Leveret
Full Member
An enchanting hare
Posts: 217
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Post by Leveret on Jul 15, 2022 11:08:52 GMT -5
Post questions for the authors here. The authors will try our best to answer questions about anything in the hunt, except for the Epilogue and the final two puzzles and tokens. You can also make comments about your thoughts on the hunt here if you wish. Questions about the main hunt puzzles that have unreleased solutions may be answered, may go unanswered until the solutions are revealed, or may be answered with spoiler tags, depending on the mood of the authors on a given day.  |
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ddp
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by ddp on Jul 15, 2022 18:30:32 GMT -5
I have a lot of questions about the puzzles themselves that I will hold until all the solutions are released. But I am very curious about the story behind the creation of the hunt. It was extremely well-planned, well-constructed and well-run, and I was wondering if you would say a few words about how you went about creating and organizing everything. How did the idea come about, when did you start planning and writing the puzzles and the book text and creating the artwork, when did you place the tokens, how much test solving was done (there was an impressively small number of errata)? Those kinds of details would be really interesting now that the Master Key has been found.
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Post by wgardner on Jul 15, 2022 18:54:22 GMT -5
It was extremely well-planned, well-constructed and well-run Thanks for the kind words! I was wondering if you would say a few words about how you went about creating and organizing everything. How did the idea come about, when did you start planning and writing the puzzles and the book text and creating the artwork. The project was started in spring of 2021. Beth wanted to do an ATT tribute and had the concept about the story with the Feys and the seasons. Most treasure hunts are just puzzles to a treasure or proxy, or to multiple proxies. OTOH, many puzzle hunts have layered puzzles with feeder puzzles feeding into meta puzzles leading into meta-meta puzzles. We had never seen a treasure hunt with meta-treasures before, and thought it would be cool to see if we could implement something like that. This led to the concept of claimed treasures plus digital copies of the treasures for folks who found the same location later. Beth wrote the story and Bill provided editorial comments. It went through numerous revisions. The initial location of the final master key token "walking instructions" provided a very nice way to give a basis for four sets of puzzles based on literature/text, art, STEM, and music. (If you don't know the initial location, you'll understand this better when the solution is revealed.) Once we decided on that, we then had to come up with sets of puzzles with those basic themes. We worked on those through the summer and fall of 2021. Beth created the artwork page by page as locations and puzzles got finalized. Bill added digital symbols, notations, etc. to the original artwork. Beth also created the detailed map that required cities in very specific locations, some map grids showing very specific landmarks and roads, and that all came together and looked like a typical fantasy map ala Tolkien. Bill added the town and geographical feature names digitally after the map was completed. As token locations were finalized, Beth wrote the "creature adventure" stories incorporating confirming hints about the locations of the tokens. These were some of the last parts of the story that were written. We also wanted to pay tribute to ATT and its Polybius structure without having every puzzle be Polybius based as ATT was. So we used a new Polybius structure for the meta-treasure puzzles and threw in some Polybius feeder treasure puzzles while also having many puzzles that did not rely on the Polybius structure at all, so different folks could solve different puzzles. We also had to come up with a way to reveal that Polybius structure, that keywords were used, and that the ordering of the letters, numbers, and symbols was unique. The map's border codes provided a nifty way to reveal all of this in a "Rosetta Stone" type mechanism where the same message was encoded twice with different means. We liked that puzzle. We also liked when jrrag sent a message to catherwood on the MW forum asking "how2use" using the new Polybius code. My favorite puzzles were the map border/Rosetta stone, the 3 messages encoded in the map town names (and hinted at by binary messages in 3 Fey borders and a ternary message in the 4th Fey border), the Snail flipbook (another ATT tribute), the "real" Ant puzzle (sadly short-circuited by the hints in the text), Worker Bee, Butterfly, and Verdee's key. I'd love to hear what puzzles folks liked or hated. Coming up with fun and unique music puzzles was probably the biggest challenge: not sure how well we succeeded there. when did you place the tokens The tokens were placed in various trips by the authors and one friend in summer and fall of 2021. I believe the tokens were all in place by October of 2021. We were glad to find out that only 2 of the 17 tokens went missing since then (though we were sad that those 2 were missing, of course!). The authors have only met in person once, when hiding the Queen Bee token that is roughly half-way between our homes. how much test solving was done (there was an impressively small number of errata)? Bill did much of the digital aspects of the detailed puzzle creation, often using spreadsheets and sometimes custom code (e.g., the Fey borders). Then Beth did a complete solve for all of the puzzles. The Solutions document to be released soon has pages upon pages of Beth's handwritten, double checked notes and decodings of everything in the book. The two puzzle typos that missed were because Beth accidentally started with Bill's puzzle details and not the digitally modified puzzle artwork in 2 cases, and Bill made 2 errors there when he created the digital artwork modifications.  I'm still not sure how "Levert" didn't get flagged by google docs as a misspelled word! Bill |
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Post by mike6888 on Jul 15, 2022 20:23:32 GMT -5
When's the next one?
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Post by mike6888 on Jul 15, 2022 20:34:32 GMT -5
Did you anticipate that the master spiral was solvable from only 2 fey tokens? Silva was by far the most important to have. Without that it would be hopeless.
