Full transcript
0:00Is this Colin? How's it going? NICE TO
0:02MEET YOU.
0:03>> [screaming]
0:06>> AFTER ALL THAT HAPPENED, THE NUMBER ONE
0:07question I kept getting, of course, was
0:09how do you solve a million-dollar
0:11puzzle? What was the final solution, and
0:13why was the vault code
0:14R62L39R05L736060623093121200300?
0:20So, initially, I decided I would make a
0:22series of walk-through videos to go
0:24through all the details. I started
0:26making a video that just focused on the
0:27first nine puzzles, which were
0:29technically optional to solve, in case
0:31you hear me refer to them later as phase
0:33zero. And these nine puzzles were some
0:35of my favorites because they were in a
0:36popular puzzle hunt style that I like to
0:39describe with three steps:
0:41exploration, execution, and extraction.
0:44Since this is just how I like to think
0:46about puzzle hunts, I'll say a little
0:47bit about what each of those steps
0:49means. Exploration is just finding
0:51patterns and recognizing what type of
0:53puzzle you're looking at. Execution is
0:55the fun part. It's where all the work
0:56happens. It's what most people generally
0:58associate with a puzzle: putting
1:00together a jigsaw, filling in a
1:01crossword, doing a maze. Extraction is
1:04really the unique step that I think is
1:05most strongly tied to the puzzle hunt
1:07format, and that's finding or otherwise
1:09decoding the answer to the puzzle, a
1:11secret word or phrase.
1:13It can get pretty creative, but very
1:15often it involves indexing, which means
1:17using numbers as positions in words. So,
1:20if I have the word fox and the number
1:22three, I can combine them to take the
1:24third letter, X. Another very common
1:26technique is to get letters from numbers
1:27directly by using alphanumerics, where
1:30one is A, two is B, three is C, and so
1:33on all the way down to 26, which is Z.
1:36Anyway, I finished a video for the first
1:37nine puzzles, and then I learned that
1:40Mr. Beast was also planning to do the
1:41same thing. So, naturally, I put my
1:43project on the back burner. And if
1:45you're watching this, then Mr. Beast has
1:47released what is probably the coolest
1:49and craziest puzzle breakdown of all
1:52time, and I will link it in the
1:53description. He covers so much that I I
1:55really feel an incentive to duplicate
1:57all that content in a different voice.
1:58However, when I made that video, I
2:01wanted to describe the process and
2:03approach to this hobby as best I could
2:05so you could see yourself figuring
2:07everything out and enjoying it in the
2:09way I think so many people did.
2:11And because of the puzzle hunt style I'm
2:13mentioning, there ended up being a lot
2:15of leftover value in my opinion for that
2:18specific set of intro puzzles that I
2:20think Mr. Beast couldn't really go into
2:21without starting a show called Beast
2:23Puzzle Games. So, this is an abridged
2:25version of a video I almost scrapped, a
2:28detailed walk-through of how to begin
2:29solving the million-dollar puzzle. Feel
2:31free to leave comments and especially
2:33questions about these and later puzzles.
2:35If there's enough feedback, I think it'd
2:36be fun to cover any remaining minutia on
2:38Twitch and present my team's worksheet
2:41and or a really nice write-up that I
2:43know is out there from another team with
2:45their permission. And now, here's me
2:48casually streaming puzzles from my hotel
2:50room.
2:50I should warn you that the production
2:52quality is Where was I? Million-dollar
2:53playlist, nine videos, nine image links.
2:57Most of the image links are now dead,
2:59but early on a Reddit user collected all
3:02of the puzzles and put them in the Mr.
