Solution: The Braille Witch Project

Written by Tom Weisswange

 

The program supplied is a sliding block puzzle in which all the blocks are visually identical blank squares, but each has associated with it a brief snippet of audio. The solver must slide the blocks around until all of these snippets, in order, form one long audio excerpt from The Blair Witch Project (Heather's speech with the camera pointing up her nose). When this is done, a message box pops up saying:

Call us about 'Braille Witch 2: Book of Dimples'

When a team called in, they were instucted to send over a group of at least two people, at least one of whom either knew Braille or had a copy of the Braille alphabet. The group was escorted to Lobby 7; one (call him/her A) was positioned, blindfolded, on the main floor, and the rest (call them, collectively, B) on the second floor balcony overlooking the main floor.

Cardboard boxes, each with three letters written on its outside, were distributed around the main floor. Solver A was handed a piece of cardboard with a Braille dimple pattern on it. Then,

1) A had to communicate to B what letter he/she had felt -- either by saying what it was (if A knew Braille) or by communicating the pattern of dimples (so that B would know or could look up what the corresponding letter was).

2) B then had to vocally direct A to the cardboard box that had the given letter on it.

3) A would then reach into the box.

The first five times, the box contained another Braille dimple pattern, and A and B would repeat the process; the sixth time, the carboard box contained slips of paper, and A took one of them. A's blindfold was then removed, and A and B were dismissed.

The slip of paper had on it a three by twelve rectangle of squares, each either empty or with a capital letter delta on it. The solvers had to put the sequence of Braille letters solver A had felt while blindfolded into the squares provided, and then change the contents of all the squares with deltas from dot to non-dot or vice versa (capital delta being the symbol for "change"). This resulted in the following sequence of Braille letters:

**  *   **  **  *    *
 *   *  **          *
    *       *       *

which is Braille for the solution, DOGMAS.