We technically had 3 tokens when we reversed the Ruby keyword and cipher but we had the lazuli section 95% completed and the basic keyword structure done before getting our hands on the lazuli token. I was pleased to see that it all lined up with expectations. I'm pretty confident given another 24 hours we wouldn't have needed the lazuli token either.
I say this not as a brag but as a compliment to the puzzle structure. It feels like it was designed in a consistent and predictable way so that a team could proceed despite not having solved everything up to that point. Many times in puzzle hunts the meta is solvable with only partial information and a little inspiration.
Just curious if this was by design or a happy accident.
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Post by wgardner on Jul 15, 2022 20:56:23 GMT -5
Did you anticipate that the master spiral was solvable from only 2 fey tokens? Silva was by far the most important to have. Without that it would be hopeless. We technically had 3 tokens when we reversed the Ruby keyword and cipher but we had the lazuli section 95% completed and the basic keyword structure done before getting our hands on the lazuli token. I was pleased to see that it all lined up with expectations. I'm pretty confident given another 24 hours we wouldn't have needed the lazuli token either. I say this not as a brag but as a compliment to the puzzle structure. It feels like it was designed in a consistent and predictable way so that a team could proceed despite not having solved everything up to that point. Many times in puzzle hunts the meta is solvable with only partial information and a little inspiration. Just curious if this was by design or a happy accident. We expected that the meta-puzzles could be solved with much but not all of the information. In particular, the North and East key token keywords were solvable by clever solvers with only 2 of the 3 creature feeder tokens. Similarly the South key token keyword was a little tricky but the decoded message could be found with some clever searching of the few keyword possibilities once 2 tokens were known. Or perhaps once the general area for the South key token was known (from having 2 of the 3 creature feeder tokens), some clever thinking about the Lazuli's theme and the general area could lead solvers to a region where a mini-map search matching the blue flag could be done. The West key token keyword was encoded in a slightly trickier manner on the feeder tokens. Again, clever solvers looking the right way might catch the trick by looking at only 2 of the 3 tokens, but it wouldn't jump out in a straightforward way like it might have for the North and East keywords. We figured folks might be able to solve the location for the Master Key token with partial information. Maybe solvers might find the master key token without decoding the center spiral at all, just from the other walking instructions with some of the words missing to first get in the general area and then do a location search nearby? Maybe folks might decode the outer quadrants for 2 or 3 of the key tokens, then be able to guess some of the missing intermediate words from the quadrants of the other key token(s), and then use those guesses as plaintext to back-solve for the remaining key token keywords? We know treasure-hunters, puzzle-solvers, and code-crackers can use a lot of ingenious methods! We'd love to hear the story of how the Debugging Ferrets did solve the Master Keystone with only 3 of the 4 key tokens, whenever they're ready to share their story! |
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Post by wgardner on Jul 15, 2022 20:57:25 GMT -5
In MIT Mystery Hunt fashion, the rules state that next year's Leveret hunt must be created by the team that finds the Master Key token in this year's hunt. Didn't you read the fine print? |
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Post by mike6888 on Jul 15, 2022 21:11:19 GMT -5
In MIT Mystery Hunt fashion, the rules state that next year's Leveret hunt must be created by the team that finds the Master Key token in this year's hunt. Didn't you read the fine print? That's fine but Brian can only draw in red stick figures. On occasion we can get a light purple. Prepare to use a lot more imagination next year! |
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Post by GeneticBlend on Jul 15, 2022 21:19:21 GMT -5
When writing the "Epilogue", Bill said to me to leave an opening for the sequel. I said there will be no sequel. This book was done so well, I am afraid that we could never top it. |
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Post by susb8383 on Jul 15, 2022 21:41:36 GMT -5
When writing the "Epilogue", Bill said to me to leave an opening for the sequel. I said there will be no sequel. This book was done so well, I am afraid that we could never top it. I don't believe that for a second! Any book the two of you put together will be brilliant. |
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Post by susb8383 on Jul 15, 2022 21:42:34 GMT -5
What was the reasoning behind releasing the tokens to everyone after 28 days? I've never heard of that type of thing being done before in a treasure hunt.
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Post by GeneticBlend on Jul 15, 2022 22:05:43 GMT -5
Since the token had a partial message/code inscribed on it, the finder immediately had an advantage gaining that knowledge. If the finder could get the other tokens in that same set (North, South,East or West, then later the Keys of the four Feys), they could complete the code and move on to the next level.
The 28 days allowed them to have that code exclusive to them. In that time frame, they could try to solve, then find another token in that set, or barter with another team who might have the token they needed.
