Mmm, this was a pretty good dog. A bit too small though. The chili was high on beans for me but otherwise pretty good.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Chicago chili?
Chicago isn't known for its chili. So instead I got a Chili Cheese dog at Portillo's Hot Dogs.
Mmm, this was a pretty good dog. A bit too small though. The chili was high on beans for me but otherwise pretty good.
Mmm, this was a pretty good dog. A bit too small though. The chili was high on beans for me but otherwise pretty good.
Day 5: Chicago (Bonus!)
It is Wednesday, August 14, and Day 5 of the race. As you know, the race was originally supposed to last 5 entire days, but we had been told the night before that it had to be curtailed. So, after sleeping in, we head to a leisurely breakfast with Team Despicable (the Millers) and Rock Lobster (the Gaddys).
SEEK THE WORK OF A SAINT HERE ALONG THE WAY FOR THERE BENEATH THE STEED SIX WREATHS SHALL SAVE THE DAY
NC QXOE GVVXBQT + BENTON = MY DEAR FRIENDS
XH NTH OE ADBFK + PORT = IT WAS AN HONOR
WO AFZROE SFNL + DALLAS = TO PUZZLE HUNT
BWKA XITA KWEX + FORT = WITH SUCH FINE
QHEDW ZED WOZRMSJ + EZRA = MINDS AND SPIRITS
But lo! What should appear in our inbox but email from Czarda! The subject is "Chicago Thanks" and the contents are this poem:
Great to see all of you
and so all it had to end
Here is something chewy
Until we meet again
Attached to the email is this PDF.
The last poem (clue #3) is particularly amusing to us:
Six very simple Vigeneres
But which aligns with which
Is just a bit of mystery
To scratch that brainy itch
Screw this guy and his vigenere
You scream unto the sky
As you search each keyword
Or frequency you try
You see, we had let it slip the previous day that Jonathan's fancy statistical Vigenere cracking system (worth a post in its own right) squeaked us through some tricky bits the previous day where we didn't technically have the key. When we hear about an implied sextuple Vigenere with arbitrary alignment, our minds boggle. We figure this is Josh's way of getting back at us with a nod and a wink; this one's hard enough to crack even if you have the key! But, of course, that's clue 3; we have to solve clue 1 and clue 2 first.
Anyway, after receiving the clue, we do the only sensible thing and proceed with breakfast as planned. Wei-Hwa has a spinach pie. Stories are exchanged. Pictures fail to be taken, sadly, but a good time is had and bellies are filled.
After, we head back to our hotel suite to solve. Rich thinks he recognizes the photo, and indeed! It's a brachiosaurus skeleton mounted outside the Field Museum:
The obvious thing to do at this point would be to head to the Field Museum. But, you see, it's really comfortable in our hotel room, and I only have a few hours until my rescheduled flight, so we study the rest of the clues first. We recognize the cryptogram symbols below the photo from Day 1, and after some digging through clue archives we retrieve our key and decode it:
CLUE 1
YUMMY IT'S
SO CHEWY
I REALLY
LOVE THIS
CRACK
IT IS LOVE
OF PUZZLES
SO GREAT 2(?)
HACK
We have some trouble understanding this! Yummy it's so chewy? Is that another Wrigley reference? "I really love this crack"? Are we talking about crack cocaine, or a crack in the ground, or cracking ciphers? What's up with the grammar of the second half? Is that symbol really a 2? We haven't seen it before.
There's a zombie's head above clue 2, we notice. Hmm. Do zombies like crack? Or puzzles?
Clue 2's poem refers to a "code that you discovered, somewhere on the way." We think that's the cryptogram symbols, but we're not sure, especially since the references to chewy crack isn't really "helping us on the way" so far. But eventually we realize the ciphertext in clue 2 isn't Vigenere, it succumbs (mostly) to simple substitution! Then we know that the "code that you discovered" was actually keyed Caesar. We backsolve to discover the key, which turns out to be MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ. This is significant because she is the artist responsible for Agora, an outdoor installation quite near the Field Museum:
Aha! Zombies! So that fills in the path so far -- the image leads to the Field Museum, the zombie head leads to the headless statues, the poem tells you to use the artist's name with keyed Caesar, and that decodes the clue 2 ciphertext:
SEEK THE WORK OF A SAINT HERE ALONG THE WAY FOR THERE BENEATH THE STEED SIX WREATHS SHALL SAVE THE DAY
We figure this must be referring to something near the headless statues, and indeed in the same park (Grant Park) we find an equestrian statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens with six ornamental bronze wreaths under it:
 |
| (You can just barely see the wreaths around the base.) |
The wreaths contain text referring to battles where the General served: "BENTON VILLE KENESAW", "JACKSON PORT GIBSON", etc.. Now, recall, we're still in our hotel room, so we can't just read the six wreaths. We can find photos with five of them, though.
And this brings us back to the "six very simple Vigeneres". We have learned that when a Czarda poem says something is "simple" (like "solve this simple code"), it means it's tricky. This one is "very simple" and that strikes fear into our heart. Even if we have six keys (the phrases in the wreaths? the first words thereof?), do we have to shift them around? This could be literally thousands of possible combinations!
Fortunately, we discover that it's not that complicated. Instead of repeated Vigenere, it's a traveling Vigenere, where segments of the cipher are encoded with different keys. Using single words from inside the wreaths, we decode as follows:
XH NTH OE ADBFK + PORT = IT WAS AN HONOR
WO AFZROE SFNL + DALLAS = TO PUZZLE HUNT
BWKA XITA KWEX + FORT = WITH SUCH FINE
QHEDW ZED WOZRMSJ + EZRA = MINDS AND SPIRITS
VOAZZA OTSKU YAJ IFR LJPS WTG + ??? = ???
Now we really need that sixth wreath. I'm finally talking people into taking the drive to Grant Park (it's only 15 minutes!) while Rich is researching every battle General Logan ever served at. Just as I'm picking up the phone to dial the valet, Rich whispers to Jonathan: "Try CHAMPIONS". And indeed!
VOAZZA OTSKU YAJ IFR LJPS WTG + CHAMPIONS = THANKS AGAIN YOU ARE THE KEY
(Get it? The KEY for this message segment is CHAMPIONS, so...) Hooray!
