Teams will receive a smartphone with which to play the “pre-beta” version of Pokémon Go, Master Edition. The “smartphone” is actually a piece of cardboard with red cellophane taped to it.
Teams will also be shown a “nearby” screen that is similar to the one in the actual Pokémon Go game, but the pictures for the “stops” are broken images. Thankfully, there are text descriptions of what the images show. To aid with identification, the locations are sorted by building number (treating W20 as 20).
| Description | Location |
|---|---|
| 3D optics lab on the 3rd floor | 3-319 |
| Records office | 5-115 (registrar’s office) |
| A Noctowl in flight. They must have been real fast to get this photo! | 10-4, near Strobe Alley |
| A fishbowl | 11-1 Athena cluster |
| Rectangular concert room near the library | 14-1, near Killian Hall (poster on a nearby column) |
| A banner of a fuzzy Pokémon similar to a Venonat | W20-5 near SIPB |
| A subterranean Fountain that makes you feel years younger | 26-0 water fountain (the Fountain of Youth) |
| A thousand Flying-type Pokémon circling overhead | 32-1, entrance closest to the Sean Collier memorial |
| The Lodge where freshmen learn to make things | 35-318, near the MakerLodge |
| People studying Electric-type Pokémon make their headquarters here | 36-4, near the RLE Headquarters |
| Bring your PokéWalker and pick up the Courage badge! | 50-356 |
| The base of the triangle. You can catch a Vanillite here! | 66-0, near the elevators |
Near to each of these locations is a public bulletin board. Per the directions, you need to look under “every stone”—that is, underneath a poster with a picture of a rock. You’ll find another poster here, with a weird silhouette of a Duskull.
If you look through the smartphone at the Duskull, it will reveal a short message. Each of the 12 locations has a message as follows:
| Location | Message | Poster |
|---|---|---|
| 3-319 | Moves 3 19 and 45 // Thursday vs Ding | poster | red revealed |
| 5-115 | Moves 41 67 and 105 // Thursday vs Qiao | poster | red revealed |
| 10-4 | Moves 35 101 and 111 // Thursday vs Meng | poster | red revealed |
| 11-1 | Moves 69 115 and 159 // Friday vs Ke [first] | poster | red revealed |
| 14-1 | Moves 43 55 and 143 // Friday vs Park [second] | poster | red revealed |
| W20-5 | Moves 29 67 and 69 // Monday vs Dang | poster | red revealed |
| 26-0 | Moves 109 119 and 137 // Monday vs Gu [third] | poster | red revealed |
| 32-1 | Moves 15 85 and 93 // Tuesday vs Yang | poster | red revealed |
| 35-318 | Moves 89 129 and 133 // Tuesday vs Kang | poster | red revealed |
| 36-4 | Moves 63 65 and 73 // Tuesday vs Shi | poster | red revealed |
| 50-356 | Moves 63 109 and 143 // Wednesday vs Nie | poster | red revealed |
| 66-0 | Moves 103 127 and 161 // Wednesday vs Zhou [second] | poster | red revealed |
These refer to moves in a series of 60 matches that the AI program AlphaGo played online between 12/29/2016 and 1/4/2017 under the alias “Master”. The game logs can be found here. Games are identified based on their day of the week (12/29/2016 was a Thursday) and by the surname of the opponent (with ordinal disambiguation where more than one game was played by a player with that surname on that day).
Three moves from each of twelve different matches are noted. In each of these matches, AlphaGo played black. Plot AlphaGo’s moves on a Go board to spell out the answer PASTOR.