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Post by wgardner on Jul 16, 2022 6:52:27 GMT -5
What was the reasoning behind releasing the tokens to everyone after 28 days? I've never heard of that type of thing being done before in a treasure hunt. To add to Beth's response: Most treasure hunts just have one treasure to be found or multiple independent treasures to be found. Leveret was fairly unique in that some treasures had to be found first before other later meta-treasures could be found at all. This required some new thinking and new rules about if, how, and when to release information about found treasures. We had a few choices for how to deal with this: 1. We could never release information about found treasures. If this happened, a few competing teams could find treasures that were needed for later stages and never agree to share information with each other or with other participants, resulting in the hunt grinding to a halt. 2. We could immediately release information about found treasures. If this happened, it would dramatically reduce the reward for finding an early treasure. Part of the reward was the jewelry and artwork, but part of the reward was finding information needed later in the hunt. If digital tokens were immediately released to all participants after a find, it might lead to finders deciding to not report a found token. This was also why we put in place the "24 hour quiet period" for finders who go to a site but don't find a token, as this means that someone finding a token and not reporting it might miss out on an early treasure if they sit on the token and never report it (which we wanted to discourage). 3. We could release the information after a delay but still allow later BOTG finders to get digital tokens before that release date if they went BOTG to the correct locations. We eventually went this route. We debated how long was the best amount to wait before a token was released. We did want to encourage BOTG solvers after a token was found to still try to go to a site to claim a digital token as that was part of the adventure of the hunt, token or no-token. Not releasing digital tokens to finders who missed going to the correct location by a day or two so would give the initial finder too lengthy of an advantage for later treasures, in our opinion. Overall, we were pleased that the mechanism caused multiple solvers to travel to different sites (or find friends to travel to different sites) to find digital tokens to keep the later stages of the hunt an active and vibrant competition. We also figured that this would cause partnerships and alliances to be formed, and that this would also be part of the end-game for the hunt. We were pleased that this happened in reality. The Debugging Ferrets team that found the Master Key token was an alliance of teams that initially were working separately in the hunt, and they might not have found the Master Key token had they not formed their alliance. Similarly, Team Palmford allied with jrrag and SeanL81 to find tokens in various remote states, which helped them claim two of the later Fey Key tokens. Team BugCatchers that claimed the other two later Fey Key tokens was essentially a power-team with solvers across the country from the start. We were afraid that one team would end up finding nearly every token. We were pleased that this did not happen. We would love to know your opinions about this aspect of the hunt, and how you might have chosen to do things differently if you ran a similar hunt yourself. |
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jrrag
Junior Member
Posts: 51 
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Post by jrrag on Jul 16, 2022 10:12:28 GMT -5
You may not be able to answer this yet since there is an epilogue, but how were locations found/selected? Were puzzles built around locations, or maybe the other way around, or were they independent? I had to ask myself on a few BOTG, "how in the world did they find this place?" (butterfly comes to mind).
I thought the whole thing was brilliant. It will go down as one of the greats like ATT. The "Rosetta Stone" was just too cool as a break-in, and the layers fitting together the way they did with various methods and difficulty levels was genius. I hear Beth when she says she wants to go out on top, but to echo susb8383 and mike6888, please do another!
Another question: was this hunt personally funded by the 2 of you, or did you have investors? Was the jewelry custom commissioned after you acquired stones, or how did that work? Where did the stones come from? The results were very beautiful! A lot of people I tell about this hobby always have the same first question: where does the money come from? If in addition to the time and effort you expended on this project all the rewards came out of your pockets, we thank you again!
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Post by wgardner on Jul 16, 2022 11:19:58 GMT -5
You may not be able to answer this yet since there is an epilogue, but how were locations found/selected? Were puzzles built around locations, or maybe the other way around, or were they independent? I had to ask myself on a few BOTG, "how in the world did they find this place?" (butterfly comes to mind). Some were randomly chosen and some were chosen with purpose. The 4 key token locations were all chosen related to places with actual keystones at or near the sites. Those keystones were also painted into the artwork. I suspect most folks didn't notice this detail. In particular, the location pointed to by the 3 south feeder tokens was actually a keystone on a bridge, and then the instructions encoded on the South keystone described how to go from that keystone to the location where the south key token was hidden. Two of the south locations were also chosen for their science/STEM association. We searched for scientific facilities in southern states near us that could be used hide a token. The 4 west locations were related to 3 separate trips Bill took in the past year. Beth picked the Butterfly location. Beth, wanna chime in about how you picked that one? I thought the whole thing was brilliant. It will go down as one of the greats like ATT. The "Rosetta Stone" was just too cool as a break-in, and the layers fitting together the way they did with various methods and difficulty levels was genius. Thanks for the kind words! Another question: was this hunt personally funded by the 2 of you, or did you have investors? Was the jewelry custom commissioned after you acquired stones, or how did that work? Where did the stones come from? The results were very beautiful! A lot of people I tell about this hobby always have the same first question: where does the money come from? If in addition to the time and effort you expended on this project all the rewards came out of your pockets, we thank you again! This was all self-funded. Book sales probably totaled around $3000. Cash prizes were about $1000. Costs for book printing were about $1000. Jewelry, shipping costs, art supplies, etc. probably cost about $1000. So all totaled up, it was not profitable but not super unprofitable either. Of course, this didn't account for the costs of travel in hiding tokens, etc., but those were usually enjoyable trips anyway. And of course we both ended up with an hourly salary of about $0/hour for our efforts, but this is a hobby so we didn't really expect to be compensated anyway. Beth procured all of the jewelry, so I'll let her comment about that (or not). |
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