Fortune Telling Solution

How It Works

Puzzle consists of four minipuzzles and a short meta. When a minipuzzle is solved, the teams receive a card. When all four cards have been received, they can be exchanged with the master Fortune Teller for the meta.

Minipuzzle Walkthroughs:

OUIJA: Twister-style duck

Teams follow instructions to move around a Twister-style board that has letters like an Ouija board. During each stage, each player should land on one letter. Assuming that they follow the instructions correctly, the letters that each player lands on should spell out:

  • RED: SINFUL
  • YELLOW: OR NON
  • GREEN: SWISS
  • BLUE: CHEESE

The answer to this minipuzzle is UNHOLY.

MAGIC 8 BALLS: Ternary

There are three magic 8 balls of varying sizes. Each magic 8 ball contains a six sided die inside. The faces of the die each have a color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) and a short word or phrase. Each phrase is either a positive, unclear, or negative response.

Starting with the red sides, then orange, etc. and treating positive responses as 2s, unclear as 1s, negative as 0, ternary can be read out (largest bit is the largest ball).

Answer to this minipuzzle is CHARMS.

TAROT CARDS: Compound words

Teams receive a set of 21 cards, each with a picture. First they must identify each picture.

Next they will realize that compound words can be formed with the pictures, specifically in a "before and after" style.

  • BLUE - JAY - WALK
  • FIRE - ARM - CHAIR
  • HAIR - CUT - THROAT
  • LOW - KEY - BOARD
  • PIG - PEN - KNIFE
  • RIP - OFF - HAND
  • TIME - TABLE - SPOON

The answer is found by reading the first letters of the middle cards: JACKPOT.

PALM READING: Pigpen

Teams see a set of hands (some left, some right) with lines drawn on them and specific areas indicated on them. The lines drawn on the hands form the basis for creating pigpen letters.

  • Left hands act as the first half of the alphabet ("no dots" in traditional pigpen), right hands are the second half.
  • The hands that are set out can be read as "FIFTH PLANET"

There is also a palm reader at this station. If teams draw the pigpen lines on their hand (left or right) (they must draw the full design) and indicate a specific area on the palm, the palm reader will tell them the letter it corresponds with. The palm reader will only do this for letter that are part of the clue so that interns cannot obtain the entire alphabet this way and must recognize the pattern of assigning letters / the pigpen encoding.

To solve this puzzle, recognize that the "fifth planet" is JUPITER, write this on their palms using the same encoding, and show the palm reader. If teams return with the answer not written on their hands, palm reader will hint that it should be written on their hands.

META:

Teams receive four cards, each with one of the four answers, a colored symbol, with 3 specific letters from the answer underlined and a sheet with 12 blanks, with a colored symbol below each.

Teams must correctly place the letters from the card specified (via the colored symbols) into the blanks to read out the final answer: METAPHYSICAL (letters do not fit into the blanks in order)

Solution

METAPHYSICAL

Design Notes

Some teams thought it looked like the picture for "RIP" in the Tarot cards looked like a woman holding up her bra. It wasn't supposed to.

Construction Notes

GC Notes