U.S.S. Princeton.

See if you can find the two typos.

The poem seems to be pretty clear what we need to do.  Take the names on the plaque in order, which are UPSHUR, GILMER, KENNON, MAXCY, GARDNER.  Assign them the letters from A to Z, so A is U, B  is P, C is S, and so on.  Doing that, we can decode YENNSAEHLA into... WKOOCTKDIT.  Well, except that the Ks could be Ns or Cs, and the Os can be Ps, Rs, or Bs, and the Ts could be Ys.

This is not good progress.  We call GC and, not asking for a hint, ask for confirmation that this puzzle has in fact been solved.  GC says that other teams solved it in playtest.

We try other techniques and talk ourselves out of it -- sorting by alphabetical order, sorting by first name, Playfair cipher, Vigenere, etc.  Since we're off the clock and can legally split up, Jonathan and I decide that even though Hamilton is long since dead, we'll try walking to Clue #6 and see if we can find anything that helps with Clue #7.  We don't.

Jonathan gets a call from GC about data confirmation.  Their records say that the first two names are "UPSHER" and "GILMAR".  We call back to Rich and Dan, who quickly extract the answer of "WE ROCK. EDIT!", a rather appropriate message for us to give to GC.  Rich and Dan come and pick us up, and we speed away from Princeton.

Rich and Jonathan have grumblies in their tumblies, so we figure out what the quintessential dining experience in New Jersey should be... and we go to White Castle. 

Now the only sliders are made from motor oil!

But wait, the map says there's a White Castle here but it's gone!

Parking lot seems awfully crowded for a White Castle.

Whew, they just moved half a mile away.

But first, a game of Classic Concentration!

We order a mass quantity of food to celebrate Dan losing his WC virginity.

Dan exhibits schadenfreude.

Rich downs 12 sliders.  He later says, "If I had a time machine, I would have only eaten 8."  Maybe he already has a time machine and he original ate 16.  Who knows.

We then brave NYC rush hour traffic, and Rich loses his "driving in NYC" virginity.  He handles the horn like he's been driving here all his life.

We check into the hotel, which has an interesting property -- to get to Dan and Ana's room, which is on the sixth floor, we had to go down 6 steps of stairs from the elevator.  To get to Rich and Jonathan's room, which is on the 11th floor, we had to go up 6 steps of stairs.  I'll let you guess as to the reason why.

"Unh.  Can't.  Reach...."

After marvelling at the world's most inconvenient toilet dispenser, we joined Larry Green-noun-that-I-can-never-remember-but-it-is-probably-field for dinner at Seasonal.  I come back here and type up most of this blog post.

Then I type the first sentence in the last paragraph.  Then the second one.  And then I type the penultimate sentence in the post.  I type the last sentence and that's it.