3:04Beast subreddit. So, here they are. You
3:07can print them out. They're most of them
3:09work very well as pen and paper puzzles
3:11and they're fun that way. So, if they
3:12look fun to you, uh go ahead and try
3:14that. But, what you just saw is the
3:16entirety of phase zero. And this is
3:19going to be the first puzzle, 100 wells
3:21in Africa. This is a word search and
3:24it's unconventional obviously because of
3:26all the water in the grid, but also
3:28instead of a plain word list, we have
3:30clues. And it might feel natural to try
3:32and answer the clues and then find those
3:34words in the grid, but as you look at
3:36them, they're too vague to answer in
3:38most cases. So, a type of boat, a US
3:41landmark, these are not specific enough
3:43to get good answers to. So, I found it
3:46easier to look at the grid blindly and
3:48find words and then go back to the clues
3:51and see if I could relate them to find
3:52out what was going on here. There's
3:54definitely a level of trust you have to
3:56have with puzzle hunts in that the
3:58designers want you to have fun. Things
4:01are not as random as they seem. Usually
4:03there's a theme or something secret
4:05going on that's going to form a pattern
4:07and tie it all together. So, when I
4:09looked at the grid, I found Robin on
4:12this diagonal, wink crossing Robin, and
4:15train in the upper right-hand corner.
4:17There are a few other red herring words
4:19in the grid, but these are the ones that
4:20are going to be helpful. So, for me,
4:22coming back to the clues, I saw a
4:24literary outlaw two words and thought of
4:27Robin Hood.
4:28And then I looked back at Robin and
4:30asked, "Well, where's Hood? Why is that
4:32not in the grid?" And there is a letter
4:35D after this water droplet that's sort
4:37of in the way. I had a thought there,
4:40but I wanted to confirm it and I went to
4:42work with train. Train worked as a
4:44child's toy, but it says it's two words
4:46and hyphenated. So, to make it a little
4:48bit longer, you can think of choo-choo
4:50train. And that pretty much makes the
4:53pattern here, which is that
4:55water in the grid represents the letters
4:57h o o.
4:59And if you ask why, if you haven't
5:01thought of it already, that's because
5:02the chemical formula for water is h2o.
5:05And yes, it's two h's and one o, not one
5:09h and two o's. Don't think about it too
5:11hard, they're just being funny. Wink is
5:12a little bit trickier, but that ends up
5:14being hoodwink, for deceive, and so on.
5:16You can find a word that contains the
5:19letters h o o for every clue and then
5:21find those all in the grid. So, this is
5:23the final word list. I've gone ahead and
5:25marked all of the words in the grid in
5:27green, and I've also circled the only
5:30two water droplets that weren't used in
5:33red because they're about to be
5:34important. Some of the more interesting
5:35clues were a cold noise, meaning a noise
5:38you make when you have a cold.
5:41Uh Hoosier was definitely a Google for
5:42me. That just means anyone from the
5:44state of Indiana. Shook took me a minute
5:47just because not only is it slang, but
5:49it has the fewest letters, so there's
5:51only two other letters in the grid to
5:53find here on the bottom row. And then I
5:55think the last ones I got were
5:56definitely hooray because you also have
5:59woohoo as an option and offui which I
6:01knew from Donald Duck, but I think I had
6:04something written down like shoot. It
6:06really helps to eliminate other words
6:08from the grid. Exploration was figuring
6:11out that this was a word search and that
6:12there was a theme with the clues.
6:14Execution was finding all of the words
6:17and now it's time for extraction. In
6:19this case, there are two sets of unused
6:21information from this puzzle. The more
6:23obvious one is all of the unused letters
6:26in the grid. So reading those off, you
6:29get count H2O into each word. That's
6:32where the droplets I've circled in red
6:34come in. They represent the number two
6:36in H2O and that's actually a hint for
6:38what we're going to do next, which is
6:41indexing the number of water droplets
6:44into the words that contained them. So
6:46the very first clue, a chew, it reads up
6:49here in this column and it has one water
6:51droplets, so that's going to be the
6:53number one and the first letter is A.
6:56It's the same for Robin Hood. Robin
6:58Hood, if you recall, had one water
7:00droplets, so that's going to be a one,
7:02which is the first letter R and I've
7:04covered it on the grid here, but there
7:06is a plus sign in the bottom right most
7:09set of water droplets and that's because
7:10in choo choo train, you have two sets of
7:13water and they have to be added together
7:156 + 6 to make 12, so you the 12th letter
7:18of choo choo train is I.
7:21And this is the full list of indexes and
7:24it reads out answer is every. So the
7:27answer to the first puzzle is just the
7:29word every.