We head for another meal of chewy, chewy Giordano's pizza, I take my tearful farewell and head to O'Hare, and the rest of the team rides off into the Chicago sunset. I'm hopeful they'll visit the field of zombies at some point, it looks pretty awesome. I leave with the warmest of fuzzies and the best of regards for the indomitable Czarda, my doughty teammates, and the other teams with whom we shared the adventure of the Iron Raven.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Day 4, Part 4: Gone With the Wind!
Having triumphantly finished with the Indianapolis leg, we set off towards our final stop, The Windy City!
The driving puzzle this time was a bunch of audio clips of lines from famous movies, and our task was to identify the movies and then fill them into the following grid:
Once we'd identified the majority of the movies, the letters of each color could be anagrammed to get a message that was something like "KEY IS FAMOUS CHICAGO BLUESBROTHERS LINE". Around the same time, Jonathan seemed to find a good lead on the Vigenere key from the other direction, suggesting it was a 15-letter key ending with "TITHITIT". Putting these two pieces of information together, we determined the actual key was just "HIT IT", and this decoded the text at the bottom of the page. Well, almost all of it. That bolded line didn't decode.
The non-bolded text, after applying the Vigenere, decoded to:
We figured whatever this led to would help us decode the rest of the message. As we had a lot of driving yet before we'd reach Chicago, we tried to see how far we could get. We quickly realized that the place we were looking for was Wrigley Square (the "chewy" references) in Millenium Park (the "falcon" reference), and that we were looking for a plaque or reference to Wrigley himself. With this in mind, we found this image online:
The large quote at the bottom was in quotes, so we figured that if this was in fact the plaque we wanted, it would be something from there. But nothing worked to decode that last bold section. Without any more leads, we eventually got to Chicago and just went to Wrigley Square in Millennium Park, only to find that this exact plaque was really the most likely candidate. It wasn't until we were looking at the plaque in person that we spotted that the word "PERISTYLE" can also be found in quotes. Surely that was it! But no, it didn't work to decode the remaining crypto text either. So now we were stuck. We wandered over and checked out the Cloud Gate (aka the "Bean"), which was awesome, but didn't help us solve the puzzle.
After 20 or 30 minutes stuck at this point, we cried uncle and went for another hint. Josh told us "don't forget to hit it!". Of course! We were supposed to have already applied "HIT IT" to that text, and *then* apply PERISTYLE. This worked like magic, and gave us a phone number to call.
When we called the phone number, we heard a live rendition of "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. After a little research, we found that there was an Oz Park in Chicago that had statues of all the Wizard of Oz characters! Cool! And surely, we'd be looking for Scarecrow, who sings that song. It was after 11 PM at this point, and were off to our second location in Chicago.
At the Scarecrow statue in Oz Park, we found a scroll with a hand-drawn brain on it. We examined it very closely to reveal that in the folds of the brain were some hidden letters that spelled out Kingston Mines, one of Chicago's oldest and most famous blues clubs. (Shortly after, we realize that we were supposed to "fry" the brains, which would have melted away everything but the letters.)
So we head to Kingston Mines, a place I had visited many years before with my friend Sanmit, who lived in Chicago at the time. I never would have guessed at the time that it would end up the finish line for an epic journey across the country some years later. The finish line, I say? Yes, that's right, when we arrive at Kingston Mines just before midnight, Josh tells us that the race is over and he hands us the Iron Raven! He says we won by 2 hours and 6 minutes, and the other teams have already gone back to their hotels for the night.
Confused that we wouldn't have another day of racing (later we found out Josh had a family emergency arise that he had to take care of back home, so certainly nothing to be upset about on our side), but happy that we'd defended our title, we hung out at Kingston Mines for a while to share stories with Josh and Sean, then we headed out to celebrate the best way we could think of: with some real Chicago pizza! All the more famous places were closed at the time we were out, so we tried out Pequod's Pizza, which was open until 2 AM.
The driving puzzle this time was a bunch of audio clips of lines from famous movies, and our task was to identify the movies and then fill them into the following grid:
 |
| Driving Puzzle to Chicago. The bottom looks Greek to me. |
The non-bolded text, after applying the Vigenere, decoded to:
YOUR HEAD MUST BE IN THE CLOUDS AT THIS LOVELY PLACE
THOUGH SOON A SQUARE YOU MUST FIND WHERE COLUMNS SIT AND WAIT
THERE YOU SEEK SOMETHING CHEWY NOW INDEED
FOR HE MADE IT CHEWY TO HELP YOU TO SUCCEED
BY HIS MARK ON THE PLACE LIKE A FALCON YOU WELL KNOW
THAT WHICH WAITS IN QUOTES SHALL LEAD YOU FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD
We figured whatever this led to would help us decode the rest of the message. As we had a lot of driving yet before we'd reach Chicago, we tried to see how far we could get. We quickly realized that the place we were looking for was Wrigley Square (the "chewy" references) in Millenium Park (the "falcon" reference), and that we were looking for a plaque or reference to Wrigley himself. With this in mind, we found this image online:
 |
| This sign was chewy indeed. |
 |
| Jonathan finally finds a mirror of the appropriate size. |
When we called the phone number, we heard a live rendition of "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. After a little research, we found that there was an Oz Park in Chicago that had statues of all the Wizard of Oz characters! Cool! And surely, we'd be looking for Scarecrow, who sings that song. It was after 11 PM at this point, and were off to our second location in Chicago.
 |
| We were at Oz Park at night after it was technically closed, so we destroyed the evidence and instead show you this stock photo of what it looks like during the daytime. |
So we head to Kingston Mines, a place I had visited many years before with my friend Sanmit, who lived in Chicago at the time. I never would have guessed at the time that it would end up the finish line for an epic journey across the country some years later. The finish line, I say? Yes, that's right, when we arrive at Kingston Mines just before midnight, Josh tells us that the race is over and he hands us the Iron Raven! He says we won by 2 hours and 6 minutes, and the other teams have already gone back to their hotels for the night.
.jpg) |
| Ladies and Gentleman, your GAR 3 Champions, complete with photobomber. |
 |
| Nothing tastes better than victory except for possibly authentic Chicago pizza. |
It was a great end to a great race... or was this really the end? Stay tuned...
