National Dot Your I's Day (Holiday Hoopla 2023)
| National Dot Your I's Day | |
|---|---|
| Holiday Hoopla 2023 | |
| Answer | Click to revealWHITEBOARDS |
| Statistics | |
| No. solves | 65 |
| No. total guesses | 117 |
| Links | |
| Puzzle | Link |
National Dot Your I's Day is a puzzle from Holiday Hoopla 2023. Its difficulty level is categorized as Hard relative to the other puzzles in the hunt.
The puzzle is presented as a collection of images surrounded by several cartoon eyes.
Solve Path[edit | edit source]
Solvers can begin by noticing that the eyes all appear to be looking in different directions, based on the location of the iris within each eye. More specifically, almost every eye is looking at a different eye, allowing solvers to draw a path from eye to eye (hinted by "Connect your i's" in the flavor text). The path begins at the eye labeled "START" and ends at the one with the iris in the center.
As solvers draw a path from eye to eye, they will notice that the path crosses itself several times. Each crossing takes place directly on one of the images, and solvers can note down what the images represent.
The order used in the table below is by first encounter along the path.
| Image | Word |
|---|---|
| 1 | LILO |
| 2 | CARBON |
| 3 | WALES |
| 4 | HANKS |
| 5 | LEI |
| 6 | BEAN |
| 7 | CURIE |
| 8 | BOA |
| 9 | SHOES |
| 10 | NOSE |
| 11 | DOWN |
The flavor text contains several words that appear to be misspelled. In each word, the letter "t" has been replaced by a different letter. Solvers can attempt to change each of the words found earlier in a similar fashion (but in reverse: none of the words contain the letter "t", so solvers should replace one of the existing letters with "t" to create another valid word).
The order used in the table below is by first encounter along the path.
| Image | Word | Transformation | Letter Changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LILO | LILT | O |
| 2 | CARBON | CARTON | B |
| 3 | WALES | TALES | W |
| 4 | HANKS | TANKS | H |
| 5 | LEI | LET | I |
| 6 | BEAN | BEAT | N |
| 7 | CURIE | CUTIE | R |
| 8 | BOA | BOT | A |
| 9 | SHOES | SHOTS | E |
| 10 | NOSE | NOTE | S |
| 11 | DOWN | TOWN | D |
Solvers may expect to extract the letters that were changed to "t", but the current order does not allow for a sensible phrase. It turns out that "find your t's" in the flavor text has a secondary meaning: a "t" is an intersection. Solvers should retrace the path and sort by the order in which the intersections were formed.
An intersection is formed the second time that an image is visited. The diagram below depicts how the first two intersections are assigned.
The diagram below shows all 11 images numbered in sequential order. The extraction letter for each image has been made more prominent.
The order used in the table below is by the order in which the intersections were formed.
| Intersection | Word | Transformation | Letter Changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WALES | TALES | W |
| 2 | HANKS | TANKS | H |
| 3 | LEI | LET | I |
| 4 | BEAN | BEAT | N |
| 5 | SHOES | SHOTS | E |
| 6 | CARBON | CARTON | B |
| 7 | LILO | LILT | O |
| 8 | BOA | BOT | A |
| 9 | CURIE | CUTIE | R |
| 10 | DOWN | TOWN | D |
| 11 | NOSE | NOTE | S |
Using this new order, solvers should see that the extracted phrase is almost a word. Following the reminder "Make sure do double check your answer!" and replacing the letter at that location with a "t" gives the final answer, Click to revealWHITEBOARDS.
Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]
Visual Extraction - Ordering from extraction comes from the sequence for which the path crosses itself.
Recursion - The extracted letters need to be transformed once again by the mechanism introduced in the puzzle.