7:31Moving on to puzzle number two, changing
7:33the lives of 600 strangers. This one is
7:36a Sudoku. If you haven't seen a Sudoku
7:38before, they contain the numbers 1
7:40through 9 once in every row, column, and
7:433 by 3 box. So, for this puzzle, the
7:46numbers 1 through 9 have been replaced
7:48by nine letters given in the bottom
7:50right of the puzzle in blue. And I won't
7:52solve the whole puzzle in this video,
7:54but early on there is a pretty difficult
7:57step that I wanted to go over, and it's
7:59after you put in the letter C and the
8:02letter N into the grid. You have to look
8:04at the letters A and H. So,
8:07this A right here blocks an A from these
8:12two squares in the upper right box of
8:14the grid. So, I'm going to put an A in
8:16these two in lower case to indicate it
8:18has to be in one of these two squares.
8:21Similarly, the letter L here is blocked
8:24from those two squares. So, these two
8:27squares have to be the letters A and L.
8:30And the only two letters missing from
8:31this whole box
8:33are
8:34E and H,
8:37which is going to come in handy in a
8:38moment.
8:39And so, the first thing to do with this
8:41information is look at the second
8:44column. And an A cannot be in this cell
8:48because of these, an A cannot be in this
8:50cell. So, the only box left for an A in
8:53the second column is this right here.
8:55And next, I'm going to look at the
8:56letter H. So, these cells cannot be H's,
9:00and we have an H that has to be in one
9:03of these two cells in the upper middle
9:06box because of the rest here, you can't
9:10have an H here, you can't have an H
9:12here.
9:13So, there has to be an H in one of these
9:15two cells. And now, if I ask, where can
9:17an H be in the second row? It can't be
9:21anywhere in here, because of this, it
9:24can't be anywhere in here, and there's
9:26an H blocking this cell, so this cell
9:28has to be an H. And from there, I think
9:30the Sudoku gets pretty solvable, but
9:33that definitely took me a minute. Here
9:35is the final solution to the Sudoku, and
9:37the extraction is pretty tricky. You
9:39have to actually pay attention at the
9:41beginning before you start solving that
9:43the letters given to you are in this
9:46checkerboard pattern
9:48here.
9:52And the answer to the puzzle is in these
9:54missing checkerboard cells, and on the
9:57right in my sheet, you can see that the
10:00answer is going to be the word
10:02challenge. Puzzle number three, I'm
10:04going to have to start being faster with
10:05these. This one is referencing a list of
10:08TV shows on the left, and on the right
10:11we have more crossword clues like in the
10:13first puzzle. Here you just want to try
10:15and answer as many clues as you possibly
10:17can to try and find the pattern between
10:19them. The debris at the top isn't really
10:22helpful until later. The starting point
10:24they set up for you here is pretty cool.
10:26It's third to last row, where the
10:28reality show being referenced is the
10:30Beast Games, and Jimmy and Mark's Ocean
10:32Charity is in the title of the puzzle,
10:35Team Seas. And the thing to notice here
10:37is that all of the letters in Team Seas
10:40are also in Beast Games with the
10:42exception of the capital B and the
10:45capital G. The capitals are irrelevant,
10:47but it in my opinion, it just makes it
10:48very easy to notice this.
10:51>> [laughter]
10:52>> It's me, Dr. Xnor, and in my opinion,
10:55your opinion is bad. The first letters
10:57are very relevant. Every show is two
10:59words, the first letters are what make
11:00the difference between the clue words,
11:02and they even call it initial
11:05>> removed to debris. I don't know how I
11:06didn't see that before. Carry on. And I
11:09think the next one I used to confirm
11:11>> No, no, wait, I'm not done. What's crazy
11:12is in two puzzles from now, I'm going to
11:15say something along the lines of you
11:16should always try more specific ideas
11:18before general ones. What an imbecile.
11:20What an ultra maroon.
11:22>> Kermit was opera paired with Top Gear.
