PUZZLE POTLUCK 3
Solution – Reality
ANSWER – MOULDJUICE
by Darren Yin
Warning: This solution contains spoilers for the answer to Black Widow.
The flavor text instructs you to step one generation forward according to the rules of Conway's Game of Life. But where do you get your starting grid from? Once you realize that the corresponding avenger ability for this puzzle is Black Widow's BLACK BELT, you then make the logical leap that you must color all of the letters in BELT black, and that these correspond to live cells. Then, executing one step of Conway's Game of Life results in the letters MOULD JUICE spelled out across the grid.
Initial grid after shading all the cells of BELT:
Grid state after one generation of Conway's Game of Life:
Author's Notes
- The general idea of this puzzle came up when we still were brainstorming different combos of trivial pursuit puzzle and snapped half-puzzles. At some point I thought of how Entertainment and Reality might go well with say, Reality TV, and perhaps an interesting Survivor-themed puzzle could be constructed, but I couldn't come up with an interesting mechanic with that source material. Also, at this point we already had MOULD JUICE as an answer, and at some point I realized that "Game of Life" could be linked thematically (albeit a little tenuously) to both Entertainment and Reality, plus it fit very nicely with the desired answer. I also hadn't seen Conway's Game of Life used that often as a mechanic (at the very least it doesn't seem to come up too often as of late in Mystery Hunt, according to devjoe's list), so I thought that this was as good of a theme for the puzzle as I was going to find. Then, the actual puzzle idea is pretty simple. Fundamentally, I tried to have it be the simplest possible application of the Avenger power that would still give a modicum of satisfaction.
- It was a little tricky to come up with a grid that would resolve to something legible in a generation. Originally I wasn't even sure exactly how easy it would be to find a board state that could be Game-of-Life'd to become a readable answer, but luckily, it worked out.
- I'm not actually sure how much people saw the attempt to keep things as thematic as possible, but hopefully some people out there enjoyed it.
- Best Wrong Answers:
Wrong Answer Submitted by: MOUTH JUICE → SALIVA great now it's a party (our test-solve team) MOO JUICE → MILK great now it's a party (our test-solve team)
Stats
- 327 solves
- 465 incorrect guesses
- Most common incorrect guess: MOLDJUICE (guessed 26 times)
- First solve: hoME AT last in 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 22 seconds