Day 4, Part 3: Circling the Circle City
When last we left our heroes, they were en route to Indianapolis from Cincinnati. Jonathan had prematurely cracked both of the driving puzzle Vigeneres, they had opened the cryptex, and they were starting to strategize how to tackle the next leg of the journey...
So... inside the cryptex we found four sheets of paper which we determined to be the set of clues we'd need to solve in Indianapolis. The first page was a set of twelve photos of landmarks in Indianapolis, with a poem indicating that two of them were red herrings. (Note: I'd love to share the fresh clues with you, but unfortunately we only had one copy of each page, and we wrote all over them before taking pictures of them. Sorry...)
The next two pages were clues that we were supposed to pair up with ten of the twelve images.
The fourth page was an ambiguous color acrostic that was clearly the meta, as it had spaces for us to fill in the answers for Clues 8-15. Spaces to fill in the answers for Clues 6 and 7 were conspicuously absent from that sheet, but later we found out this was just a production error.
OK, so armed with all we needed to tackle Indianapolis, and still driving from Cincinnati, we decided to stop work on the initial puzzles (which we had mostly short-circuited by cracking the Vigeneres), and focus on researching where we'd find all those photos.
Progress on finding the locations of these photos was initially slow, partly because our internet connection was spotty on the road, and partly because some of these photos were hard to come by. Eventually we determined that quite a few of the photos were in and around University Park, some were at the Indianapolis State House, and at least one was at the Crown Hill Cemetery. One of the photos (of Ben Franklin, on the top right) had some tiny writing that we noticed and could faintly make out a question of "What glasses did I invent?" So we were pretty sure that one of the answers would be BIFOCALS, but not yet sure of which Clue it went with.
We also found that one of the pictures (the Pro Patria statue, on the bottom right) was a statue made by Henry Hering -- a perfect candidate for one of the red herrings! Later we'd find out that a second statue (Seated Lincoln, on the bottom left) was also made by Henry Hering, but alas that was not the other red herring. Too bad, that just made it seemed like the first Hering statue was just a coincidence...
As we approached Indianapolis, we decided to go first toward University Park, since that seemed to be the place where most of the places we'd found were. There were still four or five images we hadn't found yet, so I dropped everyone at the Scottish Rite Cathedral (across from University Park), which we were sure was one of the pictures and that it went with Clue 8. After scouring the Scottish Rite Cathedral for a while, we got an unsolicited tip from Josh "not to overthink it", or something like that. At that point, from the car, I looked up some details on the locale and found that it contained a 54-bell carillon, suggesting that simply CARILLON was our answer. (It also suggested that there was actually no reason to visit that location at all, which was a little disappointing.)
Anyway, finally armed with our first solid answer, Dan, Wei-Hwa, and Jonathan set out to walk around the enormous University Park, while I sat in the car and did more research. I finally struck the Mother Lode with this wikipedia page, which helped finish finding all the remaining images except for one (the one just below the top left, which looked like it *must* be in the cemetery).
The guys solved several of the other puzzles and identified what seemed to be the other red herring (The Depew Memorial, the fountain seen just to the left of the bottom right image). We were able to solve all the puzzles we found there (and match up the Ben Franklin one we'd mostly solved on the road!), but one still eluded us. We *knew* it was the right statue, and we *knew* it was semaphore, but couldn't quite get it to work.
Anyway, feeling like we'd collected all the data we could, we moved on to the state house. Here we found another answer (which I won't describe), and another one that we couldn't quite get (which I will describe).
Clue 12 lead us to the monument shown above. It used a very clever self-contained mechanism in which the dates on the plaque were used to extract letters from the other lines on the plaque. That gave us the letters IYBIDOCI, and we were looking for an eight-letter word that described Stephen Baldwin in the movie Threesome. Needless to say, we were not certain we'd done this correctly, and that those were even the correct letters, but we had the data so we moved on.
Next we decided to tackle the image that showed a distant view of one of the buildings in University Park (the image to the right of the top left image). We'd seen that building in University Park, and recognized the buildings shown on each side of it, so it was clear we'd have to go well south of the park to get to that vantage. So we started driving south and looking to find the right vantage. After a while, it became clear that due to other buildings in the way, it was going to be impossible to find that vantage. This is when someone (I think Wei-Hwa) realized that maybe the image we had been given was reversed! Sure enough, it was, and we actually had to go to the north end of Washington Park. Doh! That cost us some time.
So we head to the north end of University Park to find the right view. There we find a plaque for a guy named GRESHAM, that goes with Clue 7. According to the clue, "Add unto the mix an I, and with a simple anagram, you'll find a tag to try." OK, great, so we need to anagram GRESHAMI into something. Seems easy enough, but it had us stumped. So we decide to press on.
At this point, we'd found all but two of the images, and still had a few clues that we think we've got the date for, but haven't finished yet. One of the last two images we knew was in Crown Hill Cemetery (the one above the bottom left image), and the other (just above that) we felt likely would be there too. So we head off to Crown Hill Cemetery, which we'd left for last since we'd noticed Josh has a tendency to end legs in cemeteries, and we felt that might optimize our routing for the day.
The cemetery is enormous, and as we approached it we started to worry that finding these two images was going to be next to impossible. After driving around aimlessly at first, eventually we find some more detail on where the fountain we were looking for was to be found, and head over there. The Clue for this one (#11) was not as straightforward as we expected, but we think the answer might be SERENITY, as that is a prominent eight-letter word on the sign.
It seems the other picture in the cemetery is up on a hill, so we start driving around and looking for a way to get to a higher ground. Eventually we find our way up to the top of a hill to the very fancy burial plot of James Whitcomb Riley, a famous Hoosier poet. We need to solve another Vigenere here, so we start trying out every word we see on the crypto text until one of them works, and this approach eventually gives us the solution word YOUNGEST. In retrospect, the bolded letters in Clue 10 should have pointed us to "Poem Beast" to help us positively identify which word to use.
It is around this time that we receive a text from the other team (which remember is now both other teams working together), that they've punted on Indianapolis and started heading off to Chicago. It is at this point, we decide to start playing strategically, but to do that, we need information from Josh. We have visited all 12 locations, and have solved somewhere between 5 and 7 of the Clues, but aren't sure exactly how many since we don't have a way to verify our answers.
