Three mice are set loose one at a time in a maze. They each try to
+document their time in different ways. The maze fits within a 6 by 13
+grid. Not every mouse traverses every square (you can get the unique
+answer anyhow).
+
+
Blinky
+
+
NOTE: Pictures are not shown in the order taken.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Jottie
+
+
+I woke up to unfamiliar magenta walls and a blue floor lit from above
+with wide spotlights. I had a moment of panic when I realized I had my
+trusty blue pen, but no notepad beside me. I would have to rely on my
+memory. You see it was my first assignment as a new reporter for the
+Lab Rat Rag and I was in a new maze. The first thing I saw was that I
+was at the dead end of a hallway extended out in front of me. I
+decided that a smart move would be to mark my way on the floor, so if
+I ever came that way a second time I would not go the same way
+twice. But to save ink (and time) I would only mark which way I went
+if there was a choice.
+
+
+I went a little ways along the hallway. Soon there was an opening on
+my left and the hallway ahead looked like it deadended a ways forward
+so I drew an arrow on the floor pointing left and turned to go through
+the opening.
+
+
+To my dismay I then stepped out into a hallway that was completely
+dark in both directions (it stretched out to my left and to my right).
+ wasn't sure which direction to go but the left looked shorter so I
+bent down to make an arrow, but my pen didn't show up in the darkness
+and I had to pause and think about my maze algorithms class for a
+minute. I reasoned that it would be safest if I always took the
+leftmost branch when I couldn't mark my way.
+
+
+When I reached the end of the hallway there was an opening on my right
+which I took (there being no other choice). But no sooner had I
+stepped out of the dark hallway, then I had another choice: Right or
+straight ahead. My first impulse was to turn right since straight
+ahead looked like more darkness and I wanted to be able to use my
+pen. But when I looked down the hallway to my right I saw no openings,
+so I sighed and continued on forward into the darkness (first marking
+the direction I followed on the ground).
+
+
+Once entering this new dark hall I realized immediately I would have
+to turn right. I did so and walked glumly down the long hall. At the
+end I had to turn left.
+
+
+The area in front of me was lit. I was so relieved I marked my way
+even though I had no choice. I had to go straight... into
+another dark hallway, this time leading off to the left.
+
+
+About halfway down it I came to an opening on my left. I followed my
+"choice in the dark" rule and turned into the opening. After turning
+there was a short hallway to my left. But it seemed to be a dead end
+so I turned around and went back out into the long dark hall.
+
+
+I continued on to my left (the same direction I had been going prior
+to the last little "in the dark choice") and immediately saw another
+opening on my left. I took this one too, but all it had was a small
+dark cubbyhole on the right. Exasperated I went back out into the long
+hall. Only all of a sudden I realized I was almost at the end of it,
+so I continued to the end and turned right and out under another
+light.
+
+
+Ahead of me was yet another dark hallway! This time stretching right
+again. I was starting to sense a pattern here and I tell you I was
+getting sick of it. I went a little ways down it and soon found light
+openings on both my right and left. I choose left, just to be
+consistent, you understand. It was a short hallway stretching to the
+right. I could see that there were no other exits, but I thought I saw
+something on the floor at the end, so I went to investigate.
+
+
+It wasn't the cheese scoop that would have assured my career, but I
+was happy enough after I saw it, because it was this piece of paper. I
+decided I had better take the opportunity to record what had happened
+so far since I was already starting to forget.
+
+
+Next I will go back over it all and make a map and continue on. Well
+maybe after I take a nap...
+
+
+
+
+
+
Milton
+
+
NOTE: Milton has short legs. However, an integral number of his steps
+do fit within one wall segment.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2 1 1 2 2 1
+3 | 6 ^ 3 ^ 15 v 2 v 17 v 8 v 14 | 6 v 2 v 5 | 15 v 8 v 14 ^ 3
+
+
+1 2 2 2 1 1 2
+^ 3 | 3 v 2 v 5 v 2 | 3 v 8 v 2 v 5 | 6 v 8 v 14 ^ 3 ^ 3 | 3 v
+
+
+ 2 2
+2 v 5 v 2 | 3 v 8 v 2 v 5 | 6
+
+Overactor; Frasier role; lip hair, briefly
+Northwestern state; louder; venomous Indian snake
+Home canners; heron, in Munich
+Cautious and deliberate; adventurous acts
+Foundation author; make unwanted comments; type of salt
+Pallid; prized; Roman galley
+Declare unfit for habitation; thinking machines (abbr.); discard
+Former, as a girlfriend; collection of Persian quatrains; Ken's gal
+Provide with weapons; whirlpool; sorcerer
+Mule's daddies; Welsh dish
+
Down
+Religious school; Amend strip
+Village People tune; part of a musical note; marital invalidation
+Adhere to a surface; Norwegian attractions; angled edge
+Celebration before Lent; osso buco component; Joan of Arc, for example
+Pollux or Betelgeuse; part of an oarlock; Menlo Park denizen; eight bits; transmit
+Owner of a Lonely Heart band; items for a book collector; machines found at a car wash
+Theater aide; snitch; Argentine repression
+Stirring up, as a fire; inferior substitutes
+Pumbaa, for example; Chef's garment; certain spiritual leader
+Societies simpler than a state; sub-par result?