11:26And then anything that takes up space is
11:28matter, which goes with Get Smart. Each
11:30of these TV shows needs to lose exactly
11:33two letters to become one of the words
11:35on the right side. The research is
11:37definitely difficult. The Internet Movie
11:39Database, IMDb, is going to be your best
11:41friend here. And towards the end, you
11:43can use the debris to try and take
11:45letters away from any extra TV shows you
11:47have or add letters to any of the clues
11:50that you have to try and make the last
11:52few pairs work. I kind of just ignored
11:54the numbers on the right-hand side of
11:55the puzzle at the beginning. You can try
11:57a few things with them, but when nothing
12:00really works out and you have other work
12:02to do, uh you should go do that work.
12:05Each of those pairs of numbers is used
12:07to index into the TV shows on the
12:10left-hand side. And to get the order,
12:13you have to notice that the TV shows are
12:15in alphabetical order by genre, starting
12:18with A for action and going to S for
12:21superhero.
12:22And that indicates that the clues on the
12:25right-hand side, which are sort of in an
12:27unpredictable order, are the order that
12:29you need to use. So, here is the final
12:32list of TV shows and words. I've kept
12:34the original order of the words and
12:37reordered the shows to match them. What
12:39If has six letters, and if you remove
12:42IW, you get all of the letters in heft.
12:45And then the numbers for that clue, Axis
12:48Handle, are three and four. I go back to
12:50the TV show and take the third and
12:53fourth letters, A and T. I read this all
12:56the way down, and I get a term for chief
12:58roles, which is leads, or metals with
13:02symbol Pb, which is leads. So, the
13:05answer is leads or leads, l e a d s.
13:08Next up, the first puzzle I cannot take
13:10credit for directly. Number four is $1
13:14to $500,000
13:16and the flavor text at the top says,
13:18"Where did I go?" This puzzle is a
13:21geography puzzle. The rectangles are
13:24meant to look like street signs. And so,
13:27what's going on here is they've taken
13:29two street signs and overlapped them.
13:32So, it's kind of like you're looking at
13:34one letter through the stencil or
13:36outline of the other letter. I was glad
13:38someone else did this. It's a little bit
13:40of a headache to look at these colors
13:41and strange shapes for too long. The
13:43goal is to get two words out of each
13:46rectangle. So, the very one at the top
13:48in red is Danesbury and Glencairn, if
13:52I'm pronouncing those right. You want to
13:54sort all of these signs in rainbow
13:55order. And then, of course, the question
13:57is how do I extract the answer? I
13:58imagine once you have all the locations
14:00of one color, you do a little bit of
14:02digging and write down where the
14:05intersection of those streets is, what
14:07city, what county, what municipality,
14:10what state, province, and country. And
14:13the pattern ends up being in the city
14:15names. The first three in red are
14:19located in Toronto, Toledo, and Tempe.
14:22The next three orange intersections are
14:24located in Owensboro, Ottawa, and
14:26Orlando. And all three of the cities
14:30start with the same letter. So, these
14:32start with W A R D S. The answer to
14:36puzzle number four is towards. Number
14:39five, Pokémon Go stereotypes. Each of
14:42the cage bars at the bottom has a number
14:45in it. And Pokémon have a unique ID. And
14:49when you look up these Pokémon, they
14:50each fit very nicely into their
14:53respective boxes. So, the task here is
14:55to put the cage bars in the grid to form
14:58a cage that is a loop around the little
15:00man in the grid. The second assumption
15:02to make is that the blue boxes are
15:06intersections of the clues. Without
15:08that, I think there is too much to work
15:11with. With puzzles like this, you always
15:12want to try specific ideas before more
15:15general ones, just to see if they work.
15:17This is the amount of progress I made
15:19using just logic without any guessing
15:22whatsoever. The way you get these pieces
15:24is first by finding letters that only
15:27occur twice. So, the letter A is only in
15:30one down clue and one across clue, so
15:33you know those have to be put together
15:34that way.
15:35Wugtrio is interesting because we're not
15:37playing Scrabble. We don't want to form
15:39new words other than the Pokémon, so we
15:42shouldn't have any 2 by 2s. And that
15:45means that in order to have an I and an
15:47O intersect next to each other, one word
15:50has to end in I and the other start with
15:52O, or one word has to start with I and
15:55the other one has to end with O. And
15:57this is the only unique way to do that.
