Meaning of Life Solution

How It Works

  • The magazine has several relevant components:
    1. A QR Code on the back page, which decodes to "Take 56 moves to retire". It has an oddly colored subsection (this will be used later).
    2. 56 pages in the magazine, each with a colored border.
    3. An article near the front covering the details of the life of Alice and says that going to college is beneficial.
    4. A cover page which says "Fill in her path as she dashes through LIFE"
    5. LIFE symbols at the bottom of some pages of the magazine are data
  • The team's job is to reconstruct the path Alice takes through the game of life.
  • Each page of the magazine corresponds to one turn (which more importantly will indicate which space Alice lands on for that turn.)
  • There are multiple ways to figure out where alice lands
    1. If the page border is a specific color, that indicates how many moves must be taken at the start of that turn (UNLESS they hit an orange stop space).
    • The way to translate the colored borders into numbers is by using the colored number bar included in the box (see above).
    1. If a page has a "LIFE" icon on the bottom of the page it indicates that they will land on a "LIFE" square next.
    2. If a page is or has a picture, it's some clue as to where alice lands
    • If it's an ad for adopting a pet, she lands on "Adopt a pet"
    1. If all else fails, the team must refer to the article on Alice's life on pages 24-25 to look for clues as to what she did.
    • For example if a page talks about "Alice" visiting the louvre, that would indicate that the next square alice lands on might be "Visit an art museum".
  • The teams must start at college, as per the magazine cover and follow the border colors (This doesn't count count as a move but does get used in the message because it's step 0).
  • The scrap of rules in the box (see above) is there to indicate that the must follow the stop rule.
    • In other words if they are more than 1 square before a stop sign, they cannot go past that stop sign, they must stop there.
  • Some of the borders are greyed out.
    • This indicates missing data.
  • When the path through the board game is reconstructed it can be read out in morse code to read CONWAYQR.
    • The morse comes from sets of 3 continuous landed on squares being a dash and a 1 solitary landed on square being a dit.
  • This is a hint to the teams that they must apply Conway's Game of Life to the QR code on the back of the magazine.
  • If they apply Conway's Game of Life to the entire QR code or just the oddly colored section they will see the answer.

Solution

PI

Design Notes

Construction Notes

GC Notes