Custom-built Enigmas
Custom Built Puzzles and Enigmas
In 2019, we teamed up with Ryan Creighton of "Nights Around a Table" to write a series of custom puzzles for Niantic. Niantic's game Ingress is an Augmented Reality game; and is the forerunner to Pokemon Go. In Ingress, two sides contest control over cities by capturing and linking energy 'portals'. These portals are real world locations - public art, monuments and public buildings - that are linked together to take control of areas in game. Every two to three months, Niantic ran big public events in cities around the world where the two sides compete in challenges to unlock new lore. As part of the October 2019 'Nemesis: Umbra' event, they commissioned a set of challenging puzzles and enigmas, to be themed around the cities hosting the events.
Writing the Puzzles
Writing and testing these was an interesting challenge, as each had to be non-trivial, but solvable in about an hour. We had to have low-to-medium language complexity for the non-English speaking cities; and give clear instructions where we could - but without spoiling the discovery of the puzzle itself. The puzzles had to use the city as inspiration. We gathered ideas from reading a lot of travel guides, wikipedia pages and our own personal knowledge of some of the locations. Ryan and Enigmatic Events were in contact most days comparing ideas, and building designs. We had to write the puzzles and also test each others work, give feedback and help refine the offers. Just because a step seems obvious to the writer, it may be far too obscure to the average solver. One common mistake we learned to avoid was we used idiom that's unique to our own culture and upbringing. Removing that bias was an important learning step for our international audience. Sometimes the method to get to the solution method was clear, but the work involved isn't actually fun. So we avoided puzzles were it was just work, not inspiration to solve.
9 Custom Puzzles to Sample
We've collected all nine puzzles that were co-wrote and released here. Each is a PDF file, and the solution is a word or phrase that associates with the city. Please feel free to email us directly if you want to check an answer or need a hint. I've put a rating on each based on the solve times during the event. A Level 5-rating took an hour or more to solve, while a Level 1 was under 15 minutes. As a free hint, you may need to do your own research on the cities to solve some of these puzzles.
Taoyuan City skyline by Photo by Lisanto 李奕良 on Unsplash
ASIA Sector
Newcastle, Australia - Level 3. Crossword Puzzle
Taoyuan, Taiwan - Level 1. The Night Market
Sabah, Malaysia - Level 3. Nature Guide Wordsearch
Antwerp Station by Polly on Unsplash
EUROPE Sector
Antwerp, Belgium - Level 4. Container Loading
Dresden, Germany - Level 3. The Exhibit
Gothenberg, Sweden - Level 2. The City Tour
Guadalajara Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres by Roman Lopez on Unsplash
AMERICAS Sector
Brooklyn, USA. - Level 4. Star Pizza
Guadalajara, Mexico - Level 4. The Mariachi Setlist
Sacremento, USA - Level 5. The Sacremento Cafe - This one requires a local knowledge and/or access to the Ingress maps
Please contact us at business@enigmaticevents.com for hints, answers, or to talk puzzles with us!
