Treasure Hunt

February 12, 2007 9:40 PM

Treasure Hunt Puzzle I've been nutting my way through some of these puzzles with some difficulty but with a great deal of fun. Thought I would share...
posted by gnomesb (63 comments total)

Very cool link! Thanks!
posted by amyms at 9:47 PM on February 12, 2007

I love these things. Here are a few previous ones.
posted by painquale at 11:43 PM on February 12, 2007

I suck at this one. At least the other ones you can sometimes muddle your way through with half-guesses. The only one I've got here is "Overly Verbose."
posted by juv3nal at 1:08 AM on February 13, 2007

I think I have everything except #3. The rest are fairly easy, especially if you look at the hints. (7 took a little bit of work though.) I'm sure #3 isn't very hard either, I just don't know where to start.
posted by H-Bar at 2:02 AM on February 13, 2007

You bastard, gnomesb..

Overly Verbose is bugging me. I know it ought to be simple but I can't for the life of me see what the pattern is. I think I have 2 or 3 correcrt answers so far.
posted by salmacis at 2:03 AM on February 13, 2007

Hm.... the prize is kind of an adverprize. Not that I was expecting anything valuable, but it felt a bit tawdry. Anyway, the puzzles are fun. With hints, I thought Overly Verbose was the hardest; but I never would have got Odds and Ends without the hint.
posted by beniamino at 3:27 AM on February 13, 2007

How are you guys actually solving these? 3 and 5, I can't even see where to start. 6 and 7, I can't do, but at least I can see where the puzzle is. I'm sure my answer to 1 is incorrect. That only leaves 2 and 4 I'm confident about, and I'm getting frustrated.
posted by salmacis at 3:45 AM on February 13, 2007

salmacis: Read all the hints. Three of them directly address problem 5.
posted by H-Bar at 4:16 AM on February 13, 2007

I think I've stumbled across the answer to 5. I've spotted something interesting in 3, but I'm not at all sure whether that's the right answer. 6 and 7 I still can't do.

Benamino, are you sure you got all the answers correct?
posted by salmacis at 4:56 AM on February 13, 2007

Yup, I'm sure -- it only lets you proceed to the next stage once you've got them all right. 2,3,5,6,7 are all 'when you've got it you know for sure' (each of 3 and 5 has two possible answers, but you're told which one to choose). Do scour the hints and follow all the advice there. Hint 14 helps enormously with question 7. All the hints are good, with the possible exception of 11 in which I found the word 'completely' a bit misleading.
posted by beniamino at 5:12 AM on February 13, 2007

thanks for the hint beniamino - I was stuck and you prompted me to go to hints.
posted by gnomesb at 5:21 AM on February 13, 2007

I think i am the idiot savant - no idea!!! Time to go to bed and ponder the wacky world of the puzzler...
posted by gnomesb at 5:29 AM on February 13, 2007

Are you sure you can only progress to the next stage when you have them all right? Just to test, I put in random amswers to the questions I don't have yet, and got the button to "start digging".

For 3, I'll be disappointed if I'm correct - the puzzle still doesn't really make sense. For hint 11, it just hints at how I would normally attack that puzzle anyway, but with no joy. I can't make head or tail of hint 14.
posted by salmacis at 5:29 AM on February 13, 2007

How irritating. I found the hint that hint 14 was referring to. Except that that was exactly how I expected to solve number 7 anyway and I still can't do it!
posted by salmacis at 6:01 AM on February 13, 2007

In that case, salmacis, you are very smart, and very, very close to solving #7. Assuming you've drawn something, you may want to (a) draw a black border around what you've drawn, and/or (b) come back and look at it with fresh eyes later.
posted by beniamino at 6:15 AM on February 13, 2007

Woot. I got #7, and having scratch paper definitely helped. (as does blurring one's eyes). I also got #4 almost right away, but I have no clue on any of the others.
posted by shiu mai baby at 7:12 AM on February 13, 2007

SHOOT. I have 1, 4, 5, and 7, but am completely baffled on 2, 3, and 6. Great time waster-- thanks!
posted by orangemiles at 9:24 AM on February 13, 2007

Grrrr! This thing is bugging me! I think I have 1-4 (not 100% about 2). And 6 (Overly Verbose) is bugging me.

Great post, gnomesb!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:42 AM on February 13, 2007

This link makes me feel good about myself, because at first I was completely clueless about every puzzle, but now I think I've got them all with the exception of "Overly Verbose."

