Smug. Co. Endgame.1

Again, sadly we were too wrapped up in this high speed game to capture the images of the directions for the Endgame. We had a fantastic time and used this as an excuse to run into the City on “dates.” No one suspects that you don’t belong somewhere when you’re gazing into your partner’s eyes or taking a picture of them at a historic landmark or bar.

First Puzzle: A picture of an historical landmark placard that was mostly smeared out. The image had some pretty clear rope fencing and wooden pillars like those found around docks. Under the image was the clue “Terry A. Francois & Mission Bay.” There was a box in the image that was blank but obviously outlined a word. There was a corresponding box under the clue for you to put the answer.


Answer: Bosel

Logic: It was easy to pull out an iPhone and use Google maps to find what stood on the corner of Terry A. Francois & Mission Bay S. It was clear that it was a yacht club or boat house. The hard part was figuring out the street number for that location. We searched for a list of yacht clubs in that area of San Francisco and figured out that it wasn’t the Mariposa Hunters Point club since it didn’t match up. Therefore it was the Bay View Yacht Club. Next we searched the website of the club and flickr to see if they had the placard available. An hour later we were preparing to drive into the City and find the placard ourselves. Just as we were going to leave, one last search brought up a picture on the yacht clubs website of the placard. From the image it was easy to see the answer was the name of the original Bosel Boat house.

Smuggler’s Cove SF Clues part 2

“Solve the trials above after all four are revealed and you’ll be added to the archive of initiates: a document which will be listed here on the site, as well as locked in a time capsule and buried in smuggler’s cove. Solving the four trials will grant access to the endgame: the final set of clues that will reveal the secret location of smuggler’s cove. But be warned: the endgame puzzles are fiendishly conniving, difficult if not impossible for some people to solve, and designed to make sure the first person to crack it is dedicated and worthy of the prize.
The winner (if any) will be the first person to give correct answers to all the following: the 4 trials, all endgame puzzles (final count TBD), and the correct location of smuggler’s cove, all before July 1st.”

First Trial: Set up as a series of post cards with numbers (i.e. 2:20) below them followed by a box for the answer. Some cards had names or song titles on them, while others did not.
a) Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher
b) Louis Armstrong - Mack the Knife
c) Peggy Lee - Why Don't You Do Right (1943)
d) Billy Murray - I'll See You in C-U-B-A (1920)

Answer:
a) gold
b) someone
c) twenty
d) drinking

Logic: Many people tried to find the songs in their own collections, on iPods or Pandora. However, you had to find the video with the exact image so that you would not miss the word on at that exact time indicated. Of course the answer was easily found on YouTube. You play the video and at the designated time, write down the word you heard and enter it in the box provided. The only video that we didn’t know and consequently took the longest to find was Billy Murray’s “I’ll see You in CUBA!”

Second Trial: This puzzle was a maze of letters in circles linked by arrows leading to and from each circle. You needed to find a path from the start point to the end point through the various circles going only in the directions the arrows point. There were two puzzles in this trial.

Answer:
1) LDCXI
2) NMEWCAHXLZ

Logic: There were no instructions. Once you figured out what you were supposed to do, the first puzzle in this trial was relatively simple. However, the second puzzle was very difficult. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that by accident of design there was more than one way to go through the puzzle. At the end I heard that there were at least 3 different possible answers even though only one was initially accepted by the site.

Third Trial: This four part puzzle showed pictures of cocktail recipes with the drink name missing. Answering one correctly brought you to a page where there was another picture/missing name. The final picture had words in place of the ingredient names like “curt.”

Answer: a) Mai Tai, b) French 75, c) Sazerac, d) El Presidente

Logic: It was easy enough to identify the Mai Tai, since our tiki friends always ask us to make them one. I think several of the Gindicate can make a Mai Tai in their sleep! The second trial puzzle in this series was equally easy to identify since one of the Gindicate likes Champagne drinks, and again Google is your friend. The Third drink is actually a classic cocktail that includes Absinthe. Since we have become great fans of Absinthe Vert from St. George Spirits and they give a list of cocktails to try, again this was an easy find. The last puzzle in this series was extremely hard! It switched gears and forced the player to think outside the box since this was not a Google and go. At first we tried coming up with words that could be synonyms for the ingredients (i.e. curt could be bitters or lime). We resorted to the Twitterverse and saw that some friends had said it was an anagram. It was short work after that to complete the puzzle with the correct list of words. Primarily the clue was that there were too many o’s and u’s and a v so we knew there had to be vermouth in the recipe. El Presidente it was!
On a side note we had a friend who worked diligently on this puzzle with the word substitution. He eventually finished the puzzle with word association and probably a lot of trial and error. Congrats, Mai Tai, here’s to your gray matter getting it done! We stand amazed!


Fourth Trial: Matrix! This puzzle was awesomely difficult and complex. The outside bars have light and dark images around the jumbled letters within the matrix. There was a coded series of words under the matrix that you had to decipher. There was no box in which to put an answer, unlike all the previous puzzles.

Answer: Call 415-XXX-XXXX and ask for directions. When you spoke to the gentleman on the other end of the line, he asked your name and then told you to, “change veil to reveal” on the URL for that page. About an hour later the coded message changed to say, “change veil to reveal.” I guess they got tired of answering the phone!

Logic: We got the answer by figuring out the coded message images were the result of two images on top of each other. For example a white pause symbol (double bar) placed on a dark square would create a single dark bar in the middle. However you needed to make the assumption that the images in the bars around the matrix had either a dark or light background. That changed the direction of the image and its letter. Once you changed the URL to reveal you were taken to the Endgame page!

Smuggler’s Cove SF Clues part 1

We were very impressed with the marketing and online puzzle play of Smuggler’s Cove SF. It brought about a lot of online buzz and fast ‘n furious tweets for an opening that was still several months off. Luckily we all live in the SF Bay Area and could make a quick dash into the City to find the answers to the Smuggler’s Cove puzzles. Below is our version of how we got through all the puzzles, to the Endgame and ultimately the WIN!

So it begins:


First Clue: Sadly we did not save the image of the first clue. It was relatively easy in that the title page’s logo was a link to a paragraph (which we can’t remember the topic). At the end of said paragraph was another logo link to a page of smeared out words and a red box halfway down and a little to the right.

Answer: Legendary.

Logic: We assumed that the previous page’s paragraph was the smeared mess we were currently looking at. It appeared to have the right length and spacing to be the short essay we had just read. Flipping back to the previous screen it was easy to find the right word. Typing it into the box brought you to another page telling you to come back at a later time for another clue.

Second Clue: After retyping Legendary in the first clue location (on the appointed day) you are brought to a scrambled image with a series of blue dashes drawn on it. There is a box to put in the correct answer at the bottom of the page.

Answer: Handmade

Logic: Print out the image and cut out the scrambled pieces. Past them together again in a logical fashion and you will notice it is a photograph of a bunch of post cards, pictures, and hand written notes. The blue dashes appeared to line up and when drawing lines through them a short paragraph at the bottom of one to the post cards has a box drawn around one word. That is the correct answer. Unlocking that brings you to your next set of directions and we will post the next part later.