I first encountered the concept of a Puzzle Hunt in 2009, when I attended my first GenCon. It was a particularly fortunate year for me to attend, because—unbeknownst to me—that year featured one of the finest Puzzle Hunts ever, and after that few-day period, the hunt was completely unavailable to anyone in any form for over a decade.
I should probably back up for a moment to explain what a puzzle hunt is: a series of puzzles, many of which are tied together via one or more metapuzzles. They often take place during a brief window, so you’re competing against other people or teams to solve them. Often—as was the case at GenCon—physically exploring a space is necessary to retrieve all the puzzles and clues necessary.
These puzzles are likely not what you’re expecting, either. If there’s a word search, the hidden words may be unlisted, or they may be listed in some unexpected way. For example, if the puzzle is named “Paired Up” and “TEA” is on the word list, you may be expected to find the word “COFFEE,” since coffee is frequently mentioned together with tea and it contains double letters. If there’s a crossword, some clues may not be provided, or some clues may be for the wrong words… with the relationship between the word actually in the puzzle and the word that was hinted providing some pieces you’ll need for a letter puzzle. (An example would be a straightforward hint like “The seat of thought” leading to a four-letter blank… so you might figure out from the other hints that you need to write “RAIN” there instead of “BRAIN” and take the “B” as part of the meta-solution to the puzzle.)
The 2009 Puzzlevania Puzzle Hunt was noteworthy in a number of ways, but chief among them was that it didn’t have one set solution. Instead, hunters were given a set amount of resources and tasked with gathering as many gemstones as possible. Some acquisitions, like the emerald held by the current king of Puzzlevania, were relatively straightforward, but the rules of the puzzle allowed you to find solutions never anticipated by the puzzle creators.
My husband and I were busy exploring GenCon, but I was captivated by the puzzlehunt and we worked on it late into the night after returning to our hotel. I forget exactly how many gems we acquired: it was a number of modest success, something in the range of 8 to 11. I was disappointed, as I felt confident that with more time, I could definitely get three or four more, but that seemed to be the limit to me.
So when we went to the turn-in to have our answers verified on the last day, only to encounter another group that, as I remember it, had over twenty gems, I was floored.
I desperately wanted to buy a copy of the puzzle from the company and work on it my own when I wasn’t time-limited to see if I could better my score.
But… I couldn’t. Lone Shark had a deal with GenCon to make the hunts exclusive to the con.
While I ran into the company several times during the years (their Maze of Games puzzle book kept me sane during a pregnancy plagued by such extreme nausea that I couldn’t watch TV or play video games), that state of affairs continued until very recently, when Lone Shark got together a number of their old hunts and republished them in a book called The Hunting of the Shark.
Puzzlevania was actually printed on a mega-fold out complete with a punch-out crown of the kingdom with gems I could glue on. Since there were 18 blanks on the completion page and 18 gems I could stick on the tiny crown included with the puzzle, that was my target number. I made my children help me.
If you don’t want to be spoilered on the puzzle, you should stop here and go find it yourself. If you want to follow me on my path through nonsense and war crimes to sweet, sweet victory many years delayed, here we go:
We start with 50 gold and no resources.
The road poem had 25 letters of the alphabet in each stanza, with the missing letters spelling out SMOKY QUARTZ (1).
We paid 3 gold (down to 47) to get Prescott to protect us in the graveyard and bought a B from the beekeeper (down to 46) to change the RAIN to a BRAIN to satiate the zombie. We picked up some BLOOD from the dead rabbit’s corpse while there. We found a pass to the city in the crypt but had to solve the puzzle to gain entry to the city of QWERTY. We did so.
The hermit let us take a bunch of his shit, most notably a STONE and his DOOR, which we paid 2 gold (down to 44) to anagram to ODOR, which we used to drive away the troll from his cave to retrieve the name badges from the skeletons therein. We chose ALEX ANNE DWIGHT, giving us the gem ALEXANDRITE (2) and three name badges.
The wizard gave us a card which was not a heart or a club, so we figured it was a SPADE. We paid 2 more gold (down to 42) to replace a letter, changing one BADGE to a BARGE and going over to the island and digging up the treasure map and the LAPIS LAZULI (3). We grabbed some SAND and anagrammed it to SARD (4 gems, 40g) and then anagrammed OCEAN to CANOE to get back (down to 38 gold).
We picked up two patrolmen from the watchtower and went to the mega-mage’s mansion. Solving the puzzle made it clear that one was a SENTRY so we beheaded him into an ENTRY (down to 36 gold) which was… dark, but okay! War crimes are clearly on the table here! The mega-mage wanted a canine companion, so we bought a bag of DOTS candies from the grocery for 1 gold (35) and swapped a letter to give us two DOGS instead (33). We gave one DOG to the mega-mage to smush our BLOOD and our STONE into BLOODSTONE (5).
The other dog we took to the farmer to use as a beast of burden, for which we got an A. We took the A to the front of the city and slammed it into the GATE there, giving us an AGATE (6).
Our DWIGHT name badge we beheaded to WIGHT and then letter-swapped to LIGHT (29 gold) so we could enter the maze and get tons of paper and a TANZANITE (7).
We traded some of the other papers to enter the stacks at the library and solved the riddle to enter the private collection and pick up a PERIDOT (8).
We bought a HORNET from the beekeeper for 1 gold (28g) and anagrammed it to THRONE(26g) to trade with the king for his EMERALD (9).
One of the spare papers was big enough to be folded into a QUARTO, which we letter-swapped to QUARTZ(10 gems, 24g).
We grabbed some GRASS from the hermit’s area to letter-swap to GLASS, (11 gems, 22g) and the International Gem Society counts natural glass as a gemstone (https://www.gemsociety.org/gemstone-encyclopedia/). I don’t think you can get much more natural than grass, so that works out.
The SQUIRE decided to accompany us (Why? Why would you do that? We don’t know) so we turned him into a SQUARE (20g) and swapped him for a DIAMOND (12 gems) at the town pentagon.
We still have that second patrolman from the watchtower, so he’s clearly a member of the WATCH, and we can generalize WATCH to TIMER, which we can letter swap to TIGER (18g), and then we can rip out both eyes, considering one a TIGER’S EYE (13 gems) and one generalizing to a CAT’S EYE (14 gems) and then generalizing the poor maimed tiger to a CAT, then generalizing the CAT to PET, then letter-swapping PET to JET (15 gems, 16g).
Then we go back to the grocer and buy a bag of MOUNDS candies for 1g. We’re gonna letter-swap MOUNDS to ROUNDS (14g) and then trade in both our ROUNDS at the Town Pentagon for shapes with the same number of straight sides (zero). We’re asking for an OVAL and a SPLINE. The OVAL we letter-swap to OPAL (16 gems, 12g) and the SPLINE we anagram to SPINEL (17 gems, 10g).
With the finish line in spitting distance, we dash back to the beekeeper to buy another HORNET (9g) and letter-swap it three times: CORNET (7g) to CARNET (5g) to GARNET, for EIGHTEEN GEMS, three gold remaining, and delicious victory made ever sweeter by its time deferred.