We've Got Merit

Owner:

Bridgette Kuehn

Solution:

HORNET

Partial Answers

none

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

In the beginning of the event teams get an empty sash with circle placeholders for badges, a troop number on the sash, a welcome note, and their first badge. At the end of each puzzle, teams will receive a badge. Once teams reach We've Got Merit, they should receive all the badges that they did not receive for skipped puzzles. There should be a total of 24 badges.

Walkthrough:

The intro text gives basic instructions:

Welcome to Camp Northwindl Here is your troop number and empty sash, ready to be filled with badges Place your badges once you have eamed them all and use each row's common thread to tie them together We'd also like to give vou your first team badge for making it all the way here to Camp Northwind. Congratulations and

Steps:

  1. Badge Placement

  2. Row Commonalities

  3. Answer Extraction

Badge Placement

There are three rules to badge placement:

  1. Two adjacent badges (above, below, left, or right) should be matched together with the same number of tick marks on the sides of the badge

  2. Badges touching an edge will have no tick marks on that side

  3. Every badge should be right side up

There is only one solution to this puzzle. If they have put it together in a different way, something is incorrect. Here is the final badge layout:

00Φο 0000

Row Commonalities

They were now told (in the original instructions) to look for the "common thread" in each row.

So, take the first row:

Each badge can be easily associated with multiple words, but if you get the right word for each badge there will be three compound words formed with one badge being the same persisting word in all three compound words. Additionally, the badges before the key word badge are appended to the front of the word and the badges after the key word badge are appended to the back of the word. In this case you get these words:

The common word 'Fish' is used. The two that come before fish form catfish, starfish, and the badge coming after forms fishbowl.

The same can be done for each row:

Machine generated alternative text: 0000

RowCommon TermCompound Word 1Compound Word 2Compound Word 3
1FISHCatfishStarfishfishbowl
2BOOKFacebookPhonebookBookmark
3FIRECrossfireCampfireFirewood
4HANDDeckhandHandpaintHandwrite
5HOUSELighthouseTreehouseBoathouse
6FOOTFoothillFootnotefoothold

Answer Extraction

Now is the time when teams should use their troop number. The troop number is a 6 digit number where each digit corresponds to a different row. The troop number here is 423354. For each digit, index into the common term. The extracted letter is the final answer:

Troop#Common Term
4FISH
2BOOK
3FIRE
3HAND
5HOUSE
4FOOT

Final answer: HORNET

Hinting:

Putting it together (usually not too bad):

  • Possibly tell them the rules listed above if they are pretty stuck

  • Could be helpful for them to send you pictures to debug so they don't have to describe each image?

Row Commonalties:

  • Pay attention to the image on the badge

  • Do the words have something in common?

  • Focus on each row (in case that missed that part of the welcome sheet)

Answer Extraction:

  • Do you have any data you haven't used yet (i.e. the troop number)?

Changes Since Beta/RC:

List changes here so GC staff who played know what's new.

Data:

CAT STAR FISH so we

CAT STAR FISH yowl

FACE PHONE 700k MARK

cross CAMP FIRE wood

PECK HAND PAINT WRITE