Programme Puzzles
In this year’s programme, we provided nine puzzles for attendees to work through during or after the conference. Here there are, and at the base of the page we’ve provided the solutions to relieve any frustrations!
Solutions
#PLpuzzle1 – translate the three words provided into the languages spoken in the areas provided (Rhineland is in Germany, and so translating Red into German gives Rot; in the same way, Army translates as Her in Icelandic; and Harness translates as Ham in Hungarian). Adding the three translations together gives Rot-her-ham, or Rotherham: the location of keynote speaker Deborah Bullivant.
#PLpuzzle2 – a google search of a few of the names should take you to the IKEA catalogue, where you’ll find that all the forenames and surnames happen to be designs of chairs. The conference officer you would need to contact is therefore The Chair.
#PLpuzzle3 – this is a simple logic puzzle: a common way to solve these is to draw up a diagram of the problem (in this case, five hotel rooms) and start to add information from each clue. As you do that, you’ll find that all the guests match up with a known room except Alan Adventure, who is left with Room 4.
#PLpplaytime – not a puzzle, just a Nine Men’s Morrris board (see web link for gamplay instructions) that attendees could use their M&Ms as counters for.
#PLpuzzle5 – this could only be solved at the conference. Around the venue were posters containing a list of names of rewards in PacMan (apples, cherries, etc.). Sharp eyed attendees would have noticed these, and also the fact that the page behind puzzle 5 was left blank – meaning that the page could be held up against the poster and a set of letters would show through the white squares: revealing MANIC.
#PLpuzzle6 – similar to puzzle 5, the other portion of this Connect 4 board could be found on posters around the venue. When lined up, the board would reveal that the next move could be won by Yellow.
#PLpuzzle7 – the most straightforward of the puzzles: count the bears! There are a mixture of photographic/cuddly bears (look out for different colour fur hiding undernearth) and also black overlaid bears. There are 18 altogether.
#PLpuzzle8 – a logic puzzle where letters have been replaced with symbols. The clue and background image suggest a four digit combination, so you are looking for four numbers (in fact, four single integers, 0-9). You’ll notice that some of the symbols are repeated: try writing out the numbers zero to nine in words and see if you can spot a pattern. The ghosts provide the best clue – they must represent E (thrEE and onE), then the wizards (T, for ThrEE and TwO), which should then allow you to work out that the bottom word is OnE, and the only three-letter number left is six, giving you the top word. 6321.
#PLpuzzle9 – a tricky one to finish. First work out each of the number puzzles, as follows:
Red Ghost: Use the Transport for London website to get the bus route for Penge to Tottenham Court Road Station: [Bus route 176]
Pink Ghost: 3 Tesseracted is 3x3x3x3 [=81]
Blue Ghost: Both of these represent the same year 199 in different calendars.
Yellow Ghost: Taking the initial letter of each word gives CXCIV which is roman numerals for 194.
The clue at the base looks familiar… it’s a web address, and you have four numbers to type into it.
But first you need an order: the four coloured ghosts are hidden in the rest of the programme – you’ll find them in the order yellow, pink, blue, red, giving the web address: https://194.81.199.176 – where you could enter your answers to the puzzles.