The River Solution

How It Works

This is a trading game along the lines of Masks a few years ago, but with wordplay. Sometimes characters provide items to the teams, sometimes they request specific items, and sometimes they allow them to make some sort of wordplay-based transformation:

  • The Alchemist "distills" an item by dropping a letter and anagramming the rest. (LEAD -> ALE)
  • The Bartender "tops off" an item by adding a letter to the front (LOCK -> CLOCK), but requires payment in some form of money each time he does so.
  • The Craftsman "ties together" two words, turning them into a compound word (PAN + CAKE -> PANCAKE)
  • The Diva "breaks down" an object into its component parts (PACK -> WOLF, SKELETON -> BONE)

The teams receive a series of quests requiring objects that can be created by these transformations. As it happens, there's only one order the quests can be completed in:

Part 1: Getting Started

  • Note: when reading this, items the team has are in CAPS and requests (or quests) a team has are in bold
  1. Talk to the Alchemist; he gives you the rules to the puzzle and a set of cards allowing you to introduce yourself to each of these actors.
  2. Use the introduction cards: you learn the Alchemist's transformation, receive PILL, SUBSTANCE, BERET, and FRIES, and get a bunch of quests. (Something made of glass for the Alchemist, a beverage for the Bartender, some rope for the Craftsman, some makeup for the Diva, and a lethal weapon for the Explorer)
  3. Get the bartender A beverage: Distill BERET into BEER. Turn in BEER to the Bartender. Bartender will now give you TONIC and WINE as a reward, learn the Bartender's transformation, get a new quest (Something to help with the noise).
  4. Get the carpenter Some rope: Distill TONIC into COIN. Pay the COIN to make WINE into TWINE. Turn in TWINE to the Craftsman. He will give you TICK and ROUTE as a reward, learn the Craftsman's transformation, get a new quest (Something to cover the floor).
  5. Get the diva Some makeup: Distill PILL into LIP. Distill ROUTE into EURO. Pay the EURO to make TICK into STICK. Combine LIP and STICK into LIPSTICK. Turn in LIPSTICK to the Diva, she will give you PHONE and OWL as a reward, learn the Diva's transformation.

Part 2: Advanced transformations

  1. Carpenter needs Something to cover the floor: Break down SUBSTANCE into MOLECULE into ATOM. Distill ATOM into MAT. Turn in MAT to the Craftsman. Get RAKE and SCHOOL as a reward.
  2. Bartender needs Something to help with the noise: Distill RAKE into EAR. Combine EAR and PHONE into EARPHONE. Turn in EARPHONE to the Bartender. Get CHAPS and TONGS as reward.
  3. Get alchemist Something made of glass: Break down SCHOOL into FISH. Distill CHAPS into CASH. Pay CASH to make OWL into BOWL. Combine FISH and BOWL to FISHBOWL. Turn in FISHBOWL to the Alchemist, get BANK and RAM as reward.

Part 3: The endgame

  1. Explorer needs A lethal weapon: Distill TONGS into SONG. Break down SONG into NOTE. Combine BANK and NOTE to make BANKNOTE. Pay the BANKNOTE to make RAM into TRAM (or PRAM). Distill TRAM into ARM. Distill FRIES into FIRE. Combine FIRE and ARM into FIREARM. Turn in FIREARM to the Explorer, get a new quest for fishing equipment.

At this point, teams appear to be at an impasse. They just got a new quest, but they have no objects left... or do they? They still have the rules from the very beginning, which specify that something is a valid object if one of the characters in the puzzle gave it to you and told you its name, and the Alchemist did say "Here are the RULES." So the RULES themselves are the missing object:

  1. Explorer needs Fishing equipment: Distill RULES into LURE. Turn in LURE to the Explorer, get a RED SWAN as reward.
  2. Distill RED SWAN into ANSWER.

The ANSWER is a card with the final answer to submit, SCONE RESTORER. ("Sorcerer's Stone" run through the Alchemist's operation)

Solution

SCONE RESTORER

Design Notes

This puzzle type has shown up in many places over the years. As far as I know, the oldest iteration is from the old Mac puzzle game System's Twilight, where it was called The River. I'd say you should play it, and the games by Cliff Johnson that inspired it, but then I can't steal their other puzzles for future events. Your call.

I thought it would be cool to make a physical analog to that puzzle, and tweaked it a little bit to make it work: instead of exploring a map to reflect the state of which requests you've fulfilled, I used a set of actors based on the Masks formula that worked well a few years back. Also, some of the quests had multiple ways to fulfill them, and if you fulfilled the quest in the wrong way you had to start over. I considered that briefly, but resetting in a physical implementation is a mess; that's why the rules explicitly call out that you don't need to undo quest completion.

I had the Alchemist's transformation and the endgame twists from the beginning, but I knew I needed more meat to the puzzle than that. It sat in my notes for a while before I had enough content to hit all the points I wanted to hit: a transformation with a cost that has to be fulfilled in multiple ways, a semantic transformation that has a couple different interpretations, multiple quests for each of the characters, etc. The A/B/C/D/E ordering was a cute coincidence once I had the Alchemist and the Bartender, so I stuck with it.

Construction Notes

Finding a bunch of random items that were chosen for their wordplay nature rather than their ability to be easily found is hard. Amazon, Dollar Tree, and Oriental Trading Company were all extremely helpful in this regard. A few items we made ourselves: Sandy made finger-sized CHAPS out of fake leather, and we got little plastic swans for wedding supply or something and painted them to make RED SWANs. In two cases (TICK and TAR) we resorted to Magic cards.

There were one or two in-jokes in the items that were printed. The SONG was (unlabelled) sheet music to Call Me Maybe, and the ROUTE was Bing Maps directions from the last clue site to this one.

GC Notes

Stevens Pass was cold, rainy, and generally miserable in our June beta. This was the first of two locations that led us to warn teams about Completely Original Lifestyle Destinations, but it turned out fine the weekend of the actual event.

Confusion at the end of the puzzle when teams only had RULES left was rather common. Anyone that called in saying "we don't have anything left" or similar got the achivement "Nothing! Absolutely Nothing!".