15:59And lastly, there are two down clues
16:02that have three blue boxes and two
16:05across clues that only have one blue
16:07box. So, those are like branches on the
16:09loop, and those end up being very
16:11unique, easy connections to make. From
16:13there, you want to put all the pieces
16:14together, and this is the final
16:16solution. It's the first one I got. I
16:18don't know if there are others that
16:20maybe don't fit in the grid and you have
16:21to do it again. I took a couple of
16:23guesses, and this is what I got. And I
16:25can prove that this is the correct
16:26solution by copying the format of the
16:28grid where that red square is the little
16:30man.
16:32And pasting that here, the red square is
16:35indeed inside the loop of words that I
16:37have made.
16:39And now to get the answer is a little
16:41bit tricky, but as long as you've kept
16:43the blue boxes around, they are what you
16:45need to look at. The weird thing is
16:47you're not reading in a loop or even
16:49left right top to bottom. There are sort
16:51of two columns here, so if you start
16:53with this S in the top left and read
16:55downwards, you can see the word
16:57solution, and then the I jumps to the S
17:00at the top of the puzzle again for
17:01solution is location. So, location is
17:05the answer to puzzle number five.
17:07Puzzle number six is a standard logic
17:09puzzle called tents. In this case, the
17:11rules are written at the top of the
17:12puzzle. The goal is to place one tent
17:14next to each tree such that no tents
17:16touch even diagonally. One thing to be
17:19careful of is that even though there's
17:20only one tent per tree, a tree is
17:22allowed to be next to multiple tents and
17:24a tent is allowed to be next to multiple
17:26trees. The numbers on the outside of the
17:28grid also indicate how many tents are in
17:30each row and column. The numbers inside
17:33the grid are unusual, but they just
17:35represent all of the possible places
17:37tents can be and so solving this puzzle
17:40means you're figuring out which of the
17:42digits inside the grid are relevant to
17:44the final answer. Getting started with
17:46this puzzle was pretty tricky. What I
17:48did was look at the two rightmost
17:50columns and they can only have four
17:53tents in them.
17:55And in the rightmost column, just the
17:56one, there are four trees. So all four
17:59of the tents here
18:01are really assigned to these four trees.
18:04So any other possible tents have to be
18:06marked impossible.
18:08And that's these gray squares right
18:10here.
18:11Similarly on the left side, five columns
18:15have nine tents in them,
18:17but the first four columns have nine
18:19trees. So the nine tents of those nine
18:22trees encompass all five columns and so
18:25all of the extra squares can be marked
18:27as not having a tent. And that is enough
18:30to really get you started. After a
18:32little bit of work, there was another
18:33sticking point that I thought was kind
18:34of interesting and so in this column
18:37right here, there are supposed to be
18:39three tents. You can pretty easily get
18:42these two and the third one is going to
18:44be on either side of this tree. You
18:47don't know where, but you know that the
18:48third one is there and that actually
18:50eliminates a tent from being in any of
18:53these locations.
18:57And in the column to the left, you're
19:00looking for two tents. One of them is
19:02here, another one is here and that lets
19:04you mark this square as not having a
19:07tent in it, which allows you to figure
19:09out that the tent to this tree is placed
19:11to its right. The rest of the puzzle
19:13wasn't too bad in my opinion. This is
19:15where all of the tents are located and
19:18the extraction is a little bit different
19:20and it turns out that the digits in each
19:22row and column sum to numbers between 1
19:25and 26. I originally only figured out
19:27the rows and after a while of looking at
19:30quartet after pen and not feeling like I
19:33could get a straight answer from that,
19:35that was when I also tried the columns
19:36and that's what's pretty interesting
19:37about this is it's not trivial to make
19:40that work out. I think it's a pretty
19:42cool that they did that that the same
19:43numbers can be added in both directions
19:46to give different correct letters. So,
19:48the final clue phrase is quartet after
19:50pen brand last or user and the word that
19:54can come after all of those four words
19:56is name. So, the answer to puzzle six is
19:59name. Puzzle number seven, I adopted 100
20:01dogs.