I did run into a problem when I checked my answer for "Colored Emotions." Either he doesn't know what day it is, or I don't.
posted by Nedroid at 10:38 AM on February 13, 2007

Anyone willing to give hints on Vowels, Lightning Bugs, or Overly Verbose? I'm pulling my hair out.
posted by orangemiles at 10:50 AM on February 13, 2007

"I've been nutting my way through[...]"
ewww
posted by pantsrobot at 11:32 AM on February 13, 2007

Got all but #5 (Colored Emotions). Still bugged. Especially because on the Hints page, he indicates that when you get the answer, you'll know.

orangemiles - The words in Overly Verbose are not completely useless.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 12:03 PM on February 13, 2007

ObscureReferenceMan, hint number one is the most relevant to solving #5.
posted by Nedroid at 12:51 PM on February 13, 2007

I got all of the answers except for "overly verbose" without much ado. The clues are all explained in various parts of the site. But I can't seem to make any headway with "overly verbose." What am I not getting?

The words all seem useless, and I don't see any pattern.

Help?

By the way, great post!
posted by norae at 1:48 PM on February 13, 2007

Got it! And I was SURE I had all 2 and 3 right. But no. Also, 7 was wrong as well. Grrr....
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 1:53 PM on February 13, 2007

I've gotten everything except one. Solving Overly Verbose is hinted at (spoiler in rot13!) yvar rvtugrra bs gur chmmyr.

Can somebody give me a hint on #1? I'm totally lost.
posted by onalark at 2:00 PM on February 13, 2007

I hope this helps...

The answer to #1 can be added as a suffix to turtle and ear, and can be done to a car and is done by the moon.
posted by norae at 2:11 PM on February 13, 2007

So far, 5 out of 7. I was sure I had Vowels and Consonants right!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 2:13 PM on February 13, 2007

PHEW- got the Vowels and Consonants. Duh.

Lightning Bug help, anyone?

Onalark-- I don't have a very simple tip for #1. If I gave it away I'd have to swab the deck for sure.
posted by orangemiles at 2:14 PM on February 13, 2007

Lightning Bug:
Google the poem, and read it very very very carefully.
posted by norae at 2:17 PM on February 13, 2007

I ended up getting #1 while Metafilter was inaccessible on my own. Sa-weet.
posted by onalark at 3:08 PM on February 13, 2007

Got it. It only took me, what, 6 hours to figure out who Jeorge was? And I was absolutely certain I had #2 right, matey, but obviously I was wrong. Good post.
posted by krakedhalo at 3:44 PM on February 13, 2007

Somebody please help me on 6 and 7! It's doing my head in!
posted by salmacis at 4:27 PM on February 13, 2007

onalark, number 6 is obviously to do with the odd spacing. I clocked that within 5 seconds. But what!?
posted by salmacis at 4:35 PM on February 13, 2007

salmacis, perhaps looking at the html source will make the spacing clearer.
posted by ajshankar at 4:57 PM on February 13, 2007

wow, #6 took forever but I finally got it!

thanks for the help everybody!

must...find...more...puzzles...
posted by norae at 5:52 PM on February 13, 2007

Got #7 (Odds & Ends). Still stuck on #2.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:15 PM on February 13, 2007

ObscureReferenceMan, hint for #2:

There are hundreds of CVCVCV words in the dictionary (it's in third place, right?) A clue for the specific CVCVCV combination you're looking for is on the problem page itself (though the actual answer isn't on the website anywhere, as advertised). Make sure to read and interpret all of the problem text.

I am still unable to figure out what Hint #14 means. (Specifically, if it requires getting login and password information, I have no idea how. If not, then I'm totally clueless.)
posted by ajshankar at 8:48 PM on February 13, 2007

Gah! Got it!!! Now I can go to sleep. But first, must check out other puzzle links...
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:55 PM on February 13, 2007

Funny thing is, I know that word. Well, the word... um, that is... Never mind.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:56 PM on February 13, 2007

ajshankar, you don't need any sort of login/password to take advantage of #14. If you know or can find out who this "Jeorge" character is, it should be relatively straightforward to follow the rest of the clue from there.
posted by Nedroid at 9:03 PM on February 13, 2007

Thanks for the extra hint nedroid; that was what I needed. And I only solved "Overly Verbose" after every other one.
posted by bevedog at 11:07 PM on February 13, 2007

Haha, thanks for the clarification, nedroid.

