Sorry! I hadn’t realised I’d made it that hard…
I had exactly one correct entry – from Brendan P, who’d managed
to identify all of the puzzles by midnight on Christmas eve and solved the puzzle
by early evening on Boxing Day – well done Brendan! A copy of HalesLock 4 is on
its way to you, along with a couple of other goodies.
A few others corresponded with various degrees of success at
deriving the characters from the grid – Big Steve came pretty close and then
ran out of steam… Ryan managed a couple of them but couldn’t identify some of
the disentanglements and ground to a halt. Steven C and Amy picked up the baton
a few days later and managed to derive all the characters, then couldn’t work
out where to go from there… so close!
…and that was it – nobody else even had a bash – those that
did all seemed to enjoy it, so perhaps it was worthwhile.
My random draw from
non-solvers goes to Amy, who also gets a copy of HalesLock 4. Thanks for playing along folks!
Solution
Starting with clue bottom right – hopefully you recognised
the not-so-subtle clues to Caesar Shift and ROT 13 – which resolved the
horrible font to “Identify, Analyse, Link, Derive and Solve” – the instructions
for the puzzle.
I’m sure you noticed that some of the letters in the
plaintext challenge were randomly underlined, so you wrote them down and got: “the
answer is a single word”.
Start by identifying the puzzles and their designers,
using the usual convention of dropping articles at the start of puzzle names
and using surnames for the designers. Sort them alphabetically (analyse)
and then join the dots for each designer separately – link. Draw out the
shapes you’ve derived, realise that they’re numbers and work out what
you could do with six numbers in a specific order.
Now in the challenge I reminded
you all I was in the UK, where we write dates as DDMMYY – six digits – so you
have 070311, or 7th March 2011. At this point may I remind you that
this is a puzzle blog…and if you look back through the entries for March 2011,
you will find exactly one entry for the 7th of March 2011- a write-up on Danlock, which is the one-word solution
you’re looking for.
<There was a confirming clue hidden in the white space
above the Rose that referred to “EH’s favourite” if you fiddled with it in a
photo editor – sadly blogspot reduced that to a blurred mess! Something I didn't realsie until after Brendan had solved it.>
The Grid
|
B1
|
A5
|
A1
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B2
|
|
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E1
|
D1
|
C5/C1
|
F1
|
|
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D2
|
||||
|
A4
|
C4
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D3
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C2
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A2
|
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D4
|
||||
|
E2
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C3
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F2
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||
|
B3
|
D5
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A3
|
||
|
Key
|
Designer
|
Puzzle
|
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A1
|
Bosch
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Big MazNCube
|
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A2
|
Bosch
|
Helical Burr
|
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A3
|
Bosch
|
Pole Dancer
|
|
A4
|
Bosch
|
Really Bent Board Burr
|
|
A5
|
Bosch
|
Rhombic Maze Burr
|
|
B1
|
Bright
|
Escape from the Labyrinth
|
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B2
|
Bright
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Great One
|
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B3
|
Bright
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Shoot the Moon
|
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C1
|
Kawashima
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Pod
|
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C2
|
Kawashima
|
Rose
|
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C3
|
Kawashima
|
Spring Camera
|
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C4
|
Kawashima
|
Twin Lens Reflex
|
|
C5
|
Kawashima
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XY
|
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D1
|
Sound
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Cocobolo Maze Burr
|
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D2
|
Sound
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Loop Box
|
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D3
|
Sound
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Lotus Box
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D4
|
Sound
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(Number 2 / #2) Pencil Case
|
|
D5
|
Sound
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Snake Box
|
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E1
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Toulouzas
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Fairy Door
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E2
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Toulouzas
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Judge's Gavel
|
|
F1
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Yananose
|
Meanders Box
|
|
F2
|
Yananose
|
Spade Case
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