Day 7: Boston

This morning we started at 11:00am for a change.  (Later we learned that Josh was having a spot of computer trouble and had to re-lay-out a bunch of puzzle material, which explains certain minor formatting glitches later on.)  We started where the swan boats operate in the Public Garden (a Boston park).  Alas, Rachel & company had a family emergency and couldn't play in this last day, so it was just us and the team Kangaroos Can't Jump.

Josh explained to us that, unlike previous days, today would be mostly linear with each clue leading to the next.  There would also be a set of nonlinear, independent bonus clues at scattered locations.  This was the inverse of the previous day in NYC (when we had a linear bonus track and a choose-your-path main set). Each bonus solve today was worth 30 minutes of time.

Josh also made sure we had our goodies.  We had actually misplaced our goody bag, so he gave us a replacement blacklight, which turned out to be critical (see later).

Much like yesterday's bonus track, today's main track contained some location hints, so we could make some guesses about where we could go.  We spent a little time at the start searching for them to get a head start on identification and navigation.  More importantly, we tried to nail down the location of today's scattered bonus clues, so that we could pick them up when they were in the area.

The clue packet also included a hotel card key for the nearby Park Plaza hotel.

Main track #1: Line of Statues

The first main track clue had four portraits of historical figures and this poem:

Near moving swans not living

These four man [sic] span a line

And there [sic] last names in this order

Shall fill the grid just fine

When you have this order

Zig Zag leads the way, that which you must find

For the next clue now in play

This was followed by a large box with scattered X's and a series of small boxes across the top.  This was a straightforward solve: The historical figures are all statues along one side of the park; their names fill the boxes at the top; reading the letters corresponding to the X's in vertical order yields the message "PREACHERS PROPHET OF".

We got stymied here for a while.  One of the statues was clearly of a preacher (with a Bible, etc.), and had an inscription including the phrase "PROPHET OF LIBERTY".  So we thought the answer was "LIBERTY", and we thought that would feed down into the chunk of crypto text below.  But we couldn't get it to decode.

But that was wrong.  Eventually Wei-Hwa convinced us (over my strong objections, I'm ashamed to admit) to move on to location #2.

Main track #2: Edward Everett Hale statue

The next clue included another photo of a historical figure (Edward Everett Hale) with a statue in the park.

This matched the flavor text "(My hat is off to you sir if you an crack the code!)".

His statue had the inscription "PROPHET OF PEACE", and indeed "PEACE" decrypted the Vigenere text.  This set up the pattern for the future; whenever a dotted line appeared between two sections on the page, that meant a physical walk from one site to the next, carrying some data through.  So after receiving "PREACHERS PROPHET OF", we were supposed to walk to this site, then extract the keyword and decrypt the text.  This carry-instructions-forward mechanism is novel to me, and an interesting change from "West Coast" style hunting -- you may know where you're going to go, but without solving previous clues you won't know what to do when you get there!

Anyway, we decoded our ciphertext to a long message circuitously hinting at the word "pollywog" (via the nautical term for sailors who have never crossed the Equator), and suggesting that we find a place where adult versions might be found.  This is clearly the Frog Pond in Boston Common.

So far this was all pretty straightforward.  On the way to the Frog Pond, we stopped off at our first bonus clue on the way.

Bonus: Minesweeper

The bonus clue included a picture of the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial in the Boston Common, a Minesweeper grid, and this poem:

A monument to those for whom

This duty was no game

Fill all the squares from A to U

And the answer you may claim

Near the S&S memorial is a small memorial to the North Sea mine sweepers.

The memorial was an actual sea mine (we presume the explosive had been removed!).  Filling the Minesweeper grid with text from the mine (with started with A and ended with the letter U) and marking off the letters corresponding to mines, you get an anagram of the word "BATTLESHIP".  I thought the use of the thematic location was cute.

Main track #3: Tadpole Playground

Back on the main track, we headed to the Tadpole Playground, near the Frog Pond, as clued by the decoded text from the last main track clue.

This clue was more complicated.  It started with an arch-shaped set of numbers: "1 3 5 7 9 11 13    15 17 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16".  These clearly corresponded to the letters "TADPOLE PLAYGROUND" in the arch.  There was also a pile of ciphertext.

This stymied us for a while!  Right away, we permuted TADPOLE PLAYGROUND with the numbers to get "TAAYDGPROULUENPDL".  We tried various extensions to that without too much luck.  Applying decrypto to the ciphertext didn't work, exactly, but it did produce some promising phrases.  Guessing that this would be an ambiguous cryptogram (a Ravenchase favorite), we worked back, and eventually figured out that we needed to fill out our permutation with a backwards alphabet (yes, this was clued... but obliquely) "TAAYDGPROULUENPDLZYXWVUTSR", using that as a substitution for the forward alphabet, and working through the ambiguous cryptogram to get a message something like this:

CXXVI FEET UNTO THE SKY

SEEK HERE FOR WHAT MM KNEW

HEADLESS ZOMBIE SHOWS A CLUE

RINGS HELD BY THEIR MAN

SHOW THE PATTERN TO IMPART

I'd like to point out here that starting ciphertext with a roman numeral is a little diabolical!  Also "headless zombie", what could that possibly mean?  Read on...

