As I said in my previous entry, I mostly worked on puzzles we were stuck on during this year’s Mystery Hunt.  Worse, it didn’t feel like I “cracked” any of them, meaning getting the key Ahas to lead us to a solution.

To make myself feel better, and to get a more balanced perspective on this year’s hunt, I’m going try to find puzzles I haven’t yet had spoiled, and solve them here in the next few weeks.

Today’s is Squared Key. It is currently located here: http://ihavetofindpeach.com/puzzles/world1/squared_key/ until it moves into the standard hunt archive URL space.  It involves some not-too-grunty grunt work and then two medium-sized ahas. It is a pretty nice puzzle in the end.

I didn’t blaze through as fast as I’d have liked, but I’m overall happy that I got to the end, and the puzzle was a satisfying one.

I got the Ahas at 48 and 102 minutes in, and finished at about 110 minutes in.  My log is below after the cut, and my answer check above should work if you want to check your answer here (“Call in answer” on the puzzle page goes directly to the answer explanation)

Log:

0:00:00

Printed out puzzle…

0:00:49

found CHAINS, CLOUD, ROCK

0:01:12

CHURCH, BALLOTBOX, EIGHTHNOTE

0:01:42

ANCHOR… I don’t see any patterns yet.

0:02:09

COMET and NEON (not sure)

0:02:26

SKY HOT SPRINGS (not sure about SKY? alone? part?)

0:02:59

WARNINGSIGN, SATURN

0:03:39

WHITEFLAG, YINYANG. hmmm. some are shape-y, but not all (Rock?)

0:04:17

PISCES. I don’t think there’s a CLOUD constellation, but CLOUD, COMET, PISCES are all in the sky. Still dunno. word searching more.

0:04:55

WOLF SEX TILE RIB is all in a row. not sure how much of that is things.

0:05:27

ooh, a SEXTILE is an astrological thing. That’s a good sign.

0:06:15

PLUTO. more sky stuff. yay. Still don’t know what’s going on. maybe the leftover letters will tell me.

0:06:53

FERRY ?

0:07:37

GEAR gets rid of the SG at the beginning… but it’s lookig like “SORRY”. that’s not a good sign.

0:08:06

yep, UTAHCASTLE makes SORRY. Well, At least I can use the background letters spelling out words to find answers (if it keeps working) will try that.

0:09:06

ARIES found.

0:09:17

IRON. Now copying them all out onto paper, to look for patterns.

0:11:04

oh, ROCK is SHAMROCK.

0:12:04

and NEON is NO ENTRY?

0:14:26

found CHIRHO to get rid of H in line two.

0:14:48

SKIER to get rid of R in line 3 

0:17:47

HOTBEVERAGE on the bottom

0:18:15

EARTH and CERES

0:19:11

LIBRA… and that last I on the bottom is?

0:19:51

SHAKTI maybe.

0:21:19

JUNO is wedged in there and COFFIN

0:22:20

unused letters end SUBTLETY, that’s good, I guess.

0:23:15

well, it keeps me from circling SCAB, at least for now

0:24:19

circling SUN so ZZLE in the unused letters can go together

0:25:23

hmm to get the presumed U in PUZZLE, UTAHCASTLE may have to be CHAT going one way and CASTLE the other?

0:26:03

currently ending ZZLE HAS EMTA SUBTLETY. curious.

0:27:02

ok that M was wrong… so HAS YET A SUBTLETY? is NO ENTRY wrong? or SKY shouldn’t be circled? not sure yet.

0:29:19

FLEUR DE LIS in the middle.

0:30:05

ALEMBIC. interesting word.

0:30:58

I think I want the A in UTAH to be unused too. removing UTAH entirely.

0:31:54

SHAKTI is ADI SHAKTI. reading more about it.

0:33:04

according to wikpedia there are four Adi Shakti relgious locations… I think?

