Period of Wyrm
by Alex Irpan, Brian Shimanuki, Jacqui Fashimpaur, and Olga Vinogradova
Answer: INFINITE LOUPE
Round Structure
Period of Wyrm is a metameta and the capstone to Wyrm’s round. Each subround zooms out to the next layer, and each meta is a feeder to the next meta. We eventually learn the round structure is a cycle. The 4th layer's meta is Collage, a feeder to the 1st layer's meta.
The Metameta
This puzzle uses all 26 answers in the round. There are 13 people with various “professions”, which each match two of the answers. The flavortext clues that we want to make something complex out of components. Of the paired answers, one is real and one is imaginary. Moreover, each answer has a corresponding number in the context of the category clued by the profession. Together, these form the real and imaginary part of a complex z for each formula.
| Categories | Real Answer | Imaginary Answer | Conversion | Real Number | Imaginary Number | z | Formula Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astrologer | BEIJING TIGERS | DRAGON | Chinese Zodiac | ||||
| Laborer | APPLE | CERBERUS | Labors of Hercules | ||||
| Safecracker | FAVORITE PIN | INCEPTION | Passcodes | ||||
| Hausdorff | BRITAIN | GEOMETRIC SNOW | Hausdorff dimension | ||||
| Consoler | NINTENDO | PICO | Game console names | ||||
| Housekeeper | MONOPOLY | HOGWARTS | Number of houses | ||||
| Chemist | CARBON SINK | GOLD TOUCH | Atomic number | ||||
| Companions | DISCIPLE | FELLOWSHIP | Number of members | ||||
| Indexer | EYE OF PROVIDENCE | SEA OF DECAY | First word is homophone of letter, index of letter in last word | ||||
| Story Surveyor | TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID | ARABIAN NIGHTS | Number of stories | ||||
| Mr. President | OLD HICKORY | UNDERWOOD | US President number (use Mr. Underwood) | ||||
| Jigsaw Puzzler | TANGRAM | TRIFORCE | Number of pieces | ||||
| Best Musician | HAMILTON | AVENUE Q | Which Tony Award they won Best Musical |
The first letters of the people's names spell out MANDELBROT SET, which is also suggested by the round structure, complex numbers, and use of "dynamics" in the flavor text. The values of the formulae with the corresponding s are spread among the Mandelbrot set.
The Mandelbrot set from complex dynamics is defined as the set of values for which the function does not diverge when iterated on . When iterating this process from any in the Mandelbrot set, the sequence will converge to some periodic sequence. As signified by the title, we need the period of this sequence for each of our complex constants.
This can be done either by writing code to do the iterations, or finding an online explorer of the mandelbrot set that visualizes the period / orbit for a specific value.
Converting the periods to letters yields the answer, INFINITE LOUPE.
| Categories | z | Formula Value | Period | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astrologer | 9 | I | ||
| Demigod | 14 | N | ||
| Safecracker | 6 | F | ||
| Hausdorff | 9 | I | ||
| Consoler | 14 | N | ||
| Housekeeper | 9 | I | ||
| Chemist | 20 | T | ||
| Companions | 5 | E | ||
| Indexer | 12 | L | ||
| Story Surveyor | 15 | O | ||
| Mr. President | 21 | U | ||
| Jigsaw | 16 | P | ||
| Top Musician | 5 | E |
Authors' Notes
For most of meta writing, the metameta answer was PTEROFRACTAL. This was a fun pun, but was problematic on the art side. What does a PTEROFRACTAL look like, and what does it do? We had no good answers. After more brainstorming, we came up with INFINITE LOUPE, which was 13 letters long rather than 12. That required fitting 2 new puzzles into our metas. By that time, Collage was 90% done, and the answers we wanted were already in Collage's word web. We upgraded those words to backsolved feeders and called it a day. Technically that means we constructed 2 puzzles start-to-finish in about five minutes.