Chairiot Races
by Justin Graham, John Owens, Charlie Graham
Answer: đ»
Solvers should quickly realize that the images in the puzzle document are not solvable puzzles in their given form.
The first solving step is to recognize that the descriptions in each segment clue a well-known animated feature film with a single letter changed in the title.
Description | Changed title | Original movie | |
---|---|---|---|
The Beatles' drummer accidentally becomes the sheriff of Dirt, a lawless outpost in the Wild West | Ringo | Rango | A |
Hogarth Hughes befriends an enormous symbol from outer space that a paranoid government agency wants to destroy | The Icon Giant | The Iron Giant | R |
The quiet life of a ballpoint named Max is upended when his owner takes in a marker named Duke. | The Secret Life of Pens | The Secret Life of Pets | T |
Blu, a domesticated macaw from Minnesota follows a fiercely indpendent bird named Jewel to an exotic adventure in a Greek letter | Rho | Rio | I |
Princess Merida attempts to rely on her archery skills, but the ride comes to a sudden halt. | Brake | Brave | V |
An island of flightless musicians is invaded by mysterious green piggies. | Angry Bards | Angry Birds | I |
A young woman named Sophie is cursed with an old body, and her only chance of breaking the spell is with an insecure young wizard and his depressed fortress. | Howl's Moping Castle | Howl's Moving Castle | V |
Book-loving Belle falls in love with a prince cursed to be endlessly bragging about himself. | Beauty and the Boast | Beauty and the Beast | E |
The romantic tale of a sheltered uptown Cocker Spaniel and her stomach trouble. | Lady and the Cramp | Lady and the Tramp | T |
Major Motoko Kasunagi is a cyborg policewoman on the trail of Puppet Master using her enhanced olfactory sense. | Ghost in the Smell | Ghost in the Shell | H |
A clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef is constantly asking his dad for money. | Funding Nemo | Finding Nemo | I |
A malevolent fairy places a curse on princess Aurora, giving her Tourette's Disease and giving the studio's censor a sore finger. | Bleeping Beauty | Sleeping Beauty | S |
The hidden message here (âARTIVIVE THISâ) clues using the Artivive Augmented Reality app to unlock the puzzle contentâyour âPennyvision goggles.â Each of these 12 minipuzzles now can be viewed in their entirety. Each of the AR puzzles also is overlaid with a seemingly unrelated piece of animation.
In the event the Artvive AR versions of these animations are not available for some reason, they have all been posted in this Google folder for archival purposes.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VBAXJZEpNgPp4pcPxQg784gZ7G8q-8rG?usp=sharing
1) Ringo/Rango
(unrelated animation = CAPTCHA code box)
This is 5 bit binary. Compare the real and AR versions of the images. If they are the same, itâs a one bit, otherwise itâs a zero. Convert numbers to letters to get TRANSFORMERS.
2) Iron Giant/Icon Giant
(unrelated animation = leaves and flowers growing into a human shape)
The AR image overlays the letter grid on a North America map. The letters SF NYG appear, which hints at the SF Giants baseball and NY Giants football teams. Find the 6 city pairs that have professional sports teams that share a team name. Draw lines between them on the map and overlying grid. Find the relevant team abbreviations on those lines and select the two letters between them. Order the letter pairs in alpha order of team names. The solution is UNECONOMICAL.
3) The Secret Life of Pets/Pens
(unrelated animation = blinking eyes, yellow dots, 3 long streaks)
Each of the songs heard on the AR uses an actual animal song. The solution is in the audio order. The animals pictured are in the order of the song titles sorted alphabetically. The visible numbers are indexes
Song Title | Band |
Animal Sound |
Index into Song | |
---|---|---|---|---|
down on the farm | little feat | cricket | 4 | N |
jungle love | steve miller | parrot | 2 | U |
work it | missy elliot | elephant | 3 | R |
Strobe | deadmau5 | rattlesnake | 1 | S |
the perfect kiss | new order | frog | 3 | E |
farewell to tarwathie | Judy collins | whale | 3 | R |
meowrly | run the jewels | cat | 7 | Y |
professional widow | tori amos | bull | 2 | R |
harlem shake | Bauuer | lion | 1 | H |
prayers up | Calvin Harris | loon | 4 | Y |
tomb raider | DJ Fresh | horse | 3 | M |
been caught stealin | jane's addiction | dog | 2 | E |
The solution is NURSERY RHYME
4) Rio/Rho
(unrelated animation = face popping out in the silhouette of another face)
The AR shows a standard knightâs tour puzzle. The birds show the entry and exit points of the grid. The tour gives the cryptic clue â how to âhandleâ things when nature is disrupted by foreboding heartless chillâ, which solves to NOMENCLATURE (N (OMEN + CL) ATURE)
5) Brave/Brake
(unrelated animation = shiny gold circle things with some neon-looking french words in the center)
ADMIRES is an anagram of MERIDA + S suggesting these are all anagrams with a letter added. In this case these are all characters who are well known for being outstanding archers.
Picture Clue | Famous Archer | |
---|---|---|
NAVY SEALS | SYLVANAS | E |
HONDO | HOOD | N |
TCELL | TELL | C |
BRADY | BARD | Y |
LOG SCALE | LEGOLAS | C |
RED ELEVEN | EVERDEEN | L |
TOY TIGER | YGRITTE | O |
LAP POOL | APOLLO | P |
EMIRATES | ARTEMIS | E |
DRAGNET | ARGENT | D |
EQUINE | QUEEN | I |
OAT BRAN | BARTON | A |
6) Angry Birds/Angry Bards
(unrelated animation = weird grey dots/bubbles)
This is a deconstruction of nautical flag code. Each nautical flag has had its primary color(s) extracted and turned into a square bird. The remainder of the flag design can be found in the AR image (with letters sorted into alphabetical order). The solution is LABORATORIES.
