Master of Da Skies

Owner:

Anna

Solution:

ANDDONTCALLMESHIRLEY

Partial Answers

None

GC Notes:

DUE TO CONSTRUCTION ISSUES Some teams have an orange plane instead of a yellow plane. The walkthrough below is exactly the same, except for the yellow plane is orange.

Presentation:

Silverdale park has a concrete map next to the gazebo. There are 20 markers with the names/flags of countries/a letter placed on the country's location on the map.

[TO ADD PICTURE AFTER RC]

Teams receive a brief:

<<Brief.pdf>>

Brief:

Central intelligence has informed [spy hq] that the suspects [?] have left clues in 20 countries. [HQ] has 4 airplanes that can take 5 trips each. The planes will each take one trip per week to a different country over 5 weeks. The requirements are as follows:

Each plane will start in the United States of America

No two planes can travel to the same continent in the same week.

The clue in France is of extreme urgency and should be investigated as soon as possible.

Color plane constraints:

The red plane can only visit countries that begin with the last letter of the country that it was previously in. i.e., if the plane is in Canada, it can only visit countries that begin with 'A' on its next trip.

The yellow plane can only visit countries that have a unique vowel in their name. i.e., it can visit Panama but not Mexico. Additionally, it must travel east on each turn and not make more than one circle around the globe during the entire 5 weeks.

The green plane can visit any country, but it must visit its 5 countries in alphabetical order. Once it visits Guatemala, it cannot visit Costa Rica on a later trip.

The blue plane may only visit countries whose flag is made up of exactly 3 colors: red, white, and blue. It can visit Panama, but not Canada or Mexico.

Walkthrough:

Teams need to realize that they need to logic out a way for all the countries to be visited by the planes while fulfilling all of the constraints. Once they organize which plane visits which country on which step, they can create a table like the following:

Ste p Red First Letter Last Country 1 Afghanistan Asia Yellow Unique Vowel Travel East razi Green Alphabetical Order S. America D 2 Nepal 3 Laos 4 uriname Asia Asia S. America o eden e e ce apan Europe Europe Asia s bya Africa Paraguay S. America kraine Europe Blue Red White and Blue Flag Chile S. Ameriæ C Thailand Asia

Reading the letters of the countries visited by the planes in alphabetical order for each step (in step order) leads to the final answer for this mini puzzle, AND DON’T CALL ME SHIRLEY.

The logic puzzle has a straightforward solve:

The red and yellow planes have the most restrictive conditions. There is only one set/order of countries that fulfill their requirements. Teams should start there.

Red plane:

Step 1: The planes start in the United States of AmericA (called out in the brief so that there's no confusion for US/USA/United States/etc). So it can only visit countries that start with A - only Afghanistan from this list.

Step 2: Can only start with N: only Nepal from this list.

Step 3: Start with L: Laos, Libya, Liberia. But there are no more countries beginning with A (see step 1) so only Laos fits.

Step 4: Start with S: Suriname or Sweden - no more N countries, so Sweden doesn't work, must be Suriname.

Step 5: Only Ecuador begins with E.

Yellow plane:

Only 5 countries meet the "unique vowel" rule - Morocco, Sweden, Greece, Madagascar, and Japan. East-west order from US should be easy.

Once these two rules are fully constrained, there are only 10 countries left. Blue plane's constraints are a set of countries with no ordering, Green plane's constraints is an ordering with no set group of countries. Work them together to figure out the placement of the last 10 countries.

Only 5 countries meet the Red/White/Blue constraint. Set those aside.

Alphabetize the remaining countries (Brazil, Libya, Paraguay, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe) to get the correct set/ordering for Green.

Then slot the red/white/blue countries in while fulfilling the "no two planes on the same continent" rule. The only snag is that there are 2 European countries that could switch. But there's the additional restraint that France should be visited as soon as possible, so teams should slot France into step 1 and the Czech republic into step 5.

Hinting:

See detailed walkthrough above.

Data:

Put links to files on the Sharepoint and any other raw data.