The first thing we ask is whether we can verify answers without taking any penalties. Josh says that's fine, so we verify the answers we have, and find that we have 7 of 10 correct. The ones we don't have yet are:
the semaphore puzzle (shown above), the IYBIDOCI anagram, and the GRESHAMI anagram. Of course, we also don't know how far off we are on any of these either. Plus we still have the whole meta to solve.
Unsure of the best approach, we decide to call Josh and ask him how penalties are going to be handled for this round. For instance, we don't want to lose because the other team punted before us and we just are too stubborn to give up. We also don't want to take a hint on a feeder puzzle if that would cost the same as a hint on the meta, especially if not solving the feeder puzzles doesn't hurt us. So we call Josh to discuss, and he confirms that the other team skipped *a lot* of the puzzles, and that we had a pretty big cushion so should still try to solve it all. Armed with this information, we decide to take a hint on the semaphore puzzle. The hint just verifies it is semaphore, so we ask Josh for further hintage since we had already committed to the penalty on that one. He tells us it is two words, the first letter is an N and the last is a T. This provides us just enough of a crib to nail it, but I'll leave the specifics as an exercise for the reader. :)
As for IYBIDOCI, I eventually convinced myself that it was BI-IDIOCY, and that was a perfectly good word to describe Stephen Baldwin, but unabled to convince Dan to submit that, somehow I instead convince him to submit C III BODY. Crazily that was incorrect, but eventually we do submit BI-IDIOCY, which is confirmed as correct.
As for GRESHAMI, we are so stumped by this one, we actually drive back to the park to see if we can find another word. I don't recall exactly how, but at some point, we decide to try "HIS GAMER", which turns out to be right, and consistent with the "tag" to try, as in "gamer tag". Hmm, not my favorite.
Anyway, of course all along we were trying to crack the meta without having every answer, but now that we do, it still proves to be difficult with the ambiguity of the colors mapping to multiple possible letters in the final output phrase, but eventually we get the message: YOUR KEY IS WHAT CHICAG IS KNOWN AS THE BLARK [sic]. We debate as to whether the typos here were intentional or not (I argue that using CHICAG instead of CHICAGO prevented us from using CHICAGO as a crib), but nonetheless, this is enough to finish. Using this key on the meta's Vigenere gives us a phone number which leads us to a baseball field near the Brickyard (aka the Indianapolis Motor Speedway) where we'll find our driving puzzle to Chicago. Hooray! This means we solved all of Indianapolis with (we think) only one charged hint, and surely made up loads of time on the other teams, who punted many of the clues, and still only left town about 90 minutes before us.
Off to the Brickyard we go. On the way, I'm underwhelmed by what I expected to be a lot more impressive. I mean, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a world famous auto racing stadium, but from the outside it looks much more like some metal high school bleachers for a JV soccer field that just happen to extend for a mile.
Anyway, we got to the nearby baseball field and found our driving clue, and started off towards Chicago confident that we'd finally gotten out to a lead that we would be determined not to relinquish.
So... inside the cryptex we found four sheets of paper which we determined to be the set of clues we'd need to solve in Indianapolis. The first page was a set of twelve photos of landmarks in Indianapolis, with a poem indicating that two of them were red herrings. (Note: I'd love to share the fresh clues with you, but unfortunately we only had one copy of each page, and we wrote all over them before taking pictures of them. Sorry...)
 |
| Page 1 depicting the sights and sounds of Indianapolis, without the sounds. |
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| Page 2 depicting the day's clues 6 through 11. |
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| Page 3 depicting the day's clues 12 through 15. The fact that clues 13-15 are labeled "Day 5" might have clued us in that this was going to be a serious challenge. |
 |
| Page 4 depicting the Indy meta. Also pictured is a cup of authentic Indianapolis chili from some local fast food chain called "Wendy's" |
OK, so armed with all we needed to tackle Indianapolis, and still driving from Cincinnati, we decided to stop work on the initial puzzles (which we had mostly short-circuited by cracking the Vigeneres), and focus on researching where we'd find all those photos.
Progress on finding the locations of these photos was initially slow, partly because our internet connection was spotty on the road, and partly because some of these photos were hard to come by. Eventually we determined that quite a few of the photos were in and around University Park, some were at the Indianapolis State House, and at least one was at the Crown Hill Cemetery. One of the photos (of Ben Franklin, on the top right) had some tiny writing that we noticed and could faintly make out a question of "What glasses did I invent?" So we were pretty sure that one of the answers would be BIFOCALS, but not yet sure of which Clue it went with.
We also found that one of the pictures (the Pro Patria statue, on the bottom right) was a statue made by Henry Hering -- a perfect candidate for one of the red herrings! Later we'd find out that a second statue (Seated Lincoln, on the bottom left) was also made by Henry Hering, but alas that was not the other red herring. Too bad, that just made it seemed like the first Hering statue was just a coincidence...
As we approached Indianapolis, we decided to go first toward University Park, since that seemed to be the place where most of the places we'd found were. There were still four or five images we hadn't found yet, so I dropped everyone at the Scottish Rite Cathedral (across from University Park), which we were sure was one of the pictures and that it went with Clue 8. After scouring the Scottish Rite Cathedral for a while, we got an unsolicited tip from Josh "not to overthink it", or something like that. At that point, from the car, I looked up some details on the locale and found that it contained a 54-bell carillon, suggesting that simply CARILLON was our answer. (It also suggested that there was actually no reason to visit that location at all, which was a little disappointing.)
Anyway, finally armed with our first solid answer, Dan, Wei-Hwa, and Jonathan set out to walk around the enormous University Park, while I sat in the car and did more research. I finally struck the Mother Lode with this wikipedia page, which helped finish finding all the remaining images except for one (the one just below the top left, which looked like it *must* be in the cemetery).
The guys solved several of the other puzzles and identified what seemed to be the other red herring (The Depew Memorial, the fountain seen just to the left of the bottom right image). We were able to solve all the puzzles we found there (and match up the Ben Franklin one we'd mostly solved on the road!), but one still eluded us. We *knew* it was the right statue, and we *knew* it was semaphore, but couldn't quite get it to work.