+
Enigma Valley is throwing a soiree for top bank executives to
+celebrate a successful coin acquisition. To get additional
+information, you set up a fake catering organization to infiltrate
+Enigma Valley’s shindig.
+
+
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now you have to learn to
+cook like a top chef. And Enigma Valley executives certainly have
+peculiar tastes.
+
+
Meat
+
+
Pick any letter. Add together its Scrabble score, its index in the
+alphabet, and the number of people on your team whose last name
+contains that letter.
What is the maximum number of team members with the same birthday?
+
+
+
1: No starch
+
2: Rice
+
3: Pasta
+
4 or more: Potato
+
+
+
Vegetable
+
+
When is the earliest that anyone on your team has done the Mystery
+Hunt?
+
+
+
Everyone's first time: any vegetable you want
+
2011-2012: A vegetable of genus Solanum
+
2008-2010: A vegetable of genus Brassica
+
2007: A vegetable of genus Spinacia
+
2005-2006: A vegetable (not a spice) of family Apiaceae
+
2001-2004: A vegetable of genus Capsicum
+
1998-2000: A vegetable of genus Beta
+
1997 or earlier: A culinary fruit
+
+
+
Spice
+
+
Draw a Scrabble tile for everyone on your team (fake it if you
+don't have the tiles). Pick a letter that is, or is tied for, the most
+common or least common. Cook with a spice starting with that
+letter.
+
+
+
+
To successfully infiltrate, you should bring a meal to HQ that
+serves 4 and that people are willing to eat. You've heard that the
+bank awards Options for particularly good catering.
You find an envelope containing a paper Enigma rotor in subbasement 9,
+near the Tomb of the UNKNOWN TOOL.
+It maps the alphabet to BPJLNTVWMYUXFQHZIOCKDGSAER, and the input letters
+E, N, and I are marked with a gray background.
+
+
14-0637 is a room where you can find another rotor (on a handy cardboard
+cylinder of the right size with an input wheel). The rotor maps the alphabet to
+GHQDUIVPYABEFNRLSKCXTWMZJO. G, M, and A are marked with a gray background.
+
+
The last rotor is in an envelope on the DOOR INTO OFFICE OF DR BENOIT FORGET
+(24-214). It maps the alphabet to MLEXBZSAIVDJNRTYOKFWQHGPCU, and no letters
+are marked.
+
+
+The metas and the supermeta intro give you all the pieces of a paper Enigma,
+and you just have to figure out how to put it together. (NB: The inspiration for these rotors comes from the "paper Enigma" described here. The images used to create them can be found here.)
+
+
+
+
The example checks that you're advancing the rotors properly. You rotate the
+rightmost rotor before decoding a letter. If the rightmost rotor has a mark lined
+up with A on the input rotor, you rotate the center rotor as well. If the center
+rotor has a mark lined up with A on the input rotor, you rotate all three rotors.
+
+
If you have all three metas, you just have to put the pieces together in the
+correct order (trying up to 6 possibilities) and implement the right Enigma rules.
+If you have two, you get to try to break an Enigma wheel from a lot of crib text.
+(Random Thymes: "If the Brits could do it in the '40s, we can do it with an 8,000
+core supercomputer!" They got the last meta before it mattered.)
+
+
Some pitfalls:
+
+
The rightmost wheel rotates before decoding. (On the physical machine,
+the force of pressing a key causes it to rotate.)
+
It's tempting to think of the rotors as turning like an odometer, in which case
+the left wheel would only turn if both other wheels were notched. But the WWII
+Enigma (as well as Franklin Heath's
+papercraft
+Enigma) had a phenomenon known as "double-stepping", where the center wheel
+would step again when it rotated onto a position with a notch that turns the left
+wheel. If you don't do this, you get about 1/3 of the way through decoding the
+answers and start getting gibberish.
+
The reflector does not rotate. Its A always lines up with A on the input wheel,
+not on the left wheel. Unfortunately, the example does not check this, but you will
+get complete gibberish as the decoding if you line it up with the leftmost wheel.
+
Puzzlers are given a series of North American cities paired with clue phrases. Every clue's solution is a punny phrase that is also a heavy metal or hard rock band's name missing one letter.
The above clues to the answer THIN IZZY. The phrase is one letter short of the hard rock band Thin Lizzy. So from this clue, we extract the missing letter: L.
