Hall of Innovation
by Catherine Wu, Ivan Wang, Jacqui Fashimpaur, and Vinjai Vale
Answer: TEAMWORK IN PROGRESS
This is a metapuzzle using the 7 feeders in the Innovation round.
Throughout the round, we discovered an interesting mechanic.
- The answer to a feeder puzzle is not fixed.
- Each feeder puzzle is controlled by a number of gizmos on the Factory Floor. For example, adjusting the clock hands or the 3x3 numpad will change the presentation of Connect the Dots.
- When the shell is changed, the answer may change, and previously submitted guesses are reset.
In order to reach this metapuzzle, we need to determine the relationship of gizmos to feeder puzzles, and configure them such that we could solve them. A summary is provided below (the solution to each feeder explains the relationship in more detail).
Gizmo → Feeder ↓ | Gears with Dials | 3x3 Grid | Clock Hands | Valves | Combination | Sliders | Wires | Colored USBs | Text Input |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cryptex | cycle pairs of rows | extract from sectors | antonym some words | ||||||
| Cipher | clockwise hand symbols = extract order | valves control vert/horizontal symbols in middle | wires control vert/horiz symbols on left/right | fills or unfills symbols in the colored background | |||||
| Image ID | rotate images/indices | changes images shown per category | |||||||
| Maze | rotate walls | move start/end | put letters on diagonal | ||||||
| Connect the Dots | controls which symbols get displayed | position of letters | |||||||
| Numberlink | which numbers to extract | start/end of outside loop | |||||||
| Word Search | which numbers to find | which words to find |
Now, we can look at the metapuzzle itself. At the top, the answers we’ve submitted appear crossed out and in red, while the unsolved answers show up as ???. (If we change a gizmo and submit a different answer, we can observe that this section will update with the new answer.) We will revisit this later.
The descriptions in the meta shell are solvable (even without any feeders); they clue pairs of real phrases with one letter off. They are helpfully ordered alphabetically by the full phrase. Reordering by year, we can take the changed letter for the cluephrase TEAM WIP, an abbreviation for TEAMWORK IN PROGRESS.
| Year | Exhibit Title | Correct Phrase | Feeder Answer | Description | Extract |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | DENIAL ________ | DENTAL PRACTICE | PRACTICE | Hard work and repetition make it easy to say no to dirty teeth. | T |
| 2022 | _____ ___ A DISK | CLEAN OUT A DESK | CLEANOUT | This invention requires removing office supplies and files from all the drawers on a hard drive. | E |
| 2023 | __________ CRTS | INDUSTRIAL ARTS | INDUSTRIAL | This educational program was started to help youth develop familiarity with tools, machines, and old TVs. | A |
| 2024 | SILI___ _____ TEST | SILICON FLAME TEST | CONFLATE | An assay to determine if two or more ideas are combined with element 14, by setting it on fire. | M |
| 2025 | THE GREAT ________ | THE GREAT FIREWALL | FIREBALL | A Chinese program to regulate the Internet through explosive measures. | W |
| 2026 | ________ OF CHOICE | ILLUSION OF CHOICE | ALLUSION | This art piece implicitly calls to mind how we often have less control than we perceive. | I |
| 2027 | ALOHA ________ | ALPHA PARTICLE | PARTICLE | The discovery of this He-y nucleus is frequently celebrated with flower necklaces and roast pig. | P |
However, upon submitting this, MATE informs us that something is not right with the feeders. We can see on the puzzle page that incorrect answers are crossed out. At this point, we must revisit the round structure and update the gizmos to configure the puzzles to output each of the “correct” feeder answers.
There is only one logical way to do so. The final gizmo configurations are displayed below:
Once all of the feeders are configured correctly, we can resubmit the answer TEAMWORK IN PROGRESS.
Appendix
Gizmo Solve Path
This details one possible path. There are different ways to get to the right answer.
We can first solve for part of Maze. It’s easy to see a path where the letters trace out F*LL given the right start and end constraints, so we infer that the answer to this is FIREBALL. The text input must be A?B??R*, the sliders must be (5-7)(1-3), and the dials are constrained up to a multiple of 4.
We can use the constraints on the sliders to guess that Image ID will extract to CONFLATE. We need the C??F* from FACEBOOK, which means that the sliders must be distance 2 mod 6 apart. This locks in the sliders at 5 and 3. By filling in the remaining letters in the answer, we know that red, blue, and one of yellow/pink must be in the color gizmo.
Numberlink is solved by moving the location of the 0 and 1 wire around. Since the solution stays the same in the center, we can figure out that PARTICLE is the only answer that can be extracted. This tells us that wires go from (1-2) to (4-7) and also uniquely determines the position of the slots as 718.
Now we can solve Word Search. The remaining answer that has an E close to the end of the word is PRACTICE. We can verify that the letters appear in the grid in row major order. In order to extract only these letters, we know that the set {ABIRTY} must be in the text input. This is enough to determine that the text input must be ARBITRARY.
Cryptex solves to ALLUSION – this is another educated guess. There are two different solutions.
However, in one of those configurations, Connect the Dots does not have enough connections to extract. Thus, Cryptex tells us dials modulo 3, that only the second valve is open, and that triangle, X and pill are on.
Since we know what buttons in the 3x3 grid are on, we can now solve Connect the Dots. As indicated by the spinning radar, we must read counterclockwise, and we will extract INDUSTRIAL. One of the Is and the lower S is given to us in the grid; the remaining extracted letters are from the clock hands. This mostly determines the order of the hands, but we use the lines drawn by the matched symbols to make the positions more precise. G is unused.
Finally, we get to Cipher, which has 4 input gizmos, most of which are already determined. The answer must be CLEANOUT. Since we know the second valve is on, the second word in the middle can only be CLOUD, PROUD or ALOUD. The upright oval is used in our answer, so it must be an L.
The PLA?E in the top right must have a vertical oval since the right wire is limited to 4-7. This means white must be turned off, since PLALE is not a word. By propagating similar logical deductions, we eventually determine the remainder of the gizmos.