Category: News (Page 39 of 183)

Snow Town Library: Beware the Librarian

February 19, 2011 / Jane Doh

Wow, you really can’t let those library due dates slide. Imagine my surprise when I received not just one, but four overdue library notices from the Snow Town Library in Snow Town, Maine. I must have had snow on my mind when I took out The Snow Man by Hans Christian Andersen, Blizzard by George Stone, The Maine Woods by H.D. Thoreau,Â and Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. Surely this is a mistake!

But at a fine of 2 cents per day for four overdue books (never mind the two cents the library has added for the expense of sending me each notice), I just can’t afford to let the fines go. So, I called the Snow Town Library to rectify the situation but was too intimidated by the voicemail greeting asking me to leave a message.

Terrified, I quickly hung up the phone. It’s been years, no decades, since I’ve interacted with anyone of the “school-marm” type, and I was having flashbacks. Searching around, I came upon the Snow Town Library website. There, Snow Town Librarian Ruthie Randolph seems to be ruling with an iron fist, keeping library patrons in line, and organizing the library’s book club. Her argyle sweater strikes terror in the heart.

Although there isn’t a great deal of information to go on, there’s just something fishy about this place, and it seems like the Snow Town Library might be the setting for a new alternate reality game just getting started. For information, check out the Snow Town Library website and sign the guestbook . . .Â if you dare!

Update 2/21: Since this article was published, participants have uncovered a great deal of new information about the Snow Town Library over at Unfiction.

Strong Arm Your Way into the Ring of Dishonor: Q&A with Master Thief Mike Selinker

February 12, 2011 / Jane Doh

As previously reported on ARGNet, Wired magazine and Lone Shark Games have created a special “Underworld Exposed” issue to delight and confound puzzle-solvers and would-be thieves eager to join the nefarious Ring of Dishonor, a special place for the craftiest of puzzlers. Frustrated by the secret ciphers hidden in the magazine, available both in print and on the iPad, I cornered master puzzle-maker and president of Lone Shark Games, Mike Selinker.

Let’s see if he’ll crack under the interrogation lamp:
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Lone Shark Games and Wired Want You to Join Their Ring of Dishonor

February 3, 2011 / Jane Doh

In this month’s Wired, Lone Shark Games is presenting a unique challenge to puzzlers, techies, and . . . thugs? Promising “A Guided Tour of the Dark Side,” this special “Underworld Exposed” issue includes fascinating articles about real-world crime and other things hidden from plain sight. Along these lines, the magazine, available both in print and for the iPad, contains secret codes that, when deciphered, will provide an email address. When contacted at a certain time and date, Decode will confer upon you a most dubious honor and a place in the ultra-secret puzzling society, the Ring of Dishonor.

The Ring of Dishonor is a darker, scarier version of Decode’s regularly featured Ring of Honor puzzles. How do you get started on your criminal puzzle-solving career? Check out this trailhead puzzle, involving the now-extinct language used by Chinese women to communicate without being watched. Using this puzzle as a launching pad, nine other secret languages are being revealed in quiz form at Decode to supplement the print magazine (iPad readers have all the secret languages available already). Somehow, through the magazine, these secret languages will bring enthusiastic seekers “behind the door,” so to speak, if they’ve got the puzzle-solving chops to figure it all out.

Odd Jobs for Old Soldiers

February 1, 2011 / Michael Andersen

While going through his company’s archives, an employee using the moniker “LOKI” discovered evidence of a conspiracy. After contacting the FBI, Loki took his typewriter out of storage, drafted a cover letter explaining his situation, and sent a package of information to me and others as security. Unfortunately, he “forgot” to load the typewriter ribbon, leaving his explanatory message embossed on an otherwise blank sheet of paper. Risking a headache that still hasn’t gone away, I transcribed theÂ message’s contents here.

The package I received sets the stage for Old Soldiers, a new media comic book by Big House Comics, which aims to deliver comics that let you “[s]tep into an immersive world, where you become a part of the story online.” The first comic in the seven issue mini-series is set to debut in March, but it appears as though the alternate reality game has launched earlier.

