A couple weeks ago, the LessWrong team threw a 400-person festival called LessOnline for rationalist-adjacent bloggers and their readers. The festival featured a puzzle hunt, which I helped write!
The puzzle hunt had two rounds with a somewhat unusual structure: all participants who completed the first round were thrown onto one team to solve the (much harder) puzzles in the second round. There was also a really well-crafted and elaborate plot line (that I played no part in creating), which you can read about here.
I wrote two puzzles for the hunt: one for the first round and one for the second. Each of these puzzles opened a 5-letter lock, which means that the answer to both puzzles is 5 letters long (but isn’t necessarily a word). Standard puzzle hunt rules apply: feel free to Google things, ask ChatGPT, etc.
The first puzzle
On the subjective difficulty scale I’ve used before on this blog, the first puzzle is a 3/10. If you’re an experienced puzzle solver, you can probably solve it in about 15 minutes. If you’re not, it might take a while. The puzzle is below; I wrote up the solution here.
A blind game of Projective Set
The second puzzle
On my subjective difficulty scale, this one’s a 6/10. It would probably take an experienced puzzle solver a few hours. The puzzle consists of 50 plastic tiles, but unfortunately I can only provide a soft copy here. If you want to work on this puzzle, I recommend printing and cutting out the pieces. The puzzle is below, and also available as a PDF here. I wrote up the solution here.
Odd ones out
4 (/6)
1 (/6)
8 (/8)
1 (/6)
2 (/10)
Unexpected Values 