Main track #4: Headless Zombie

The Soldiers & Sailors memorial (the same one from the bonus -- we were probably "meant" to solve the bonus at the next main track site) is in fact 126 feet high.

After the requisite dotted line, the clue sheet included a diagram with a number of overlapping circles in various configurations with letters in each circle.  The decrypt from the last puzzle led us to search for "headless zombies", and we found this:

The pattern of rings (being handed out by some women in the frieze) matched some of the rings on the clue sheet.  Extracting the letters from those rings spelled "RM 1144".  We knew what to do next!

Main track #5: Hotel room

We headed to the Park Plaza hotel, and lo and behold, our key opened room 1144.  After the dotted line on the clue sheet was this poem:

A lock within a lock, needs a key within a key

To find the clues which wait within

Which leads you on to me

Here within this room you'll find

Six words that you will need

To crack the simple safe you find

And get what waits for the [sic]

Once you have the answer

Go there and use this code

And shall have the answer

To take you down the road

(It was like that when I got here, I swear)

Yay, a locked hotel room mystery!  As we're sort of poking around, Wei-Hwa berates us: "Haven't you ever ransacked a hotel room before?  Hurry up!"  We do things like use our trusty blacklight on everything in sight, and eventually we find a few things:

• The shaving mirror, when steamed with breath, had a phone number on one side, and "SEEK INSIDE THE LIGHT" on the other.
• Inside one of the lampshades, it said "BREATHE".
• On a mirror, we found the numbers 7, 1, 7, and 6.  This was written high enough that Rich found it before Wei-Hwa did!

We missed the biggest clue of all, which was apparently that the sheets had been written on in UV ink ("full on Monica Lewinsky style") in Pig-pen cipher.  Anyway we didn't get that.  But the safe combination was indeed 1776!  Inside the safe was a lovely cryptex:

The phone number led to a message which gave hints for the word to use: "A word which means Dutch castle, or possibly even Dutch stone".  We were trying various things, when Wei-Hwa was able to use his mechanical puzzle skills to figure out that the first few letters were "STE..."; from that, we got to "STEEN", Dutch for stone and the name of a particular Dutch castle.  The cryptex popped open:

Inside was a slip of paper with two lines of a wacky cipher made of circles with lines and smaller circles in it. On inspection, one of the lines was 26 symbols long, and turned out to be an alphabet.  After trying the wrong orientation first, we decoded it to "CRISPUS MAKES A POINT".  The actual cipher was reminiscent of the "swiss cheese alphabet" from the Googol hunt, if any of you remember that.

Main track #6: Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks has a monument back in the Boston Common depicting the Boston Massacre.  After the dotted line, the clue sheet had a series of numeric triplets (5-1-3, 3-1-3, 3-4-1, ...) which were a straightforward line-word-letter index into the plaque on the monument.  This spelled "NEARS SOUTH ST. STATION".

Bonus: Chinatown Gate

On the way to South Station, we picked up this bonus.  The clue showed a picture of one of the lions outside the Boston Chinatown gate, with this poem:

When you see this mythic creature

Turn yourself around

Assemble the sign of red found there

And a question will be found

Below that was a series of fragments of Chinese characters, each labeled with a letter.  Behind the lion was a red sign with the name of the park in English and Chinese.  Taking each character, identifying the fragments from the clue sheet that formed that character, and anagramming the associated letters yielded the phrase "NAME BUFFET NW OF GATE".

This created some consternation, because the obvious candidate was this buffet restaurant:

Unfortunately, the answer sheet for the bonus clues had an enumeration 7 letters long for this answer!

For a while we jokingly speculated that he might have mistook the name as "FLOT POT BUFFET" (based on the script text), but GC quickly confirmed that they had an error in the answer sheet and "HOT POT" was correct.  (A casualty of the rapid retyping of clue materials in the morning.)

Main track #7: South Station mural

Back on the main track, this mural is outside South Station:

On the clue sheet (after the dotted line!) was a detail from that mural, sliced into chunks and scrambled, with letters on the pieces.  Reassembling the detail to match the mural, the letters spell "NEARBY TREE OF KNOWLEDGE HAS KEY TO CODE TO LEAD ON NEXT".

Main track #8: Tree of Knowledge

The Tree of Knowledge is a Tom Otterness statue further on in the Greenway:

After the dotted line, the clue sheet has a painting of Eve, and this text:

From one bad beaver to the next...

Pounding your fist, to find the key

Might not help a bit, but a simple pound upon a key reveals

Words that are hit, 3 in all, repeated twice, less S upon the

end, help you back the code below and lead closer to the end.

