Location: Jose Rizal Park (HAMLIN)
Arrival code: MOSAIC
This clue came in the form of small pieces of felt in a net bundle. The pieces were of various shapes and colors, arranged randomly below. The bundle also included a small slip of paper with the gray images shown at the bottom of this page. (These shapes are not exactly the same as those used in the original clue.) Feel free to drag the pieces around.
Your browser doesn't support mouse events, so you're getting a dumbed-down version of this page. If you're interested in solving the puzzle, I highly recommend using anything but IE.
If your browser isn't handling the PNGs well, you're probably using IE. You can switch to GIFs, if you like. They're not as pretty for everyone else. Use
Show hints at [0] [10] [20] [30] [40] [50] minutes
10: The HINT system has determined that you will soon decide to focus on the loose tiles, and to leave the paper for later.
20: The HINT system has determined that you are just about to notice that the tiles come in a variety of shapes, some of which appear multiple times.
30: The HINT system predicts that you will group the tiles by color.
40: HINT indicates that you will soon attempt to interpret the shapes of the tiles as ciphertext.
50: Every tile in a color group represents one of the letters in the tile color name.
This is a simple substitution cipher. Each shape represents a letter. The shapes spell out their colors. The gray shapes at the bottom give the solution.
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| R | E | D |
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| B | L | A | C | K |
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| W | H | I | T | E |
 |  |  |  |  |
| B | R | O | W | N |
 |  |  |  |
| B | L | U | E |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| O | R | A | N | G | E |
 |  |  |  |
| P | I | N | K |
 |  |  |
| T | A | N |
Assigning these letters to the gray shapes gives you DEATHPRICK BLOWGUN.
This clue went through several iterations and forms. Initially, it took the form of cookies with different shapes and flavors (shapes spelling flavors). This tested well the first time, but beta one revealed that the flavors tended to run together if the cookies shared a box for too long. That observation sparked an exhaustive packing test to discover just how long was too long. This turned out to be a fairly short period of time.
Iteration two involved making chocolate candies of different flavors and colors (colors spelling flavors). Only the insides were flavored and colored and they were all encased in chocolate. This did solve the problem of flavors bleeding. Unfortunately, getting consistent flavor with the chocolate proved challenging. One early chocolate test involved a lemon flavor that ended up tasing like Pledge. Naturally, we all had to try it. On the other hand, the almond flavor was delightful. We ran the chocolates in beta two and got such identifications as "playdough," "spicy?," "chocolate," and "ass" (as opposed to lemon, almond, anise, mint, and maple). So that was another no-go.
Both betas exhausted, we still really wanted to use this puzzle, since it's just so elegant. We finally settled on shapes and colors, which should leave no room for ambiguity. It's not quite as cool as the cookies, but it's workable. Sadly, after all that R&D, this clue ended up at the end of leg three, so few teams got to see it. We distributed most of them at the finish line. Also, the location we had chosen for it turned out not to be the best place to hang around in the middle of the night. At least, so claimed the nice police officer who advised us to move along. We ended up cutting this location (and the next) and bringing the clues to the next pit stop. One team arrived at the pit stop early enough to solve it there.
