Wednesday 1 January 2020

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 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

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


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