Lengthy ciphertext follows.  This puzzle stumped us for a good half hour!  Meanwhile, the other team (the Kangaroos) showed up and left.  (After the game, we learned that they did indeed solve the puzzle, and felt really great about blowing by us.  At the time, we thought they had actually passed us -- but it turns out they had done things in a different order.)

We could tell that it was a reference to a plaque which gave a phone number and codes to enter (152#, 153#) to hear about the sculpture.  Eventually we realized that we should look for a three-word phrase repeated in the artist's description on the phone.  I don't remember the actual phrase, but it was a Vigenere key for the ciphertext.

Bonus: St. Anthony's Shrine

On the way to the next location, we stopped at a bonus location hinted by a picture of a crucifix and a poem.  This was St. Anthony's Shrine.  Matching some numbers with the text on the cornerstone generated the answer.  In a bit of cleverness, the number 8 (the 8th letter in the output) was sideways (like an infinity symbol), which meant to take the C on the sign and turn it into a U in the output, which was a phrase (that I forget) cluing "MACARENA".

Main track #9: Norman B. Leventhal Park

The ciphertext from the Tree of Knowledge gave us something like this message:

He surely was a beacon though often in a chair 

on a circle near the fountain his normal name is there

seek upon this marker in the temple park

as you get your bearings the code will spin your heart

The clue sheet had a Franklin postage stamp.  Based on the stamp we went to Post Office Square, now known as Norman B. Leventhal Park.  The rhyme refers to Leventhal, founder and chairman of the Beacon companies.  There is indeed a circular marker in this park.

The clue sheet also had a series of numbers, 188-164-....  These are compass directions indicating a position along the rim of the circular marker, picking out a particular letter.  The directions are a little approximate and our compass was none too precise, so picking this out was tricky.  (Text on the clue sheet basically said as much: "Variations May Occur.  With just a slight adjustment, the code you can infer.")

That decoded to a message which directed us to the neighboring Angell memorial.  This was confusing because the dotted line ran off the page with no further pages of clue sheet!  But the Angell memorial has a fountain, and floating in the fountain was a laminated card containing our next clue.  But first...

Bonus: Hungarian Revolution Monument

Todd was able to identify this from a tricky small detail photo, and it was near the final clue so we stopped by.

The clue sheet had this poem:

Find the place these hollow eyes

Now cast their empty gaze

Then count the "eyes" within each line

To shift the following phrase:

LJKSLCLPXH

Counting the number of "I" letters in each row on the plaque and using that to shift the ciphertext yielded the answer, "MONUMENTAL".

Bonus: USS Cassin Young

This bonus was quite a bit out of the way, so we confirmed with GC that we should go there.  By this point it was getting late, so GC advised us to skip it.  But this would have been the first puzzle we skipped!  Refusing to be stymied, we searched around online, and found this picture depicting awards won by the ship:

The clue sheet contained some of these awards, with letters at the corners.  Placing them in position on the display and reading the letters, it spelled the answer, "DECEMBER".

Main track #10: Angell Memorial

Back on the main track, this clue was quite a doozy.

Upon arrival, we found this laminated card floating in the fountain:

The dates on the fountain were "1823 - 1909", and the "6 words, upon the gentle spire" were "IN MEMORY OF GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL".

I will spare you our many wrong attempts!  We were finally reduced to confirming our approach with GC, who basically suggested we were on the right track, and closed with this:

Phone about to die.  Spoiler will be in mailbox.  Don't look if ya don't want it.

Wei-Hwa volunteered to take the bullet, read the spoiler, and then offer us nudges as needed.  Meanwhile, I went to a Starbucks to use the restroom and maybe grab a drink... while there, I suddenly had a realization and ran back sans drink to make sure Wei-Hwa hadn't spoiled us.  The realization was a minor tweak on our approach so far.  Details are tiresome, but here's the correct interpretation of the flavor text:

1 8 2 3 1 8 2 3

9 I N M E M O R

0 Y O F G E O R

9 G E T H O R N

1 D I K E A N G

9 E L L I N M E

0 M O R Y O F G

9 E O R G E T H

1 O R N D I K E

9 A N G E L L .

The numbers on the card look into the grid, for example "18" means to use the letter at the intersection of "1" (from the side) and "8" (from the top).  Note that the digits are not unique, which means any given number could be any of several letters -- an extremely non unique cryptogram.  Puzzling through that yielded this phrase: "FIRS TWO COLUMS ALIGN RAVEN WHEEL" [sic].

Another good way to stymie cryptogram solvers: Typos in the message!

The RAVEN WHEEL is the lovely codewheel they gave us way back in DC.  What that really means is to use the distance between the letters in the pairs as a shift distance.  Applying that to the letter pairs on the clue card yielded the final answer: "MEET AT MR DOOLEYS", a.k.a. the pub that was yesterday's theoretical end location.

Whew!