Solution to It's Tricky
This puzzle contains four TikTok videos in the style of the This or That Challenge. Each video consists of a few scenes where the participants choose between two words by moving off the left or right side of the screen, followed by a short black screen which displays five words. The people in each video always line up and choose in the same order; they are called A, B, C, … in order below. The word on the left always comes alphabetically before the word on the right, and the scenes are sorted by alphabetical order of the word on the left, suggesting that the order of the scenes or words in the scenes doesn’t matter.
We begin by determining what rule each person uses to pick between the two words. As clued by the flavortext, the Tunnels in ⊥IW can help us to determine these rules. Each person is following the same rule as the ghosts one can pass through in exactly one of the corridors in the Tunnels. For example, person A in video 1 always picks the word which contains all the letters in the word GHOST, and there is a corridor in the Tunnels where the player can only pass through ghosts whose words contain all the letters in the word GHOST.
We then use the final five words to extract a letter from each person. We get five binary digits for each person by determining whether each of the five words follows (1) or does not follow (0) the person’s rule. Converting them to letters (00001 → 1 → A, 00010 → 2 → B, …) spells the intermediate phrase MAKE ONE ABOUT PUZZLES.
In case we haven’t quite figured out the TikTok trend yet, the answer checker gives us more clear instructions: “Make a This or That Challenge/It's Tricky video about puzzles, and send it to us as a TikTok link or video.” When we successfully do so, we get back the message “It looks like you're FLIP FLOP masters! Thanks for your help!”, giving us the final answer: FLIP FLOP.
Below are the details for each of the four videos.
Video 1
| Left Word | Who Goes Left | Who Goes Right | Right Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| EQUIVOCATE | C,D | A,B | STONEHENGE |
| OSTENTATIOUS | B,C | A,D | TECHNOLOGIST |
| SACRILEGIOUS | C,D | A,B | SHORTENING |
| SHORTSIGHTEDNESS | A,D | B,C | UNINTENTIONAL |
| Person | Rule | TURTLE |
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES |
SHORTAGES |
DIALOGUE |
THOUSANDWEIGHT |
Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Contains all the letters in GHOST | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | M |
| B | Contains a number as a substring | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | A |
| C | Contains all five vowels | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | K |
| D | Same first and last letter | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | E |
Video 2
| Left Word | Who Goes Left | Who Goes Right | Right Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABDUCTOR | A | B,C | CREEP |
| COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY | B | A,C | STOUT |
| HALLMARK | A,B | C | RED |
| Person | Rule | SALABLE |
ACCLAIM |
BALL |
HADDOCK |
SWORD |
Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Doesn’t contain the letter E | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | O |
| B | Has adjacent identical letters | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | N |
| C | Single syllable words | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | E |
Video 3
| Left Word | Who Goes Left | Who Goes Right | Right Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANTIQUARIAN | A,C,D | B,E | WITTY |
| EYE | B,C,E | A,D | REASSURE |
| INHALANT | C,D,E | A,B | REPERTOIRE |
| MEANTIME | A,D,E | B,C | UPPER |
| Person | Rule | KAYAK |
OBSERVATION |
ANTENNA |
EQUITY |
EDUCATED |
Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | First two letters are the same as the last two letters | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | A |
| B | Uses only the letters from the top row of a QWERTY keyboard | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | B |
| C | First letters is a vowel | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | O |
| D | Contains the name of an animal with a 3-letter name as a substring | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | U |
| E | Is written in uppercase using only straight lines (e.g. A and E, but not B or C) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | T |
Video 4
| Left Word | Who Goes Left | Who Goes Right | Right Word |
|---|---|---|---|
| BEFIT | C,D,E | A,B,F,G | KEEL |
| BEGINS | D,E | A,B,C,F,G | NIT |
| DEW | A,B,C,D | E,F,G | SUNLESS |
| FIN | A,C,D,F,G | B,E | REPAID |
| FLOW | A,B,D,G | C,E,F | LIFELIKE |
| Person | Rule | DOR |
BELOW |
SINNET |
EGO |
SLIVE |
Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Uses only one of the five vowels | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | P |
| B | Reversing the letters yields a word | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | U |
| C | Letters alternate consonants and vowels | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Z |
| D | Each letter comes after the previous in the alphabet | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Z |
| E | A space can be placed in the word to turn it into two words (e.g. SINNET → SIN + NET) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | L |
| F | Is written in uppercase using only letters without holes (e.g. C and E but not A or B) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | E |
| G | Removing the first letter gives another word (e.g. SLIVE → LIVE) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | S |