0:35:49

adding PICK and NEUTER, I guess

0:37:06

ok, background letters almost work (still need that Y but not K from SKY.) looking at word list

0:38:16

googling a few things again, like ALEMBIC and CHI RHO

0:39:12

So, CHI RHO looks like a P with an X, No entry looks like a hyphen in a circle, and warning sign looks like an exclamation point in a triangle… doesn’t ring a bell.

0:41:01

Hmm, sextile has a symbol too, kind of like an asterisk. I guess the planets and constellations do too. looking those up.

0:43:44

Lots look like letters, or have similar subparts … hmmm

0:45:27

HOT BEVERAGE has wavy lines in its normal icon…. maybe we’re talking those 5 ESP cards? Zenner Cards?

0:46:13

No, I have triangles and Xs galore, which don’t work.

0:47:25

hmm, JUNO the asteroid has a symbol a lot like others I have. Could all be coincidence.

0:48:36

ok, church and ballot box seem like things there are icons for… googled: “ballot box” “white flag” “eighth note” skier and got Unicode pages… looking at those.

0:49:28

CLOUD is 2601, BALLOT BOX 2610, SHAMROCK 2618, looking good.

0:49:59

CHI RHO 2627, ADI SHAKTI 262C YIN YANG 262F. I guess I should make a spreadsheet…

0:52:40

Hmm, first 3 were 2601 2604 2609… oh it’s hex, next one should be 2610 to be the next square… and it is! hmmm

0:57:57

entering them in… but SQUARED KEY is 26BF… interesting.

0:59:45

doh, WOLF is FLOWER.

1:01:29

and IRON is CHIRON. I have them all. Well, 36.

1:02:02

What to do? given “square” and “key”, maybe I can print out this unicode code sheet and make squares? but arranged how? 16x16 probably makes the most sense. Is there an official pdf cheatsheet with that arrangement? Checking.

1:02:57

There is. That was the first link in google. Probably should have grabbed that instead.

1:10:56

Printing failed. Dealing with it on graph paper instead. Can’t seem to make full squares. can make 3 of four…sometimes?

1:13:43

Ok, let’s go up by size. 1x1 box… works… gives … damn, my sheet is messed up. redoing (wish my printer didn’t suck)

1:22:01

Not sure what to do now. … Do I care about each group? where they are on the sheet? Not sure.

1:28:18

Just counting gaps and moving to letters (numerical order) gives ACEGECOECRCCAFE… not great. trying across…. AHAFDWJ or AGECVI.. crap.

1:32:01

Ok, time to rethink. I have 36 words in the grid. [I was missing a few, but 36 was such a nice count…] They’re all names of Unicode entities on page 26(hex). The title of the puzzle is another entity (at 26BF). The standard 16x16 mapping puts the objects more or less randomly over the grid, (though 267 and 268 are empty, but those names look bad for grid entries, so I get why they were skipped). What I don’t get is why these 36 were used.

1:34:27

They aren’t grouped enough to be morse, they don’t make squares of spots (except in one or two cases).

1:40:32

Maybe we connect symbols that cross each other in the word search? Maybe the cheese pieces in this unicode range matter? Will try the crossing thing, not hopeful.

1:42:23

Wait a minute, checking something, yes. the word search is 16x16… let me apply the one grid to the other.

1:44:23

SOUTOTAAI… ugh. other way is TECSR… maybe I should mirror the unicode to across, which makes more sense in non-unicode-pdf world. [The official unicode pdfs count down column by column, so I tried that format first, if it wasn’t clear]

1:45:48

THE SOL TION TO T (so far so good)

1:46:58

THE SOL[missing apparently]TION TO THIS PUZZLE IS…

1:48:50

HARCOL BURNER… checking/fixing… (would guess at this point)

1:50:23

missing B0 and one of C2/C6/C9 to make CHARCOAL… checking.

1:51:04

B0 is COFFIN. Had that. that got lost at some point.

1:51:23

C6 is the only short missing “A”.. checking for RAIN…

1:51:55

found it. CHARCOAL BUNNER. Final answer!