Illumine Logo   Illumine Game Recap

Clue 9 Solution: Semaphore Counties

How the Clue Works

In fact, each word appeared once and only once on one and only one of the county plaques. Words can therefore be mapped to counties.

act garfield
air island
are grays
arid yakima
arm lewis
both walla
can klickitat
complete franklin
dry benton
each stevens
ears pend
eel asotin
face wahkiakum
few ferry
fire kittitas
fjord chelan
flow snohomish
four pierce
give columbia
have skamania
hub king
led cowlitz
less pacific
lie san juan
mill whatcom
mix grant
or skagit
per kitsap
pine lincoln
rain jefferson
rise clallam
role spokane
runs mason
sent clark
sold okanogan
steam adams
tell douglas
tie whitman
tip thurston

The words also appeared in the code book that the teams had just minutes ago used.

arid    can/mix(2); less/complete(11)
arm     less/arid(15)
fire    led/arid(9); led/both(3); rise/arid(1)
mix     arid/dry(14)
pine    runs/role(5); steam/role(13)
sold    hub/mix(10)
steam   can/role(7); can/tell(8); fjord/few(4); pine/fjord(12)
tell    face/role(16)
tip     face/led(6)

Translating the words into counties yields a collection of triplets. The triplets are ordered according to the number listed along with each entry in the code book.

yakima          klickitat       grant
yakima          pacific         franklin
lewis           pacific         yakima
kittitas        cowlitz         yakima
kittitas        cowlitz         walla
kittitas        clallam         yakima
grant           yakima          benton
lincoln         mason           spokane
lincoln         adams           spokane
okanogan        king            grant
adams           klickitat       spokane
adams           klickitat       douglas
adams           chelan          ferry
adams           lincoln         chelan
douglas         wahkiakum       spokane
thurston        wahkiakum       cowlitz

The Solution

Treating the triplets as first-middle-last and plotting their positions in the state, the triplets each form angled connected line segments. Taking the flag as a primer and thinking "flags" leads, in Game speak, to the semaphore flag system. The triplets decode to semaphore letters. Centralia Art Farm sent teams south to the next clue location.

Design Notes

GC Notes

This clue, sadly, was broken because in fact the words given to the teams were not always unique to a plaque. All but two of the teams were skipped.

< Clue 9  |  > Clue 10
|