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| Can you solve this? RDS, DNI, NAO, TOI, NNC, ERZ, YNM, JZM |
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| This inscription is used with Clue 12. |
Next we decided to tackle the image that showed a distant view of one of the buildings in University Park (the image to the right of the top left image). We'd seen that building in University Park, and recognized the buildings shown on each side of it, so it was clear we'd have to go well south of the park to get to that vantage. So we started driving south and looking to find the right vantage. After a while, it became clear that due to other buildings in the way, it was going to be impossible to find that vantage. This is when someone (I think Wei-Hwa) realized that maybe the image we had been given was reversed! Sure enough, it was, and we actually had to go to the north end of Washington Park. Doh! That cost us some time.
So we head to the north end of University Park to find the right view. There we find a plaque for a guy named GRESHAM, that goes with Clue 7. According to the clue, "Add unto the mix an I, and with a simple anagram, you'll find a tag to try." OK, great, so we need to anagram GRESHAMI into something. Seems easy enough, but it had us stumped. So we decide to press on.
At this point, we'd found all but two of the images, and still had a few clues that we think we've got the date for, but haven't finished yet. One of the last two images we knew was in Crown Hill Cemetery (the one above the bottom left image), and the other (just above that) we felt likely would be there too. So we head off to Crown Hill Cemetery, which we'd left for last since we'd noticed Josh has a tendency to end legs in cemeteries, and we felt that might optimize our routing for the day.
The cemetery is enormous, and as we approached it we started to worry that finding these two images was going to be next to impossible. After driving around aimlessly at first, eventually we find some more detail on where the fountain we were looking for was to be found, and head over there. The Clue for this one (#11) was not as straightforward as we expected, but we think the answer might be SERENITY, as that is a prominent eight-letter word on the sign.
It seems the other picture in the cemetery is up on a hill, so we start driving around and looking for a way to get to a higher ground. Eventually we find our way up to the top of a hill to the very fancy burial plot of James Whitcomb Riley, a famous Hoosier poet. We need to solve another Vigenere here, so we start trying out every word we see on the crypto text until one of them works, and this approach eventually gives us the solution word YOUNGEST. In retrospect, the bolded letters in Clue 10 should have pointed us to "Poem Beast" to help us positively identify which word to use.
It is around this time that we receive a text from the other team (which remember is now both other teams working together), that they've punted on Indianapolis and started heading off to Chicago. It is at this point, we decide to start playing strategically, but to do that, we need information from Josh. We have visited all 12 locations, and have solved somewhere between 5 and 7 of the Clues, but aren't sure exactly how many since we don't have a way to verify our answers.
The first thing we ask is whether we can verify answers without taking any penalties. Josh says that's fine, so we verify the answers we have, and find that we have 7 of 10 correct. The ones we don't have yet are:
the semaphore puzzle (shown above), the IYBIDOCI anagram, and the GRESHAMI anagram. Of course, we also don't know how far off we are on any of these either. Plus we still have the whole meta to solve.
Unsure of the best approach, we decide to call Josh and ask him how penalties are going to be handled for this round. For instance, we don't want to lose because the other team punted before us and we just are too stubborn to give up. We also don't want to take a hint on a feeder puzzle if that would cost the same as a hint on the meta, especially if not solving the feeder puzzles doesn't hurt us. So we call Josh to discuss, and he confirms that the other team skipped *a lot* of the puzzles, and that we had a pretty big cushion so should still try to solve it all. Armed with this information, we decide to take a hint on the semaphore puzzle. The hint just verifies it is semaphore, so we ask Josh for further hintage since we had already committed to the penalty on that one. He tells us it is two words, the first letter is an N and the last is a T. This provides us just enough of a crib to nail it, but I'll leave the specifics as an exercise for the reader. :)
As for IYBIDOCI, I eventually convinced myself that it was BI-IDIOCY, and that was a perfectly good word to describe Stephen Baldwin, but unabled to convince Dan to submit that, somehow I instead convince him to submit C III BODY. Crazily that was incorrect, but eventually we do submit BI-IDIOCY, which is confirmed as correct.
As for GRESHAMI, we are so stumped by this one, we actually drive back to the park to see if we can find another word. I don't recall exactly how, but at some point, we decide to try "HIS GAMER", which turns out to be right, and consistent with the "tag" to try, as in "gamer tag". Hmm, not my favorite.
Anyway, of course all along we were trying to crack the meta without having every answer, but now that we do, it still proves to be difficult with the ambiguity of the colors mapping to multiple possible letters in the final output phrase, but eventually we get the message: YOUR KEY IS WHAT CHICAG IS KNOWN AS THE BLARK [sic]. We debate as to whether the typos here were intentional or not (I argue that using CHICAG instead of CHICAGO prevented us from using CHICAGO as a crib), but nonetheless, this is enough to finish. Using this key on the meta's Vigenere gives us a phone number which leads us to a baseball field near the Brickyard (aka the Indianapolis Motor Speedway) where we'll find our driving puzzle to Chicago. Hooray! This means we solved all of Indianapolis with (we think) only one charged hint, and surely made up loads of time on the other teams, who punted many of the clues, and still only left town about 90 minutes before us.
Off to the Brickyard we go. On the way, I'm underwhelmed by what I expected to be a lot more impressive. I mean, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a world famous auto racing stadium, but from the outside it looks much more like some metal high school bleachers for a JV soccer field that just happen to extend for a mile.
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| Indianapolis Motor Speedway as I pictured it. |
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| Indianapolis Motor Speedway as I saw it. |
Jonathan finds the last driving clue!
Day 4, Part 2: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!
So armed with the knowledge that we're virtually tied for the lead headed to Indy, we approach this driving leg with more urgency than we had in the previous days. The driving puzzle is a fun one. As all the other driving puzzles, it came in the form of a CD, but this one had the title "Video Killed the Radio Rats", and on each track there was a TV theme song... played backwards!
We were also given a sheet of paper with two separate Vigenere codes on it (shown below), and another sheet that was nothing more than a grid of letters taking up the whole page. The obvious approach was that we would need to solve the first code using the CD, which would then in turn give us instructions on how to solve the second one using the grid.
So we set off to identifying the theme songs, while Jonathan set off to just crack the Vigenere codes directly. It was fun identifying theme songs in reverse! Doing them forward would have been fun, but trivial, while in reverse there was just enough difficulty to make it quite rewarding to identify the songs. Themes ranged from Wheel of Fortune to Looney Tunes to Seinfeld, but once identified, it was pretty unmistakable in each case, and eventually, including revisiting some after we'd solved the clue, we got them all without doing any audio stream manipulation. Fun.
