Allard’s 2019 Puzzle Puzzle Solution

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 7^th 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 7^th 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		B2
E1	D1	C5/C1		F1
				D2
A4	C4	D3	C2	A2
				D4
E2		C3		F2
B3	D5	A3

Key	Designer	Puzzle
A1	Bosch	Big MazNCube
A2	Bosch	Helical Burr
A3	Bosch	Pole Dancer
A4	Bosch	Really Bent Board Burr
A5	Bosch	Rhombic Maze Burr
B1	Bright	Escape from the Labyrinth
B2	Bright	Great One
B3	Bright	Shoot the Moon
C1	Kawashima	Pod
C2	Kawashima	Rose
C3	Kawashima	Spring Camera
C4	Kawashima	Twin Lens Reflex
C5	Kawashima	XY
D1	Sound	Cocobolo Maze Burr
D2	Sound	Loop Box
D3	Sound	Lotus Box
D4	Sound	(Number 2 / #2) Pencil Case
D5	Sound	Snake Box
E1	Toulouzas	Fairy Door
E2	Toulouzas	Judge's Gavel
F1	Yananose	Meanders Box
F2	Yananose	Spade Case