7) Howlâs Moving Castle/Howlâs Moping Castle
(unrelated animation = blinking eyes and swarming bees)
This is a simple jigsaw puzzle with pieces that arenât easily manipulated. The graffiti on the solved puzzle reads ORANGE NINJA TURTLE, which is MICHELANGELO.
8) Beauty and the Beast/Boast
(unrelated animation = swimming blue half fish/half human)
Belle loves books, especially science fiction. The AR clues the science fiction Hugo Awards. Take the award for best novel in each of the given years and align with the given book title that matches its enumeration. The real and fake titles have only one letter in common.
Fake Title | Actual Title | Hugo Year | |
---|---|---|---|
Scuttlebutt | Neuromancer | 1985 | U |
Monuments | Ringworld | 1971 | N |
Ballet Duels | Mirror Dance | 1995 | D |
Offshore Waters | Startide Rising | 1984 | E |
Tribe Theory | Among Others | 2012 | R |
Barbecue Team | American Gods | 2002 | C |
Moderator Support | Ancillary Justice | 2014 | U |
Second Tier | Double Star | 1956 | R |
Nuclear Bombs | Forever Peace | 1998 | R |
Military Strategy | Starship Troopers | 1960 | E |
Planetary Geology | Downbelow Station | 1982 | N |
Entries | Gateway | 1978 | T |
9) Lady and the Tramp/Cramp
(unrelated animationâturtle swimming left to right)
The clue in the AR hints that paw prints mean âput a paw print down and move one spaceâ and the squirrel means ârotate 90 degrees clockwiseâ. Each row of paw prints/squirrels consists of one letter. To solve, start with grid paper and heading to the right. Every time you see a paw, put a paw print into the next grid space. Every time you see a squirrel, rotate 90 degrees clockwise. Doing so will spell out the letters RIPPLE EFFECT.
10) Ghost in the Shell/Smell
(Thanks to Wei-Hwa Huang for the sudoku puzzle!)
(unrelated animationâmulticolored cloud)
Solve the sudoku variant. The sigma symbol on the real world page hints âsummationâ. Add up the the numbers corresponding to each letter (e.g., add all the numbers on an A square to get A, on a B square to get B, etc). Convert the added numbers to letters to get AFTERTHOUGHT
11) Finding Nemo/Funding Nemo
(unrelated animationâcat playing with a ball of yarn)
This is a simple dropquote that solves to âI think itâs my adventure, my trip, my journey, and I guess my attitude is, let the chips fall where they may.â The real world page gives the enumeration of the author LEONARD NIMOY.
12) Sleeping Beauty/Bleeping Beauty
(unrelated animationâblooming rose, French words in cursive, and spinning ball)
Ignore all the foreground distractions and try to pause the spinning to see the autostereogram in the background. The 3D message is CRAYOLA HEX #ff6fff, which is SHOCKING PINK
Putting it Together
The 12 letter answers derived from the minipuzzles are shown below
Transformers
Uneconomical
Nurseryrhyme
Nomenclature
Encyclopedia
Laboratories
Michelangelo
Undercurrent
Rippleeffect
Afterthought
Leonardnimoy
Shockingpink
Their first letters spell TUNNEL MURALS. A Google search for MIT TUNNEL MURALS will identify the Borderline Mural Art Project. The art project covers a 200 foot long wall in the tunnel between MIT Buildings 66 and E17 during bad weather. Many of the art murals have been enhanced with augmented reality animations that can only be visualized using the Artivive App. (This tunnel has a gentle slope that MIT students know makes for a great thrill ride on a âborrowedâ office chairâhence the puzzle title âChairiot Races.â)
Using the Artivive app, solvers must find the (MIT student-created) animations on the mural that match the âunrelatedâ animations that were overlaid onto each of the minipuzzles.
If youâre resourceful you can do this with images of the mural online, but itâs really much easier to travel down to the basement of Building 66 to do this in person.
Reorder the answer words in the same order as the mural animations (left to right, from the bottom of the ramp to the top) and you get the following:
T | r | a | n | s | f | o | r | m | e | r | s |
s | H | o | c | k | i | n | g | p | i | n | k |
u | n | E | c | o | n | o | m | i | c | a | l |
n | u | r | S | e | r | y | r | h | y | m | e |
m | i | c | h | E | l | a | n | g | e | l | o |
l | a | b | o | r | A | t | o | r | i | e | s |
n | o | m | e | n | c | L | a | t | u | r | e |
a | f | t | e | r | t | h | O | u | g | h | t |
r | i | p | p | l | e | e | f | F | e | c | t |
l | e | o | n | a | r | d | n | i | M | o | y |
e | n | c | y | c | l | o | p | e | d | I | a |
u | n | d | e | r | c | u | r | r | e | n | T |
Â
The diagonal letters spell THE SEAL OF MIT.
Using the Artivive app again on the Seal of MIT (either a graphics version online or the actual plaque in Building 7) will show an image of a ghostâthe ghost emoji is the solution to this puzzle.
Special thanks to Danny Gelman of the MIT Borderline Mural project and the people at Artivive.com for helping with the AR!