That said, we didn't get very far into the theme song identifications when Jonathan announced he had cracked the first Vigenere! The code is "DUNDER MIFFLIN". Shortely thereafter, this helped us to zero in on the solution of the CD puzzle to read "COMPANY NAME TRACK ONE"... which was odd since The Office was actually track 2 on our CD, but who's counting...
So applying DUNDER MIFFLIN to the code we were given gave us the message: "Using grids one through four upon the page of codes, align number one vertical below SD, number two horizontal below UV, number three below DN, then for four search the rest." Clearly these were instructions on how to use the grid to solve the second code (shown below), but before we could really figure out what to do, Jonathan had cracked the *second* Vigenere too! This time the code was LIGHTNING MCQUEEN, and the second code decoded to: YOUR CRYPTEX KEYWORD IS CLOWN.
(Note: We wouldn't actually forward-solve this grid puzzle until the very end of the leg, for completeness, when Dan and Wei-Hwa discovered that we needed to use the small wooden overlays we had been given at the start of the day to find the answer. The letters those overlays yielded are shown on the image above.)
So we opened the cryptex! Around this time both we and our van were getting hungry, for food and gas, respectively, so rather than stopping for fast food and then make a second stop to get gas, we killed two birds with one stone and got sandwiches from the gas station mini mart while we filled up the gas tank. Jonathan stayed in the car to start inspecting the contents of the newly opened cryptex, while the rest of us went into the minimart.
Once back in the car, and after a spirited debate about the order that Jonathan found the four sheets of paper that were contained in the cryptex, we decided to put the details of the second step of the driving puzzle that Jonathan had short-circuited on the back burner in favor of strategizing how we would tackle Indianapolis, the details of which I'll share in the next post!
We were also given a sheet of paper with two separate Vigenere codes on it (shown below), and another sheet that was nothing more than a grid of letters taking up the whole page. The obvious approach was that we would need to solve the first code using the CD, which would then in turn give us instructions on how to solve the second one using the grid.
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| This Raven speaks mostly in Vigenerian. |
That said, we didn't get very far into the theme song identifications when Jonathan announced he had cracked the first Vigenere! The code is "DUNDER MIFFLIN". Shortely thereafter, this helped us to zero in on the solution of the CD puzzle to read "COMPANY NAME TRACK ONE"... which was odd since The Office was actually track 2 on our CD, but who's counting...
So applying DUNDER MIFFLIN to the code we were given gave us the message: "Using grids one through four upon the page of codes, align number one vertical below SD, number two horizontal below UV, number three below DN, then for four search the rest." Clearly these were instructions on how to use the grid to solve the second code (shown below), but before we could really figure out what to do, Jonathan had cracked the *second* Vigenere too! This time the code was LIGHTNING MCQUEEN, and the second code decoded to: YOUR CRYPTEX KEYWORD IS CLOWN.
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| Pay no attention to the spoilerific pencil markings... |
So we opened the cryptex! Around this time both we and our van were getting hungry, for food and gas, respectively, so rather than stopping for fast food and then make a second stop to get gas, we killed two birds with one stone and got sandwiches from the gas station mini mart while we filled up the gas tank. Jonathan stayed in the car to start inspecting the contents of the newly opened cryptex, while the rest of us went into the minimart.
Once back in the car, and after a spirited debate about the order that Jonathan found the four sheets of paper that were contained in the cryptex, we decided to put the details of the second step of the driving puzzle that Jonathan had short-circuited on the back burner in favor of strategizing how we would tackle Indianapolis, the details of which I'll share in the next post!
Day 4, Part 1: BSB in Cincinnati
After a strong day 3 performance leading us to Cincinnati, we met again in Lytle Park for the start of what we were told would be the longest leg of the trip. On tap for the day was going to be:
Josh warned us that he expected this leg to go past midnight, and he'd be cutting us off at 3 AM in Chicago if we hadn't finished by then. He also told us that there were only 62 minutes separating first and last place going into this leg, so the overall outcome was very much still in doubt.
As a result, we started this leg with our game faces on, an agreed upon hint strategy (we'd take hints if we were ever stuck for 20+ minutes without progress, to be sure we would keep moving and not overpenalize ourselves when we were spinning our wheels), and some great enthusiasm for a long day of puzzling.
We grabbed our supplies for the day - another cryptex (one of the small ones this time!), some wood slats with holes in them that Wei-Hwa quickly identified as a "guess what number I'm thinking of" parlor trick aid that he'd seen before, and a set of 5 (apparently linear) clues to work on in Cincinnati.
After some quick internet searching, Dan discovers that there is a mural called "Mr. Tarbell tips his hat" nearby, and so we scurry back to our car to drive there, thinking that we were going to drive as much as possible today to save time, even if it meant there might be some sites where I'd have to circle in the car while we gathered data.
We pull the van right up to the mural to the point where you can almost read the plaque from inside the car, and find that the mural contains the name Tim Parsley, an anagram of "Salty Prime", and thus, the key to the associated Vigenere. Decoding the message and reading backwards gave us: LOOK ON MEMORIAL HALL.
A search for Memorial Hall in Cincinnati returned two results - one on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, and the other more formally known as the Hamilton County Memorial Building. Since the latter was closer to where we were, we decided to try that first. Fortunately, that was the right call, and we soon thereafter arrived at this building.
Once here, it took us a few minutes to find the inscription that Jason and the NRA would both approve, but eventually we spotted it: "The pioneer with axe and gun redeemed the continent." Writing this around the perimeter of the grid we were given gave us a fairly ambiguous way to pull letters from the grid given a pair of letters used as X and Y coordinates. There was a minor error in the puzzle that Josh later texted us about, but we were able to get a message that led us to believe we were looking for a "Martha" something.
A quick search on "Martha" in Cincinnati indicated that there was a famous passenger pigeon for whom a new mural had just been painted in downtown Cincinnati. Confident that was the intended destination, we headed out just as the two other teams (who had joined forces and were now working together as one) arrived at Memorial Hall. We hoped that would be the last we'd see of them until the finish line...
We got to the mural, and the fact that it hadn't even been finished yet clued us in to the fact that we'd gone to the wrong place. Some more careful decoding of the previous message reveals that we were actually looking for "Martha STITES", and that we could find her grave at Washington Park, which was *right across the street from Memorial Hall*, where we had just solved the previous puzzle. Argh.