Your Princess is in Another Game: The 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt

January 25, 2011 / Alex Calhoun

Editor’s Note: Alex Calhoun shares his experience participating in the 2011Â MIT Mystery Hunt in this guest post. Calhoun’s team, Codex Alimentarius, was the first to finish this year’s Hunt, earning the privilege to design the 2012 Hunt.

The time is 12:17pm on Friday, January 14^th, 2011. A string quartet is playing in Lobby 7 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. Hundreds of guests are present for the wedding of Mario and Peach, now in motion. But as any video gamer might expect, just as the couple begins to recite their vows, Bowser sweeps in and kidnaps Peach: Iâ€™m sorry Mario, but your wedding is in another Chapel!

Attendees to the opening ceremonies for the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt were greeted with this disrupted ceremony, kicking off an annual competition that pits teams ranging in size from five people to over a hundred as they attempt to solve more than a hundred puzzles in a race around the clock to find â€œThe Coin,â€ the amorphous victory trophy that signals the end of the year’s Mystery Hunt. Every competition is guided by an overarching theme. For the 2011 hunt, teams were tasked with assisting Mario rescue his bride-to-be. â€œMario is great at jumping on mutant mushrooms but lousy at solving puzzles,â€ we were told by the representative from team Metaphysical Plant, the 2010 Hunt winners.

Puzzles in Mystery Hunt are structured in rounds. As teams solve puzzles, they unlock additional puzzles and additional rounds. Each round has one or more meta puzzles, formed from the answers from each regular puzzle. Mario World had three rounds and the first was â€œWorld 1-1â€, with seven regular puzzles. The answers to those puzzles were all types of mushrooms or other fungus (Oyster, Orange peel, Charcoal Burner, Panther, Cannonball, Jack Oâ€™ Lantern, Fried Chicken). By looking up the genus names of each of these species and reading the first letters down vertically, the following word appears:

OYSTER:	Pleurotus ostreatus
ORANGE PEEL:	Aleuria aurantia
CHARCOAL BURNER:	Russula cyanoxantha
PANTHER:	Amanita pantherina
CANNONBALL:	Sphaerobolus stellatus
JACK O’ LANTERN:	Omphalotus illudens
FRIED CHICKEN:	Lyophyllum decastes

“PARASOLâ€ is another species of mushroom, and the first meta-puzzle solution. My team, Codex Alimentarius, eagerly attacked the twenty or so puzzles in â€œMario World,â€ unlocking the World One castle in a few hours. In doing so, we learned the Hunt ranged far beyond the domain of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Ford Shifts into Overdrive with “Focus Rally: America” Campaign

January 21, 2011 / Michael Andersen

Reality show audiences can often support their favorite contestants by calling in votes. Focus Rally: America is taking audience participation to another level by bringing fans directly into the action by solving puzzles and completing challenges to help their favorite teams and accumulate points for a series of prize drawings. The Ford Motor Company partnered with the creators of The Amazing Race to produce the show, with episodes scheduled to begin February 5th.

The show itself follows six teams of two people as they drive across the country in the new 2012 Ford Focus competing in tasks. Fans can follow their progress in real-time online on a GPS-enabled map, and long- and short-form webisodes will stream on Hulu five times a week for American audiences, with highlights available worldwide on YouTube. Contestants will be asked to draw upon their fans for support throughout the challenges: twenty-three fans will even win a trip for two to participate in the Road Rally Challenges. Six of these live challenge participants will win a 2012 Ford Focus.

Interested in getting started? Head on over to FocusRally.com and register to play. You can start collecting points by inviting friends to join, answering daily trivia questions, and participating in the Road Trip Challenge, a series of fifty online puzzles. Accumulate enough points, and you’ll level up and unlock newÂ privilegesÂ and features on the site. Rack up more points than any other player? You’ll win a Ford Focus. An additional Ford Focus will be awarded to a registrant, selected at random. The Road Trip Challenge puzzles are relatively straightforward, requiring you to identify landmarks and cities based on clues like an image or driving directions, but subsequent tasks and challenges are bound to get more complex once the race starts.

For more information, follow the Focus Rally: America Facebook andÂ Twitter accounts.

Correction, 01/27/2011: this article incorrectly stated that Ford would be giving away ten Ford Focuses, with eight going to random followers of the winning team. The contest is for eight Ford Focuses, with cars awarded to six of the twenty-three live event participants. The article was amended to reflect this information.