+
+
Clues are given in alphabetical order by their answer. Additionally, each clue is also associated with a North American city. These locations, when drawn onto a map, describe a somewhat ellipsoid set of points around the continent – indeed, it is a tour route! The first city listed in the puzzle is Toronto, ON. Toronto is also the only listed city outside the US.
+
+
When the missing band letters are placed on a map and read in the cyclic order of the route, they will spell out the fully extracted clue: WRITERSOFTHEPILLORIANAGE, or "Writers of The Pillorian Age". The Pillorian Age is the sole album released by Norwegian black metallers Abysmal. The puzzle's answer, then, is ABYSMAL.
+
+
The full table of clues, their answers, and their associate bands follows:
+
+
+
+
Geographical Order
+
City
+
Clue Phrase
+
Clue Answer
+
Band
+
Missing Letter
+
+
+
1
+
Toronto, ON
+
It could use a seraph scratch?
+
ANGEL ITCH
+
Angel Witch
+
W
+
+
+
2
+
Worcester, MA
+
Van Halen singer in disco boots
+
GO-GO ROTH
+
Gorgoroth
+
R
+
+
+
3
+
Woonsocket, RI
+
Choose
+
DECIDE
+
Deicide
+
I
+
+
+
4
+
New York, NY
+
Bread bowl and bear claw bakery
+
PANERA
+
Pantera
+
T
+
+
+
5
+
Richmond, VA
+
Like Vader Ripple or Chocolate Chip Maul
+
ICE DARTH
+
Iced Earth
+
E
+
+
+
6
+
Charlotte, NC
+
Beirut, to some
+
PONG
+
Prong
+
R
+
+
+
7
+
Savannah, GA
+
Sometime Kardashian beau
+
ODOM
+
Sodom
+
S
+
+
+
8
+
Jacksonville, FL
+
Doctor Who's Astrid
+
PETH
+
Opeth
+
O
+
+
+
9
+
Mobile, AL
+
Production site for Vulcan prosthetics
+
EAR FACTORY
+
Fear Factory
+
F
+
+
+
10
+
New Orleans, LA
+
Apostle acts nosy
+
JUDAS PRIES
+
Judas Priest
+
T
+
+
+
11
+
Austin, TX
+
Curve foe
+
ARC ENEMY
+
Arch Enemy
+
H
+
+
+
12
+
Pecos, TX
+
Instrumental composition on coniferous tree
+
RHAPSODY OF FIR
+
Rhapsody of Fire
+
E
+
+
+
13
+
Carlsbad, NM
+
Used to be
+
WAS
+
Wasp
+
P
+
+
+
14
+
Phoenix, AZ
+
He's between a king and a vassal
+
LORD
+
Lordi
+
I
+
+
+
15
+
Los Angeles, CA
+
A day of rest for your spine
+
BACK SABBATH
+
Black Sabbath
+
L
+
+
+
16
+
San Jose, CA
+
This olympic mascot dude hasn't eaten enough food
+
All of these images are city scapes of an American city with a clip art on top that represents the mascot of one of three sports leagues (NFL, NBA, and MLB) from a different city. The cities are ordered by league and then alphabetized within each league. Each sports teams' city (or state in the case of the Vikings and the Rangers) is represented elsewhere in the puzzle.
+
Separating by league and ordering by connecting each team to its correct city gives three distinct loops. Reading the correct letter out of each team mascot around the loops gives three words: MASCOT WASHBURN UNIVERSITY (in given order by league). Washburn University's mascot is the answer to this puzzle: ICHABOD
All of these images are city scapes of an American city with a clip art on top that represents the mascot of one of three sports leagues (NFL, NBA, and MLB) from a different city. The cities are ordered by league and then alphabetized within each league. Each sports teams' city (or state in the case of the Vikings and the Rangers) is represented elsewhere in the puzzle.
+
Separating by league and ordering by connecting each team to its correct city gives three distinct loops. Reading the correct letter out of each team mascot around the loops gives three words: MASCOT WASHBURN UNIVERSITY (in given order by league). Washburn University's mascot is the answer to this puzzle: ICHABOD
+Congrats! You've solved this puzzle. The answer is GARCIAPARRA. However, you don't know the puzzle's title. When you think you've gotten the title, submit it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
The White Queen would like to challenge you to a game of GeoGuessr. Send us a URL that proves that you scored higher than 20,000 points on a challenge generated by the Queen here.
Congratulations! All that traveling must have made you hungry. It sure made us hungry. We have associated each location with a food, displayed below. Bring us a dish which contains three of the five foods associated with the regions you correctly GeoGuessed!
+
+
+
+
You sent us an appropriate dish.
+
+
+
+
One more round of GeoGuessing! But this time, to make it more challenging, the static image is all you get!