So we drive back to Washington Park, just in time to see the other team starting to search the park for Martha. I walk by the sign first, and hoping not to give away the location, I keep walking right by it hoping the other teams don't notice before I would circle back and take a quick photo. This doesn't work at all, as Devon notices it not seconds after I pass it, and this of course makes it look like I'm just following them. Jeez.
So at this point, we were basically exactly tied with the other team on this leg, and we set out to decode the message. This was a trivial line-word-letter cipher that decoded to: "HECKER YEAR SHIFT". This time we were a little more clueful than last time, and realized that there was a giant statue honoring a guy named Hecker not more than 50 feet away.
The tricky part here was that there were two dates on the back of the statue visible from the Martha Stites sign, but another, different date on the front of the statue, which was the one we actually wanted. (We believe this is what the "It could go either way." message from the previous clue was referring to...) We zeroed in on this pretty quickly to get the message "NINETEEN UNDER FIVE WREATHS FOR A CAESAR SHIFT". Clearly this was the message we needed to make sense of Clue #5.
After a few minutes of doing some internet research and looking around our surroundings, one of us notices that across the street, right next to Memorial Hall, is the Cincinnati Music Hall, which is nineteen letters long, and written on the eaves in giant letters beneath 5 giant wreaths! Not wanting to tip off the other team to this discovery, we retreat to the van (in the opposite direction) and discreetly drive over and park in front of the Music Hall to work on the clue.
Time passes, and we have no leads. I go up to the building and take pictures of all the plaques, and even talk to staff there to find out if there is anything Caesar-related in or around the building. At some point, we notice the other team working on this clue in a glass elevator entrance just across the street from us. We try all sorts of Caesar shifts and Vigenere shifts, and nothing works. We can't figure out why there is a key next to Caesar. The other team leaves. More time passes. At one point, I go to search for "Caesar key", but get distracted with some other blind alley before doing that. After about an hour of spinning, we finally break down and text in for an official hint. And it helps! We need to apply a "Keyed Caesar" with the key Cincinnati Music Hall. None of us had ever heard of a Keyed Caesar, but I kick myself repeatedly since I had thought to try searching for "Caesar key" before we took the hint, but never did, and Keyed Caesar would have shown up as the third result. Argh.
Anyway, this final clues decodes to a phone number which, when called, gives us a poem that suggests the location of our drive-to-Indianapolis puzzle, behind a sign with a polka-dotted guy near the Taft Museum.
So not only did we finish this about 30 minutes after the other team, we also incurred a 30 minute penalty for taking a hint. So we've completely blown that hour lead we had at the start of the leg, and it is like the race is now starting from even. So we head off to Indianapolis in what we believe to be a virtual tie for first, and hope for the best! Next up... the driving clue to Indianapolis!
- a set of 5 linear clues in Cincinnati
- a driving puzzle to Indianapolis (which would unexpectedly add Indiana to my puzzle hunt in every state goal!)
- a set of 10 parallel clues in Indianapolis that we can solve in any order
- a driving puzzle to Chicago
- a set of linear clues in Chicago leading to the final location.
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| Josh and Sean kicking it off in Cincinnati's Lytle Park. |
As a result, we started this leg with our game faces on, an agreed upon hint strategy (we'd take hints if we were ever stuck for 20+ minutes without progress, to be sure we would keep moving and not overpenalize ourselves when we were spinning our wheels), and some great enthusiasm for a long day of puzzling.
We grabbed our supplies for the day - another cryptex (one of the small ones this time!), some wood slats with holes in them that Wei-Hwa quickly identified as a "guess what number I'm thinking of" parlor trick aid that he'd seen before, and a set of 5 (apparently linear) clues to work on in Cincinnati.
 |
| What's with the key next to Caesar on Clue 5? Took us our first official hint to figure that one out... |
We pull the van right up to the mural to the point where you can almost read the plaque from inside the car, and find that the mural contains the name Tim Parsley, an anagram of "Salty Prime", and thus, the key to the associated Vigenere. Decoding the message and reading backwards gave us: LOOK ON MEMORIAL HALL.
A search for Memorial Hall in Cincinnati returned two results - one on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, and the other more formally known as the Hamilton County Memorial Building. Since the latter was closer to where we were, we decided to try that first. Fortunately, that was the right call, and we soon thereafter arrived at this building.
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| The inscription we were looking for was on the left side of the building. |
A quick search on "Martha" in Cincinnati indicated that there was a famous passenger pigeon for whom a new mural had just been painted in downtown Cincinnati. Confident that was the intended destination, we headed out just as the two other teams (who had joined forces and were now working together as one) arrived at Memorial Hall. We hoped that would be the last we'd see of them until the finish line...
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| A very nice mural, but not the right Martha. |
So we drive back to Washington Park, just in time to see the other team starting to search the park for Martha. I walk by the sign first, and hoping not to give away the location, I keep walking right by it hoping the other teams don't notice before I would circle back and take a quick photo. This doesn't work at all, as Devon notices it not seconds after I pass it, and this of course makes it look like I'm just following them. Jeez.
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| The obstructed view of the Martha Stites sign I finally got after I foolishly pretended I didn't see it. |
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| Hecker memorial, but which date do we use? |
After a few minutes of doing some internet research and looking around our surroundings, one of us notices that across the street, right next to Memorial Hall, is the Cincinnati Music Hall, which is nineteen letters long, and written on the eaves in giant letters beneath 5 giant wreaths! Not wanting to tip off the other team to this discovery, we retreat to the van (in the opposite direction) and discreetly drive over and park in front of the Music Hall to work on the clue.
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| You can only barely see the tops of four of the wreaths here. |
Anyway, this final clues decodes to a phone number which, when called, gives us a poem that suggests the location of our drive-to-Indianapolis puzzle, behind a sign with a polka-dotted guy near the Taft Museum.
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| Jonathan poses with the Indy driving clue in hand. |
So not only did we finish this about 30 minutes after the other team, we also incurred a 30 minute penalty for taking a hint. So we've completely blown that hour lead we had at the start of the leg, and it is like the race is now starting from even. So we head off to Indianapolis in what we believe to be a virtual tie for first, and hope for the best! Next up... the driving clue to Indianapolis!
