Calls of the Wild Solution
How It Works
In order to get all of the data, teams needed to call the hotline from different phone numbers - the "magic number" was the last digit in the phone number. Once teams discovered this, they could call random friends and request them to call the system to collect the missing data.
Teams needed to discover that each sound was a combination of two sounds from a very limited set of animals: Duck, Dog, Sheep, Horse, Cow, Cat, and Donkey.
The set of sounds were actually a mapping of DTMF. Using the seed data they had, teams could figure out which row/column each animal mapped to and then decode the original data stream. Mapping looked like this:
| dog | sheep |
| 1 | 2 |
| 4 | 5 |
| 7 | 8 |
| * | 0 |
This provided teams with a sequence of numbers. Remembering that it was DTMF (and they'd been using phones a lot already) and the general repetativeness of the data, teams could figure out it was triple-tap phonespell, and get the message ANIMAL HYBRID AT POUND KEY. Pound key would be the sound of a horse and a donkey, so the animal hybrid (and the answer) would be MULE.
Solution
MULE
Design Notes
This puzzle was written about three years in a row by Andy for the pregame, and cut for one reason or another repeatedly. Andy was happy to finally ship this puzzle - much more happy than the teams were.