National Roots Day (Holiday Hoopla 2023)
| National Roots Day | |
|---|---|
| Holiday Hoopla 2023 | |
| Answer | Click to revealFINLAND |
| Statistics | |
| No. solves | 65 |
| No. total guesses | 128 |
| Links | |
| Puzzle | Link |
National Roots 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 series of GPS coordinates with sets of icons depicting an alien, a spaceship, and a planet.
Solve Path[edit | edit source]
Solvers can begin by looking up the GPS coordinates to see where they lead. The flavor text mentions "the cities below", so solvers should record the name of city at each GPS location.
| Row | First Set of Coordinates | City 1 | Second Set of Coordinates | City 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 42.4329° N, 21.0401° E | SHTIME | 32.3504° N, 108.7087° W | LORDSBURG |
| 2 | 60.2512° N, 24.0676° E | LOHJA | 33.3050° S, 117.3444° E | WAGIN |
| 3 | 2.1394° S, 79.5939° W | MILAGRO | 20.4610° S, 16.6512° E | OTJIWARONGO |
| 4 | 41.2996° N, 61.0884° E | HAZORASP | 49.9433° N, 7.9707° E | OCKENHEIM |
| 5 | 32.7157° N, 117.1611° W | SAN DIEGO | 36.7286° N, 68.8681° E | KUNDUZ |
| 6 | 9.5280° N, 31.6682° E | MALAKAL | 41.1114° N, 20.0823° E | ELBASAN |
| 7 | 20.1457° S, 28.5873° E | BULAWAYO | 7.0736° N, 125.6110° E | DAVAO CITY |
The flavor text instructs solvers to "Find the hidden aliens between the cities". For each row, placing the names of the two cities next to each other allows the name of an alien from film or TV to be formed. The "length" symbol and number above each alien icon serves as an enumeration for the name.
In fact, the same symbol in the first sentence of the flavor text (after the word "cosmoviews" |--5--|) is a clue that the word "movie" is hidden within "cosmoviews".
| Row | City 1 | City 2 | Alien | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SHTIME | LORDSBURG | TIME LORD | 8 |
| 2 | LOHJA | WAGIN | JAWA | 4 |
| 3 | MILAGRO | OTJIWARONGO | GROOT | 5 |
| 4 | HAZORASP | OCKENHEIM | SPOCK | 5 |
| 5 | SAN DIEGO | KUNDUZ | GOKU | 4 |
| 6 | MALAKAL | ELBASAN | KAL-EL | 5 |
| 7 | BULAWAYO | DAVAO CITY | YODA | 4 |
Solvers are instructed to "help [the aliens] remember their planetary roots," so the next step would be to find the name of the planet each alien came from. In each row, there is a planet icon labeled with an icon. Unlike in the previous step, these numbers do not specify the number of letters in the name (of the planet), but instead serve as an index. Index this number into the planet name to obtain the final answer.
| Row | Alien | Planet | Index | Extract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TIME LORD | GALLIFREY | 6 | F |
| 2 | JAWA | TATOOINE | 6 | I |
| 3 | GROOT | PLANET X | 4 | N |
| 4 | SPOCK | VULCAN | 3 | L |
| 5 | GOKU | VEGETA | 6 | A |
| 6 | KAL-EL | KRYPTON | 7 | N |
| 7 | YODA | DAGOBAH | 1 | D |
The answer is Click to revealFINLAND.
Puzzle Elements[edit | edit source]
Pop Culture - This puzzle features aliens from different science fiction franchises.
Hidden Substrings - The name of an alien spans each pair of city names.
Indexing - Final extraction uses the number provided on the planet as an index.