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Day 3, Part 4 - The Queen City
Last time on Day 3 of the Great America Race:
We played with a unicorn, griffin and lion. We ate ice cream. We went out of our way to visit a mausoleum. We explored a cemetery. We solved a nice pop culture/music clue and used the solution as a Vigenère key to decrypt some ciphertext.
Armed with our decryption, we arrived at Lyttle Park in Cincinnati knowing we needed to search near the flags for some glowing signs under a well-placed light. We suspected this was cluing the use of our blacklight but while it was easy enough to locate the flags, there was nothing particularly obvious on which to shine our light.
So we spread out and expanded our search area. While examining the flags, I noticed a rock near one that seemed a little out of place. I inspected it but didn't see anything and I didn't have the blacklight on me. So I made a mental note to show the rock to the rest of my team and continued my search.
After another 15 or 20 minutes of searching, we texted Josh and he gave us a hint to look for a rock out of place. Immediately my unfailing mental note went off and I said, "oh yeah, I saw that like 15 minutes ago, we should shine the blacklight on it." It's a wonderful system I have... very efficient.
Anyway, the message on the rock led us to search some nearby ivy where we found the last four clues of the day.
The first of them took us to the Carew Tower downtown where we found a doorway with a series of medallions around it.
The order of these medallions helped us put together a message telling us to FIND THE BURNET HOUSE PLAQ. We were a little confused by the picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger (was this a callback to the earlier clue?) but it turns out that was just added because a couple of the playtest teams solved to an alternate message indicating Arnold's Bar and Grill (I'm not sure how) and Josh wanted to prevent us from going there instead.
We filled in the names from the plaque's register into the provided grid and used the numbers on the plaque to label our x and y axes.
This allowed us to use the xy-coordinates to pull out letters and go to the Berlin Wall Monument.
There scattered around the monument, we found various words scrawled onto stones in the ground.
We used the letter frequencies of all these words to help us find the proper German word that would decode our last Vigenère of the day which led to a local pub, O'Malley's in the Alley.
When we arrived at the pub, we found Josh waiting but he did his best to ignore us as we weren't quite done yet. The final clue had us locating various signs in the bar and taking the indicated letters to form one last message. Somehow I only have a pictures of two of the signs.
The message would have had us then head to Toby Keith's Bar and Grill but as it was already pretty late, that site was scratched and O'Malley's became the final location of the day. We talked with Josh for a bit and learned that the other two teams were an hour or so behind us. We were pretty hungry so we left before they arrived and visited the nearest Skyline Chili.
I found the classic Cincinnati chili to be delicious but still a far cry from that of the Texas Chili Parlor that Rich and I had visited in Austin a month before. After gorging ourselves on chili and hot dogs, we found that we still had room for Graeter's ice cream which was conveniently located only a half block away.
I have been told in the past that Graeter's is the best ice cream on the planet which I always found to be a pretty bold statement. But after trying their 1870 Tower with black raspberry chip ice cream, I can no longer discount that statement out of hand.
All in all, I had a great time on day 3 and think that is probably my favorite day of the entire race. The puzzles were fun and challenging, the bikes were awesome, the travel clue was great, we recaptured the lead from the other teams and we finished with chili and ice cream. How could that not be fantastic?
Thanks for reading!
We played with a unicorn, griffin and lion. We ate ice cream. We went out of our way to visit a mausoleum. We explored a cemetery. We solved a nice pop culture/music clue and used the solution as a Vigenère key to decrypt some ciphertext.
Armed with our decryption, we arrived at Lyttle Park in Cincinnati knowing we needed to search near the flags for some glowing signs under a well-placed light. We suspected this was cluing the use of our blacklight but while it was easy enough to locate the flags, there was nothing particularly obvious on which to shine our light.
So we spread out and expanded our search area. While examining the flags, I noticed a rock near one that seemed a little out of place. I inspected it but didn't see anything and I didn't have the blacklight on me. So I made a mental note to show the rock to the rest of my team and continued my search.
After another 15 or 20 minutes of searching, we texted Josh and he gave us a hint to look for a rock out of place. Immediately my unfailing mental note went off and I said, "oh yeah, I saw that like 15 minutes ago, we should shine the blacklight on it." It's a wonderful system I have... very efficient.
Anyway, the message on the rock led us to search some nearby ivy where we found the last four clues of the day.
The first of them took us to the Carew Tower downtown where we found a doorway with a series of medallions around it.
The order of these medallions helped us put together a message telling us to FIND THE BURNET HOUSE PLAQ. We were a little confused by the picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger (was this a callback to the earlier clue?) but it turns out that was just added because a couple of the playtest teams solved to an alternate message indicating Arnold's Bar and Grill (I'm not sure how) and Josh wanted to prevent us from going there instead.
We filled in the names from the plaque's register into the provided grid and used the numbers on the plaque to label our x and y axes.
This allowed us to use the xy-coordinates to pull out letters and go to the Berlin Wall Monument.
There scattered around the monument, we found various words scrawled onto stones in the ground.
We used the letter frequencies of all these words to help us find the proper German word that would decode our last Vigenère of the day which led to a local pub, O'Malley's in the Alley.
When we arrived at the pub, we found Josh waiting but he did his best to ignore us as we weren't quite done yet. The final clue had us locating various signs in the bar and taking the indicated letters to form one last message. Somehow I only have a pictures of two of the signs.
The message would have had us then head to Toby Keith's Bar and Grill but as it was already pretty late, that site was scratched and O'Malley's became the final location of the day. We talked with Josh for a bit and learned that the other two teams were an hour or so behind us. We were pretty hungry so we left before they arrived and visited the nearest Skyline Chili.
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| The waitress must have misunderstood because when we asked about a 5-way, she brought us all this chili instead. |
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| I think Rich wins the Goldilocks award for enjoying his ice cream just the right amount. |
I have been told in the past that Graeter's is the best ice cream on the planet which I always found to be a pretty bold statement. But after trying their 1870 Tower with black raspberry chip ice cream, I can no longer discount that statement out of hand.
All in all, I had a great time on day 3 and think that is probably my favorite day of the entire race. The puzzles were fun and challenging, the bikes were awesome, the travel clue was great, we recaptured the lead from the other teams and we finished with chili and ice cream. How could that not be fantastic?
Thanks for reading!
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