Mathemagic

Owner

Nathan

Presentation

A few identical copies of the content below printed on [waterproof] paper (The black illustration has been hand-drawn onto each copy)

Mathemagic

A true Marcana alchemist always disguises their recipes. By simplifying and ordering each of the steps below in whole unity, perhaps you can sort out the true secret of this ancient art.

• Start with 45 carefully measured Toop of paper.
• With experience, this recipe can be finished 40 times during the 1 Radzust it would take those with less experience.
• Prepare the contraption to provide 600 Deefo of energy over the next 5 Aunk.
• Work on the brakes so that they apply 1 Ulga of force along the 4200 Jeek stopping distance.
• Hope that the 13,860 Toop pachyderm stays calm.
• Find the length of each side of a regular hexagon with a 2 Woht perimeter.
• Realize that it has been way too long since your last vacation – long enough for a 1 Jeek per Aunk snail to crawl a whole Sorn.
• Warm up by jogging for half an Aunk at your 2160 Sorn per Radzust pace.
• Ensure the measurement needle has rotated one 30^th of a full rotation.
• Set aside one ninth of the 10 Aljin generated by the process for re-use later.
• Push on the object with the force required to accelerate 12 Ezee by 3 Sorn per Aunk within 2 Aunk.
• Raise a flag 24 Jeek in the air to signal your completion.

Unit definitions

Walkthrough

The drawing might be tempting, ignore it for now.

Part 1 - Doing the Math

Each sentence is a math/science equation of some sort. Solve the equation for a whole number and unit as alluded to by the flavor text.

Here is a barebones walkthrough of each line:

Line	Partial	Explanation	Equations used
Start…	5 Aljin
With…	9 Aunk		"40 times during" → / 40
Prepare…	6 Dahk
Work…	7 Deefo
Hope…	11 Ezee
Find…	1 Jeek		"Regular hexagon" has 6 equal sides → / 6
Realize…	12 Radzust
Warm up…	3 Sorn
Ensure…	4 Tawfow		"30th of a full rotation" → /30
Set aside…	10 Toop		"one ninth" → /9
Push…	2 Ulga
Raise…	8 Woht

Note: While knowing some basic physics equations is helpful, simply trying to make the units work out is also a viable way to solve the puzzle.

Part 2 - Using the numbers and units

Once they teams have a handful to most of the values, they should realize that all of the numbers are small and unique. This leads to using them to sort something, but what? Sort the unit symbols - if you didn't save the units, go back and figure them out now.

Sorting the Units by quantity (number) gives the following phrase:

JUST ADD WATER

Part 3 - Using the partial

Video

https://youtu.be/fo5SmeAinqc

Teams take their puzzle and either wipe the drawing with water, or just submerse the whole thing in a sink or whatever.

Most of the black ink will quickly float away/wipe off, revealing an image like this remaining on the paper:

Revealing the answer of "PULP"

Hinting

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

!! At Beta some teams tried to merge all of the results into one single mess. I've tried to fix this in the flavor text, but please quickly steer teams away from this long and pain-filled rabbit hole.

Teams may not realize any of the following, but there are patterns they might recognize to help them in this direction:

• Each answer can be represented as a nice whole number (like 1, 2,3) by converting to an appropriate unit
  • Lots of flavor text for this:
    • Simplify
    • Whole
• Units matter!
  • Flavor text includes "unity"
    • If teams are confirming answers, ask for the whole or entire answer to see if they start giving the unit.
• If stuck on identifying a unit, the answer units are sorted alphabetically by line. NOTE: Since each unit is only used as an answer once, this fact effectively gives away all units!

Data

Unit dimensions (not necessary, but some teams may want to confirm this)

Unit	Value
Length
Time
Mass
Angle
Force
Energy
Power

How the disappearing ink works:

Waterproof "Rite in the Rain" paper

Background image and all text printed on a laser printer.

The drawing was traced over with a black vis-a-vis wet erase marker.