Avenue of Flags Solution

How It Works

This puzzle was solved in three steps cleverly known as the Red, White and Blue steps. Teams should have eventually discovered the following to assist them:
  • There are 26 flags in the row
  • The flags have different numbers of stars on them
  • There is a plaque with a list of numbers of flags with stars and who donated each flag--this is a daunting amount of information. (There was a firelake sticker on the pole above the plaque just to make them aware of the info on the plaque.)
  • The number of stars on the flags are in increasing order, starting with 13 and ending with 49
  • (There is a 27th flag, which has a firelake sticker on it, and is standing over the aforementioned plaque. It has 50 stars, not that that matters.)

The real challenge to this puzzle came in separating the data streams, and having the will power to ignore data that couldn't be reasonably decoded.

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Step 1 - Red

The first step was to take the red stickers (they look like "43*", "13*", etc.) and realize that these numbers represented the number of stars on the different flags. From the first flag in the row of 26 (13*) to the last flag (49*), this was a basic encoding scheme - the first flag was A, the second B, and the last Z (13* = A, 49* = Z). The plaque had all the information necessary to actually decode this. When properly decoded, the message on the stickers in red writing was PLASTIC SHADY FUN AND WAVY.

Step 2 - White

The message from the first step should have directed teams to a PLASTIC WAVY slide (FUN), and to look underneath (SHADY). When they did this, a white sheet awaited them, with what appeared to be a math problem.

In actuality, it was a request for them to combine this stream of (26) numbers with the information on the flag stickers. This produced a second stream of numbers just like the first, which when decoded said: BOTTOMNISZEROINDXINTODONOR

Step 3 - Blue

That is to say, Bottom North is Zero, Index into Donor. Now, using the blue circle stickers which were also on the flags (and many attempts were made, yea, to use these stickers in earlier steps), with the northern bottom face as zero, then clockwise (low order bit) and up (high order bit) thusly:

1 2 3 N 0 8 16 NE 1 9 17 E 2 10 18 SE 3 11 19 S 4 12 20 SW 5 13 21 W 6 14 22 NW 7 15 23

When the resultant number stream was used to index into the donors (for each flag) teams received the message: YOUPHONEANDSENDCODEGOONIES.

Solution

Teams entered the code GOONIES into the phone system, and were instructed to return to the showroom.

Design Notes

This puzzle and location were doomed from the very start. Ownership of the location and puzzle varied greatly, and poor information was given as to the nature of the location.

The week prior to our game Beta, it was clear that the person who was originally responsible for this location was not going to deliver a puzzle. After a bit of thinking, I came up with a fairly novel idea for the puzzle which involved stringing about half a mile of string between the poles. I'll not describe the actual puzzle, but here's a picture which clearly shows why the puzzle had to be changed:

We put this up during the beta, and parks department folks were brought around presently to beat us with sticks. It was a good puzzle, just not for that location. Then came crunch time, during which the puzzle that was presented in the game was developed, playtested, redeveloped, tweaked, made easier (we thought), and not playtested again (due to time).

GC Notes

This puzzle was both a schedule killer and a schedule saver at the same time. Because of the hub structure we'd developed, we needed a steady stream of teams heading through the showroom. Teams that bunched up really messed with our schedule. In attempts to cope with this, we skipped some teams over this puzzle who we wanted in the "first wave," and let some of the later teams actually visit this puzzle, in order to buy us time to get the first wave of teams out.

Because of the strange nature in which teams were skipped or not skipped over this puzzle, no hint penalties were applied for this puzzle, and the time teams spent on this puzzle was recorded as "hold" time instead of "solve" time. Frustrating, but is it better than just sitting around waiting for GC to get their act together? Unclear.

Lesson learned by me: don't attempt to bring a puzzle together like this at the last minute. Too many bugs still existed in this puzzle, and our spread wasn't super-bad going out of the first loop. Had we simply removed this puzzle from the game completely, several things might have happened:

  • Teams may not have needed to be skipped over a later puzzle in order to keep with time schedules
  • Teams would not have been demoralized over a crappy puzzle that was unfair in many respects
  • The last-minute time spent developing this puzzle could have been applied to other puzzles that deserved the attention more
  • This location could have been salvaged and used in a later year, instead of wasting it on this puzzle.