Kovaks was the first person to solve all of the puzzles (by 11 am on the friday they were released...and that was after telling me a link was broken) and earned 15 points (10 for the puzzles, and 5 for solving all of them.)
The second to finish was Cressida with 14 points.
The third person to finish all of the puzzles was DelHemar, and earned 13 points.
And the last person to finish all of the puzzles was Saka with 12 points.
Nobody submitted any answers that didn’t go on to finish all of the puzzles.
Now, let’s get on to the solutions. Feel free to stop reading here if you wish to solve them later.
A Monster of a Time
In addition to the flavor text, there were letters scattered about and 8 pictures on both sides of the letters. To solve this, you had to connect images on the left side to images on the right side. The way to connect was hinted at in the flavor text. With hints of “threats” and “monsters” and “creatures and beings split up”, the flavor text hinted that you needed to make a monsters or threat’s name. Other than some general monsters, most came from http://library.cityofivory.org/456/Threats. The Monsters were:
Bed Lamb (Bedlam)
T Roll (Troll)
Asp Piss (Aspis)
Ware Wolf (Werewolf)
Fair E(or RHEEEEEE) (Fairie)
Path OS (Pathos)
Time Snarl (Time Snarl)
D Man (Demon)
After connecting them together, if you look at all non-crossed out letters, you get “Tournaments of Artemis” which was the solution.
Ocean Time:
At first glance, all the information is a bunch of times of low tide that don’t make any sense. But if you read the flavor text, it hints at what you do with the times. Through hints like “flags” and “hile waving my arms around”it hints at using semaphore. So if you take each time on an analog clock, convert the hands on a clock to flags, it spells out “Bind The Tide” which is the answer.
The Harmonic Crystal
The flavortext suggests that some interesting word choice is involved. In addition, it mentioned holding something to your ear and static. These are supposed to hint to the NATO phonetic code. If you pull those out of the text, you bet the answer “Best Forgotten”
Dear diary,
After what happened today, I just have to tell myself bravo. I have been climbing these mountains for two weeks now and I have just now reached a building with other people in it. And to echo my climbing instructor, “when you have a chance for a break, you should take it,” so I did. Here I was in the middle of a sierra and there was a dance hall of all things, so I went inside. And wow...there was already a party going on. There were people dancing all sorts of dances. Even though there was swing music playing, some people decided to do a tango, while other people did a box step, and other’s did the foxtrot.
Once I took in the scene, Oscar and Romeo greeted me. And they asked me if I played golf of all things! Can you believe the nerve they had, thinking that I would play such a sport? After seeing how upset I got, Oscar decided to ask me to tango instead. So tango we did. And I was fantastic. To echo what one onlooker said, “that was the best dance I ever saw.” After talking with everyone in the dancehall, I had a few refreshments, and then set out again. Hopefully, I’ll be back by November.
Talk to you tomorrow.
The Unseen Island
If you solve the nonogram, it looks like this:
At this point, this may not look like much, but there are a couple clues on how to proceed from here. The title of the puzzle is “Unseen” and the flavor text mentions “blind” and “feel” which references braille. If you treat this like you are reading braille, the letters spell LEARN TO FLY, which is the answer.
Looking Back
Every weekend was the same, yet drastically different. Well, except the winter...it was a bit more spaced out then. Today though it’s time to go down memory lane and remember the better times. But after thinking about the past gatherings, what is it you just can’t wait for?
To solve this, you needed to use the answers to the previous puzzles. They were
Ocean Time - Bind The Tide
Unseen Island - Learn To Fly
The Harmonic Crystal - Best Forgotten
A Monster of a time - Tournaments of Artemis
Once you had enough answers, you had to figure out what they had in common and what to do with them. As hinted by “Looking Back”, “memory lane”, and “past gatherings”, each of the answers was an event on the realmsnet archive. Once you figured that out, this section made more sense:
A = Ocean Time, but take the water part and make it the color of tar.
B = Unseen Island, but you’ll get there if you wait 6-8 days.
C = The Harmonic Crystal, but without the superlative...and it’s definitely not evil.
D = A Monster of a Time, but if everything was lined up in order by name, this was in line before it.
It was asking you to change from one even to another, using the requirements that stated. Using that, we got:
A: Black Tide
B: Rhiassa Presents: The Gilded Lion Summer Festival II
C: Forgotten
D: Tournaments of Arsenal
Then, if you took the answer, and went that many letters into it, it would tell you which letter to extract, leading to the solution: Seeing Friends
And now, for the total scores so far: