Penny Park Guide (MIT Mystery Hunt 2020)
Penny Park Guide | |
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MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 | |
The Grand Castle | |
Author(s) | Asher Walkover, Wei-Hwa Huang (graphic design) |
Links | |
Puzzle | Link |
Solution | Link |
Penny Park Guide is a physical puzzle from the Grand Castle round of the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt. It's presented as a brochure (now available in printable PDF format), imitating those commonly given to guests at theme parks to help them navigate the area.
Solve Path
The first thing the how-to guide recommends is reading about attractions and celebrity guests, as well as cutting out pennies from a "cut-out" section. These three sections make up the first puzzle. The paragraph about celebrity visitors doesn't provide a lot of information immediately, but one can attempt to answer the questions about the attractions. They don't relate to any real theme park rides, nor are any of them real phrases, but if a few can be worked out (DRONE CENTURION and PHONE CENTERPIECE for the first and fourth being easier entry points) solvers may notice that bridging the gap between the two words is the phrase "ONE CENT". Knowing this, the other can be more easily filled out. Returning to the celebrity guests, there is now something that connects the attractions to the text. While all of the attractions had ONE CENT in them, phrases that are similar but have had that section replaced with new letters can be found within the Celebs text (such as DRUID MALFURION and PHISH MASTERPIECE). The last piece of this puzzle is to actually cut out the "ONE CENT" pieces. If solvers place the numbered coins over the Celeb text to form the attraction names, each coin's question mark will end up over a different word in the text (FOUNDER and WON as continuations of the previous examples). What solvers also need to realize, both for this puzzle and later puzzles, is that information on the reverse side of cut-out sections is still important. In this case, each ONE CENT cutout has a bit of wordplay instructions on the back. In the case of FOUNDER and WON, these are evens and shift six, resulting in the words ONE and CUT respectively. Taking all of these transformations in clue order gives ONE: FIND AND CUT OUT TWO ORANGE REGIONS.
The second puzzle is indicated to be the wordsearch, located under the FUN AND GAMES! header. While the wordsearch only provides crossword-style clues for each entry, they can easily be found in the grid due to only appearing horizontally (backwards and forwards), one per row. Solvers should notice that, in keeping with the penny theme, each word shares some amount of letters with the word PENNY. The clue that pointed solvers towards the wordsearch mentions being "bored to bits", hinting at the use of binary. As it turns out, if solvers treat letters that differ from PENNY as ones, and ones that don't as zeroes, each word can act as a 5-bit binary number. If these numbers are then transformed into letters (via a change to base-10 and A1Z26), they spell the phrase ATBASH GRID in clue order. Applying the Atbash cipher to the grid may or may not provide a useful phrase, depending on if solvers have found all of the words in the grid already. If they have, then looking at all of the spaces unused by the words gives them another intermediate phrase: OVERLAY THIS SHAPE ON BLUE AD. By cutting out the zig-zag shape made by the found words, solvers can place it over the blue "Gigantic Savings" ad under the picture of King Jeon, leaving it only partially visible. The remaining words spell the final answer phrase: TWO: CONNECT CENTERS OF RED PENNIES.
The third puzzle revolves around the Op-Ed section, which reads as relatively normal. If solvers interpret the phrase "non-cents" from the clue literally, rather than as a pun, they may notice that several phrases that normally contain the word "penny" can be found if punctuation is ignored and "penny" is replaced with a new word (such as "...in for a surprise. In for a pound..." with "surprise" replacing "penny"). The original clue also mentions there may be something "behind" the non-cents, which can be interpreted as looking on the opposite side of the paper (where the Penny Pound image is located). Fittingly enough, each word that has replaced the word "penny" is directly opposite of the heads or tails of a dog/cat/dragon. Taking this as an indicator for first/last letter of the words, solvers can spell the phrase THREE: VALLEY FOLD
The fourth puzzle mentions two sections: Trivia Time and the Penny Pub advertisement. While it may be possible for solvers who, at this point, realize that their answers follow a pattern to skip the majority of the puzzle by playing a bit of connect-the-dots with the advertisement, the intended route is a bit more involved. Each of the Trivia Time facts can be related to a two-to-five letter word (HE, BELL, and OTTER for the 1st, 4th, and 8th, respectively). As the introduction to the Trivia Time section mentions the replacement of elements with copper, solvers may notice that all of their answers begin with one or two letters that are a valid elemental symbol. If they replace that symbol with the symbol for copper (Cu), new words are formed (CUE, CULL, and CUTTER). The specific elements that are replaced aren't actually important. The original clue points to using the Penny Pub ad after this, specifically to "read between the lines" to find "seven secret ingredients". As it turns out, synonyms for the 8 CU- words from Trivia Time are found throughout the ad's text (PROMPT, SELECT, and KNIFE). If solvers play connect the dots using these synonyms in order of their appearance in Trivia Time, the line will cross over a single word each time, spelling the answer phrase: FOUR: REPEAT THIS PROCESS WITH LIME PENNIES
The last of the five clues points to using the map, and the use of the words "slither" and "link" indicate it as being a slitherlink puzzle. The given coordinates and their ratings allow one to place numbers at particular points, resulting in a uniquely solvable slitherlink. The clue to this puzzle mentions "first initial impressions" of attractions that are included, indicating looking at first letters of the attractions that end up on the inside of the loop is the next step. By doing so, solvers should get the intermediate phrase FIND RHYME COORDS. As it turns out, one of the words in each attraction rhymes with a number from one to nine, while the other (non-trivial) word starts with a letter from A-I. Therefore, each attraction name can be treated as a new coordinate. If solvers repeat the slitherlink with these new coordinates (and repeat the extraction method), they get another intermediate phrase: FIFTH LETTERS. Taking all of the fifth letters of the attractions in the given order, the answer phrase can be found: FIVE: POKE HOLES IN RED AND BLUE LETTERS. Notably, either slitherlink puzzle is technically possible to skip, due to presence of the hidden coordinates and the fifth letters from the beginning, with the intermediate phrases only pointing solvers to focus on them.
Putting all five instructional answers together, solvers can proceed to extracting the final answer. By following the instructions (the orange regions being the small parking lot area on the map, and the large background section crossing all three inner panels), one should end up with a folded-up brochure, with the circular bottom of the roller coaster on the front page lining up with the circular border of the map, with the king's head peeking over the edge between them. Poking out the correct red and blue letters should result in numbers (from the awards list) showing through. It may be noticed that these numbers are unique from 1-15, but if solvers attempt to construct a phrase using the letters they punched holes in, they'll wind up with gibberish. The leap that solvers have to make at this point is that the overlaid elements of the brochure at that point bear a striking resemblance to the tails side of a United States penny (as of 2010). If solvers take the letters that are on the penny where the holes have been made, they should be able to extract a 15-letter final answer.Final Answer: Click to revealFIREBALL ROBERTS.
Puzzle Elements
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