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Pitfall Harry's Contest of Doom


Pitfall Harry

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Ben,

 

I think you have the names of the games mixed up in your correction.

 

The silver (now white) A at 21,24 is in RIVERRAID horizontally.

 

The green (now silver) A at 19,19 is in KABOBBER diagonally.

 

The fact that those colors are going to matter late in the game is calling my whole strategy from this point forward into question!

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Shoot.

 

I'm totally stuck. Here's a link to a text file that shows where I'm at now. I think the answer that's there is correct, I just have no idea where to go next. I didn't want to post it here, in case someone's still working on this part.

 

A question though, for Ben - do you have a whole slew of clues backed up that you're going to give us in order, or do you make them up as we get stuck? Just wondering.

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Hmmm....

 

"THE DIAMOND RING" anagrams to "A HIDDEN GRIN TOM".

 

:ponder:  

 

:)

 

It looks like you've identified the bogus clue, huh? Well done! I expected Thomas would be the one to figure it out. Oh, well.

 

The White Letters are Everywhere!

 

Ben

 

I am beginning to wonder if Ben misled us with this... is that REALLY the bogus clue?

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Nathan,

 

You're on to something with your decipher of the anagram. Just experiment a bit and you'll probably figure out the next step.

 

*Whew* I still have some breathing room.

 

But we haven't heard from Thomas for a while. :ponder:

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OK... I've gotten far enough that Ben's correction of the color of the two A's makes a difference.

 

In other words, I've figured out, at least partially, the significance of the silver letters. As with the green letters, it was a case where once I figured out the significance, it was unmistakably "right." (Although I admit my understanding of the silver letters may only PARTIALLY encompass their full meaning.)

 

I still don't know what the gold letters are for.

 

Once again I am at an impasse.

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Yes, I'm spending way too much time on this. But as long as the baby's sleeping, I can manage it!

 

Anyway... Just another thought, as we've been trying to work out possible anagrams of the gold letters in the puzzle, and some have worked out ways to use the gold letters to fill in the blanks in one of the clues given at the start of the puzzle:

 

I think the puzzle is self-contained. I don't think anything within the puzzle itself is going to solve something from OUTSIDE of the puzzle, i.e. those clues.

 

If Ben's working the way he did with the Mystery of the Map contest, then everything within the puzzle itself is self-contained, and in theory the puzzle could be solved without even knowing any of the external clues exist.

 

The meaning of the green letters was entirely self-contained, and if I fully understand the silver letters, the same applies to them, so I can only guess it's the same with the gold letters.

 

I think if someone can determine what the gold letters spell out, it will probably be another clue in itself.

 

Or, the gold letters MAY be the only true "filler" letters in the puzzle, so Ben deliberately put them in alphabetical order to make them stand out that way. (This is the theory I am currently working on, but I'm still grasping for an explanation...)

 

Ben, how long does it take you to put these things together? Is it as long as it takes to solve them?

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Revised list:

 

Lost Caverns

swamp

ladder

three lives

shortcut

Explorers Club

fire ant

piranha

golden rope

twenty minutes

treasure

silver bar

red cross

electric eel

grin (?)

crocodile

Quickclaw

cobra

Raj diamond

basket

quicksand

jungle

pads (?)

balloon

Rhonda

 

I'm confident this is the complete list, although I'm unsure of the two words with question marks. (I'm sure those two words need to exist, I'm just not sure they're the RIGHT two words.)

 

If you know how I found these, congratulations. If not, good luck!

 

If you're ahead of me... :x

 

:D

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Uh-oh... time for me to re-focus and finish this thing! (Yeah, right!)

 

Anybody have a hint for how to actually get "the question"?

 

I've peeled away several layers in this puzzle now and I still have no sense of getting to the heart of it.

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More anagram fun...

 

I have learned to dissect Ben's stories about the Mystic, Harry Jr. and Anna Graham for anagrams. (Anna Graham, get it?)

 

I found a couple of phrases in the first of those stories interesting, and since both had 14 letters, I decided to work on them.

 

They are:

 

THE WOODEN CRATE

THUNDEROUS BOOM

 

From the first phrase I got: A CODE

From the second, I got: THE BONUS ROOM

From the leftovers of both, I got: UNDER THE TWO

 

I'm not sure if this was intentional or if there's any value to it. All I know is that working on Ben's puzzles has certainly improved my anagrammatical abilities!

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Sleep deprivation...

 

I noticed that the gold letters ALMOST work out to a phrase that would reinforce my idea that those letters aren't used in the final question. If there were one less O and one more T, you could spell out:

 

THESE ARE NOT WORTH ANY TIME

 

But like I said, you need another T and one less O. So it's a worthless anagram. (Just like the gold letters themselves? OK, I'm reading WAY too much into this now.)

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By the way, has anybody done anything with the map for level 2 of Pitfall II?

Yes, I had the same idea, since the both maps have (about) the same size.

 

I've been messing around with a hunch on it since Friday but so far that's not going anywhere.

Same here. :sad:

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When the mystic returned from his movie, he found Harry and Anna staring down at the floor, lost in thought. The scrap of paper

he'd left for them was nowhere to be found. In fact, the entire room had been completey stripped of furniture! A 30x30 square foot

space on the floor had been cleared, and stencilled onto the tiles of the floor was a letter-for-letter replica of the puzzle he had left

for them.

 

"Oh, this is great fun!" the mystic exclaimed. Anna and Harry watched with intense curiosity as the mystic hopped about from one

letter tile to another.

 

"Anna, did you notice how the mystic never jumps on adjacent tiles?"

 

"I did indeed," Anna nodded. "I also noticed how he NEVER lands on a tile marked with a gold letter."

 

Harry knew that if he asked the mystic point blank the odds he'd get a straight answer were zero, but he couldn't help himself.

"Is there a clue to be found in the gold letters or not?"

 

The mystic froze where he stood. He folded his arms and glared up at Harry in silence for the longest time. Finally, he

unfolded his arms and smiled. "You're exactly half right," he said, "about a clue in gold."

 

Anna was baffled. "You mean . . .there is more?" she asked.

 

At that, they mystic fell to his knees onto the silver letter where he had stood and folded over into laughter. "You only

know the half of it!" he managed between gasps for breath. "You only know the half of it!"

 

 

Ben

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