P.I.HUNT 5

Hello! Last year was the 30th anniversary of Pi Day, which makes this year the 31st. That’s got the first two digits of pi, rather than just the first one, and so is even more of a milestone and clearly not just me making up reasons to call every Pi Day special. (I’m not the only one…) I may have gone a little insane making the puzzles this year, I’m sure my mental state wasn’t too affected though. I can’t wait for you all to see what I’ve been working on during the past year.

There are 14 non-meta puzzles, all of which start off unlocked and are linked below. I’ll send the first meta once you get at least 4 answers that go to it, and it will answer the question “What should Jack do if he’s gone crazy from work?” and the second meta once that’s solved and you get at least 4 answers for it, which will answer the question “Now that Jack’s followed your advice, rather than dull, how is he feeling?” (I will let you know which puzzles go to which metas when you unlock them)

Email me at jack[dot]l[dot]lance[at]gmail[dot]com to confirm your answers. You can also email if you get stuck and want hints, or just any comments, errata, or questions. Also, feel free to work individually or as a team, and solve now or anytime after now.

So, without further all, work and no play makes Jack. A dull boy all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy:

All 1
Work And
Nº Play
Makes, Jack, A, Dull
BOY ALL!
Workandno
Play!
Makes
Jack A**
Dull Boy
All% Wo. Rk.
– and |, no /
Play Makes
Jack A Dull Boy

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P.I.HUNT 5 in a month!

So here’s a puzzle that’s pi and 5 themed! 😀

Decompose the pi shaped grid into the twelve pentominos, allowing both rotation and reflection.

Puzzle 150 – Liquid Measurement

I turn 21 today!

If you haven’t seen before, I post an age-themed puzzle each year (Here’s last years). 21 is drinking age (in US), so I have a drinking related puzzle for you.

Normally in these sorts of puzzles, you have an unlimited amount of liquid, and 2 or 3 cups, but like all college students, I’m too frugal to give you all that! In this puzzle, there’s only 1 cup.

The cup is a cube, measuring 10 units in width, length, and height, and which also has a vertical dividing wall that goes halfway up cutting it in half. I’ve attached a diagram to make it more clear, along with a front and top view.

You are given the cup and a straw, and the cup begins filled to the brim with beer. Besides the beer that comes in the cup, you aren’t given any extra (or any source to keep beer you’ve poured out.) Your goal is to drink exactly 21 cubed units of beer.

P.I. HUNT 4

It’s the day right before the Ides of March, which you might also call Pre-Ides day, or P.I. day for short! In fact, according to Google, it’s the 30th anniversary of Pi Day, so a special one indeed.

This year’s P.I. HUNT is themed around Gravity Falls, though you don’t need to have any Gravity Falls-specific knowledge in order to solve it. In fact, you don’t need any outside knowledge to solve it! That means both that you don’t need a computer to solve it, so it has no trivia, no codes like braille, morse, semaphore, etc., and also that it’s intended to be solved completely without a computer (except maybe looking up words you don’t know, or the like). See more info about printing below.

(Note that you can solve if you haven’t watched Gravity Falls, or have watched it, but if you’ve started watching and intend to finish, there are spoilers past this point. Also, the show finished airing more than two years ago! What are you doing? Go finish it!)

In the show, it was believed that Stanford Pines had written 3 journals about his findings in Gravity Falls. However, it was recently discovered that there was some more pages that had been unaccounted for, meaning the actual number of journals was a number slightly larger than 3…

It is VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you print the journal out. You should print it double sided, and as you go through it, flip pages from your right to your left, as if you were reading a book. I also recommend using a pencil, through if you write on the pages with pen, (or ruin them for any other reason…) the good thing about it being a pdf is that you can just reprint those pages.

Because lots of printers are weird and different, the printing might be the most daunting puzzle. I’ve provided a test page below. You can print the test page to make sure the printing will work okay before printing the journal. You don’t need color printing, and also there is a margin worked into the document so you don’t need edge-to-edge printing. When you print the test page double sided, the dot should be exactly in the center, and the asterisks should line up when you hold it to the light (if they are off by a little, that’s okay). The arrows shouldn’t be cut off, and should be as close to the edge of the page as they appear in the pdf (a quarter inch). Sometimes the printer tries to add an extra margin, so if there’s an option to set margins to 0, or set the scale to 100%, or an “Exact Size” option, you should select that. I had some troubles when opening the pdf in Chrome and printing it from there, so you should try saving it to your computer, and printing it using that menu. If you’re having trouble with the margins (printers are weeeeird!) you can email me and I can try to help.

You can email me (at jack[dot]l[dot]lance[at]gmail[dot]com) if you have found an error, are stuck and want hints, or have any other comments, but because there’s no unlocking this year, you don’t need to email for anything besides the final answer.

Test Page (not a puzzle)

PIHUNT!

~ 22/7 – 7/100

It’s just a week until P.I.HUNT, so I thought I’d write a little more so if you’re looking at it early on Pi Day, this’ll be the first thing you see. I’m going to post it on 3/14 1:59 PM EST. This year, you’ll get all the puzzles at once, and don’t have to send me answers to unlock anything. Also, it’s more intended to be solved individually, but you can solve as teams if you want (though I recommend solving with people you are physically with if so.) Lastly, if the timing isn’t convenient, it’s fine. Like always, it will stay up even after Pi Day.

Puzzle 149 – Dissection: P.I.HUNT 4 soon!

Puzzle 148 – Matchstick Puzzle

I’m 20 today!

There are 20 matchsticks arranged in the shape of the word TWENTY below. Your goal is to move just 4 matchsticks to make an expression which, when evaluated, equals 20.

Like every year, it’s hard to guarantee uniqueness. I think it likely is unique, but even if it’s not I’d be interested to see what creative solutions you can come up with.  If you want to check your answer against mine, the MD5 hash of the expression I have, with no spaces, is f7195be5dde9a77f21175cd8049ed557

P.I. HUNT 3

If you’ve been watching the countdown on the right, then you know that it’s time for P.I. HUNT number 3! That’s special because it’s the closest number to pi there’s going to be unless I decided to make a hunt for May 3rd (.1415… of the way from P.I. HUNT 3 to P.I. HUNT 4.) This year is also special because it shares the same starting date as another puzzle hunt that you should definitely also check out!

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As you know, I’m recruiting you to help with the case of Mr. Boddy’s untimely death, which we at the police force believe to be a murder. The reason I came to you is because I heard you’re used to solving unusual cases, like that recent kidnapping by Mystereo Cantos, and some of the evidence is… well… it’s not what I’m used to dealing with.

I’ve gathered up all of the suspicious materials found in the mansion after the body was found and taken and documented pictures. None of the suspects have been identified yet, so I’m tentatively giving the suspects codenames after what they left behind: Suspect Scarlet, Suspect Mustard, Suspect Green, Suspect Peacock, Suspect White, and Suspect Plum. You can see the objects in the picture below, but make sure to also click on the links to pdfs below which contain more detail about exactly what I found at the scene of the crime.

Once you find someone you believe any of the suspects in this case, send it to me at jack[dot]l[dot]lance[at]gmail[dot]com to receive some of the more confidential puzzling evidence.

Suspect Scarlet

Suspect Mustard

Suspect Green

Suspect White

Suspect Peacock

Suspect Plum

Puzzle 147 – Hashiwokekaro

This is a Hashiwokekaro puzzle. Here are the rules for Hashiwokekaro:

Draw zero, one, or two straight bridges between each pair of islands. Two bridges cannot cross, and bridges cannot cross through islands. The number on an island describes how many bridges are connected to that island. You must be able to get from any island to any other island through bridges.