It was dark now. Team Fishstick Mess jogged up to a certain place on the fence of the Shoreline Ampitheater parking lot, where there were clues. We sat down on the sidewalk and shone our flashlights on Minus two the Nth.
I'll reproduce the puzzle in glorious ASCII-vision.
Uhm, but don't try to solve it yet.
1 2 4 8 16 1 2 4 8 16
________________________________
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -4
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 14
-10 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 10
-10 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -2
4 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -4
0 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 0
18 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 15
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 6
14 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 21
20 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 12
15 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 20
At first it looked like we were supposed to fill in a bitmap based on binary notation. Would that lead to Braille? No, the number of squares wasn't a multiple of 2x3. Morse? That wasn't leading anywhere. And what did the minus signs mean? Were we supposed to XOR those numbers?
I thought back to the time I'd spent studying the transparency in Poke Her Face. "Where are the other dashes? You know, the ones going the other direction? On the transparency?" In the dark and in the glare of our lights, we'd missed a set of green lines on the transparency.
So we brought out the transparency and laid it on top of the
paper again.
Now we could see
that the 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 columns were really 1, -2, 4, -8, 16.
We were expressing numbers in base -2.
Noting the placement of the marks, we set the transparency aside.
1 -2 4 -8 16 1 -2 4 -8 16
________________________________
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -4
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 14
-10 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 10
-10 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -2
4 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| -4
0 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 0
18 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 15
17 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 6
14 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 21
20 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 12
15 |__|__|__|__|__||__|__|__|__|__| 20
From stuff I'd said about the Strongbadian Night Game puzzle and the Poke Her Face puzzle, you know that I was thinking about how a group might best approach these puzzles. Once we had those extra green lines, our only limit was based on how many people could write on this sheet of paper at once. (Just two.) Within a couple of minutes, we had a bitmap visually showing the name Vespa.
We found "Vespa" on the big board, wrote its number, and found the next location on the map. It was on the other side of the business park. It was after 10 at night. Officially, the hunt was over. Officially, we were supposed to head back to the Googleplex to hear the answers and see a slide show. But solving puzzles would probably be more fun, so we ran through the darkness, along empty streets, past buildings of no character.
As I thought about group solving techniques, I thought about my role in this puzzle. Any of us could have solved the negative-exponents part of this puzzle. In this case my role had been the stickler--double-checking everyone else's work. Maybe I could try to adopt that role generally in Team Mystic Fish. When we'd tried some things and hit some dead ends, I could point out all the little detaily things we'd screwed up. I shuddered inwardly. That role sounded like the opposite of fun. I went back to thinking about jog-walking through the dark without tripping over anything.