Stargazing

Owner:

Gage Ames

Solution:

TWINKLE

Partial Answers

RED STARS: Keep going

RED STAR: Keep going

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

Put what the team sees when they get the puzzle here.

A project displaying the image below, but with each constellation fading in and out. There are posters of constellations hung around the room.

Walkthrough:

Detailed solving steps / diagrams / anything needed for GC to know exactly how the puzzle is solved.

Six different constellations dim in and out in sequence. The first step is to identify the names of the constellations using the posters on the wall. Identifying the names and putting them in the order of the dimming sequence yields

Reticulum

Equuleus

Draco

Scorpius

Taurus

Aries

Reticulum

Scorpius

The next step is to take the first letter from each of the constellations in the sequence to spell out RED STARS (a partial answer).

After taking the hint to look at the red stars in the scene, the solver should notice that these stars are in (irregular) clusters of three (each red star belongs to exactly one cluster). One of the red stars in the cluster is dimmer than the other two. The two bright red stars are the arms/flags in semaphore and the dimmer red star is the center/person. Decoding the semaphore yields

T W I N

K L E

The solution to the puzzle is TWINKLE

Hinting:

Common places where teams struggle / suggestions for hinting them through it.

  • Have you noticed the posters around the room? How many are there?

    • There are 26 posters around the room

    • The name of the constellation on each poster begins with a different letter of the alphabet

  • Are all of the red stars the same?

    • The "center"/person is dimmer and a slightly different shape

  • The total number of red stars is 21 (a multiple of 3)

    • Clusters of three

  • Are the red stars clustered in any sort of pattern?

    • Represent an encoding

Changes Since Beta/RC:

N/A

Data:

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

https://gagemsig.blob.core.windows.net/ea756a54-d83b-4a08-a6f4-9f660e2e14ae/puzzle.html

https://gagemsig.blob.core.windows.net/ea756a54-d83b-4a08-a6f4-9f660e2e14ae/constellations.html

https://gagemsig.blob.core.windows.net/ea756a54-d83b-4a08-a6f4-9f660e2e14ae/gc.html

Resources:

http://astronomyonline.org/Observation/Constellations.asp

Reticulum

Equuleus

Draco

Scorpius

Taurus

Aries