I had searched for "Jeorge" in google, and the first result was this one, which seemed natural enough. (I figured that the puzzle would want you to look at the first result; how much better can you get than jeorge.net?)

At the site, there's this robot-looking thing pictured on every page, which I figured was the mascot "Jeorge"! It's some kind event management system that you can log into to RSVP for a particular event. Seemed plausible enough that the trick was to figure out the login info, and the resulting "event" would be a clue for the puzzle.

Haha... couldn't have been more wrong.
posted by ajshankar at 11:32 PM on February 13, 2007

salmacis, perhaps looking at the html source will make the spacing clearer.

That was the first thing I did! I still don't get it!
posted by salmacis at 11:48 PM on February 13, 2007

I finally did it! It was funny though because most of the puzzles you guys are having trouble with came fairly easily to me but the simpler ones seemed to take forever. The "prize" is lame, but it was still a good way to kill a few hours. Thanks, gnomesb!
posted by wallaby at 3:57 AM on February 14, 2007

Anyone? Please? Pretty please?
posted by salmacis at 6:54 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis - There have been a number of hints given here (including one obvious one). Read it. Making note of the differences. That's all I can say.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 7:29 AM on February 14, 2007

And I've made it quite clear that I've read the hints and still can't get the answers!

6: it's about the spacing of the letters/words. Some words have superfluous spaces around them. I've tried every way I can think of to selectively extract letters/words/lines based around those spaces, to no avail.

7: you have to refactor the 6x6 grid into a 9x4 grid. But even after doing that, (in a variety of different ways) you don't get a letter! So what am I doing wrong!?
posted by salmacis at 7:43 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis -- For #6, look at these two lines first:

"Have you ever noticed I sometimes take 1000 words to say
what could be said with just 500? I'm like that sometimes - "

Then consider the whole paragraph.

For #7, it really sounds as if you have done everything right. The simplest refactoring does give a letter. Perhaps you need to swap what you're seeing as 'figure' and what you're seeing as 'ground'?
posted by beniamino at 7:57 AM on February 14, 2007

Then consider the whole paragraph.

You mean take every second line? Tried it, didn't work.

For #7, it really sounds as if you have done everything right

OK, Now, I'm baffled. This is not a letter! (And yes, I've tried it other ways as well!)

XXXX
     X
  XX
  XX
     X
  XX
  XX
  XX
      X

posted by salmacis at 8:11 AM on February 14, 2007

I got them all except number 2 (CVCVCV). Does it have something to do with the seemingly random italicization of certain words in the text?
posted by rocket88 at 8:32 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis-- check your email.
posted by orangemiles at 8:32 AM on February 14, 2007

Never mind...I got it.
And no, it had nothing to do with what I mentioned.
posted by rocket88 at 8:39 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis - Put 'em in a box. And squint.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:40 AM on February 14, 2007

Good one, orangemiles!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:41 AM on February 14, 2007

Thanks orangemiles, I now have 7. (Although my answer was different!) Still need 6 though!
posted by salmacis at 8:41 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis- You're so close--in fact you've apparently already tried what will solve #6 for you. Just try it again.
posted by wallaby at 9:32 AM on February 14, 2007

I have them all. Huge thanks for the hints, friends. What a relief.
posted by orangemiles at 11:26 AM on February 14, 2007

salmacis -- Add Xes all around what you posted above. It does make a letter; one that I am especially fond of.
posted by beniamino at 3:17 PM on February 14, 2007

Oh, sorry, you got #7 already. Re #6, if taking every 2nd line doesn't work, your puzzle is different from mine. Did you try it both ways?
posted by beniamino at 3:19 PM on February 14, 2007

Hah! The answer to #6 actually made me laugh when I (finally) figured it out. That was awesome.
posted by shiu mai baby at 3:24 PM on February 14, 2007

Also, salmacis: if you haven't gotten #7 yet, try numbering the boxes of the original diagram with a different factor number, if that makes sense. It helps keep them straight.
posted by shiu mai baby at 3:57 PM on February 14, 2007

I have them all now. Thanks for the help. No wonder I was struggling with the last two - I had the right technique for solving and I still couldn't see the answer!
posted by salmacis at 11:47 PM on February 14, 2007