Pirate Code

Owner:

Anna

Solution:

WHITE TIE

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

When teams first talk to the staff person for this puzzle, they will get a handout (under Data). The portraits (16x20 frames) will be scattered throughout Boundary Bay. The staff person will be standing next to one of the portraits, to give teams an idea of what they are looking for (& that they are looking for something in the first place). Get some clue from staff person along the lines of, "Look for the rest of these portraits, they'll help you out."

Walkthrough:

The first part of the handout is a poem that describes pirates getting ready for their daily lineup.

Awake, awake! Time to get pirates up out of bed,

Bring a parrot along and cover your head,

Put a hook on your hand, and a patch on your eye,

You’ll need a peg leg, too, come on, aye aye.

Dress for the day and line up by rank

Miss daily roll call and you’ll walk the plank

Get pirates lined up by rules set forth here

Order matters, and don’t take all year

After they’re ordered, check their dress code

Bit by bit, left to right, and head to toe

Get the password to the pirates’ lair

And claim all the treasure that they’ve left there

These lines from the poem above indicate that teams need to use the logic puzzle clues in the second part of the handout to order the pirates based on their names and roles on the ship:

Get pirates lined up by rules set forth here

Order matters, and don’t take all year

The first clue in the logic puzzle is that there are 8 pirates in the morning lineup. Teams should split up to find the 8 portraits. Once they have the names/roles of each pirate, the logic puzzle should follow fairly easily.

Detailed steps for the logic puzzle:

A: Clue 6 means that William, the Captain, is on the left-most edge of the line-up


William/Captain	?	?	?	?	?	?	?

B: Clue 3 means that James the Carpenter is on the right-most edge of the lineup


William/Captain	?	?	?	?	?	?	James/Carpenter

C: Clue 4 means that Jack/John are the second and third from the end. Clue 8 gives the order of these 2 pirates.


William/Captain	Jack/First Mate	John/Stowaway	?	?	?	?	James/Carpenter

D: Clue 7 means that the swabbie is the second from the right


William/Captain	Jack/First Mate	John/Stowaway	?	?	?	Horatio/Swbbie	James/Carpenter

E: Clue 2 proves that the boatswain must stand in the third position from the right


William/Captain	Jack/First Mate	John/Stowaway	?	?	Blackbeard/Boatswain	Horatio/Swabbie	James/Carpenter

F: Clue 5 shows that Henry is to the left of Davey. As they must occupy the final 2 slots in the lineup, we now have a complete lineup:


William/Captain	Jack/First Mate	John/Stowaway	Henry/Gunner	Davey/Powder Monkey	Blackbeard/Boatswain	Horatio/Swabbie	James/Carpenter

Once this logic puzzle has been completed, teams can move on to the second part of the puzzle. This is clued by the following lines in the poem above:

*After they’re ordered, check their dress code *

*Bit by bit, left to right, and head to toe *

Teams are told to check the pirates dress code -- a code in the way that they are dressed. If they look closely at the first stanza of the poem, 5 pieces of traditional pirate garb are listed.

*Awake, awake! Time to get pirates up out of bed, *

*Bring a parrot along and cover your head, *

*Put a hook on your hand, and a patch on your eye, *

*You’ll need a peg leg, too, come on, aye aye. *

"Bit by bit" plus the 5 attributes mentioned should indicate to teams that they should be interpreting the presence/absence of the various dress elements as binary.

"Head to toe" indicates that the attribute should be in head-to-toe order based on the portraits (attributes appear in the same order on each pirate -> hat, eyepatch, parrot, hook, peg)

Since there are 8 pirates and 5 attributes, the encoding could either be an 8-letter word encoded with 5-bit binary (i.e., each pirate represents a letter), or a 5-letter word encoded with 8-bit ASCII (i.e. each attribute represents a letter). However, ASCII encoding quickly gives garbage (not ASCII letters, weird letters like X) so hopefully teams won't get stuck on this too much.

Interpreting the presence/absence of each of the attributes mentioned in the poem (hat, eyepatch, parrot, hook, pegleg) in head to toe order (slightly off from the poem order) as 5-bit binary alphabet indexing gives the answer WHITE TIE.