20:02This puzzle looks like busy work because
20:04it is busy work. There's not much way
20:06around the spot the difference piece of
20:07this. You're just going to have to go
20:09through every dog and answer all five
20:11questions. I found it much quicker
20:12rather than to go one dog at a time to
20:14go one question at a time. So, here in
20:16my sheet I made five grids where I
20:19answered each question yes or no with a
20:20quick one or zero and then in the bottom
20:22right I wrote a quick formula to
20:24concatenate all the ones and zeros into
20:26five digit codes. So, that brings me to
20:28the difficult part of this puzzle which
20:30is actually decoding what letter each
20:32dog stands for. We've been given this
20:34sort of Venn diagram with five ovals and
20:37because the L is in the center that
20:39means dogs that answer every question
20:41yes represent the letter L. You could
20:44probably go to a cryptogram solver or
20:47ask AI to help you with this step, but I
20:49took the cryptography approach. If
20:51you've never tried to decode a cipher
20:53before, I think the first rule of thumb
20:55to know is that E is by far and away the
20:58most common letter of the English
20:59alphabet. In this case, it's also useful
21:01that E happens to be in one of the five
21:03locations that represents an
21:06intersection of four out of the five
21:08ovals.
21:10So, I wrote down all of the codes that
21:12had four ones and one zero
21:15and counted them up. The last one where
21:17the dogs answer yes to every question
21:19except who's wiggling their tail is by
21:22far the most common, so I assigned that
21:24one to the letter E. And because the
21:26fifth question was answered no, the
21:29letter E is not in this oval right here,
21:32which I labeled with a red five. So,
21:34then I tried to do the opposite and find
21:36the least common letter. This
21:38combination only showed up one time, so
21:40I assumed it was the letter B.
21:42And I put this red two in the bottom
21:44left to indicate that that oval
21:46represented the second question. And
21:48initially, I thought I could label these
21:51ovals one to five in a clockwise
21:53fashion. So, one, red two, three, four,
21:56red five based on those two assumptions
21:59I made. And I went down below and the
22:01first four letters actually decoded
22:03correctly. I got the word just. And
22:06after that, it started to go haywire and
22:08I didn't see any real words, but it
22:10bothered me that I felt like I was on
22:12the right track with that. So, I checked
22:14out the letters that I had so far. I was
22:16very confident in the letter E. I knew
22:18the letter L was in the center. And then
22:20I highlighted these letters in just, J U
22:23S T. And I noticed that all of these
22:26letters actually have the same answer to
22:28the second and the fourth questions. And
22:31the second question was what I assumed
22:34from the letter B here. So, I realized
22:36that I was very, very close and I
22:39happened to switch the second and fourth
22:41circles. So, when I swapped those here
22:43on the Venn diagram, that actually
22:46worked out to decode the rest of the
22:47letters. You could go for something more
22:50like trial and error and try to guess
22:52other vowels because I and you are in
22:54here and they're going to be the eight
22:56and the six. In any case, this is the
22:58final decoded phrase. I actually noticed
23:01an error in row six, column six where
23:02the dog wagging its tail should not be
23:04wagging its tail and this L should be
23:07the letter E in adverb. And the message
23:10says, "Just 100 exquisitely fuzzy
23:12puppies can be viewed like an adverb, a
23:14number from a Spielberg movie, or a film
23:17by Coppola." And number in this case
23:19refers to a musical number from the
23:21movie West Side Story, which is
23:23somewhere and that fits the other clues.
23:26They also did a good job and made sure
23:27to put every letter from A to Z
23:30somewhere in this grid so that you
23:32really could solve this systematically
23:33if you wanted to. Hence, the first part
23:35here which is not necessarily a clue,
23:38it's just to add the letters X, Q, Z, J
23:40somewhere in this grid. I have actually
23:43been in a pit orchestra for West Side
23:44Story. It is a lot of fun.
23:49Puzzle number eight. I spent 100 hours
23:51inside the pyramids. This one is just a
23:53crossword in weird shape. A shape where
23:55the words don't cross. This one is just
23:57an uncrossword in a completely normal
23:59shape. Here are the solutions to four
24:02crossword pyramids. The way this works
24:05is you just start answering clues until
24:07you see that a lot of them contain
24:08similar letters. Here are the second
24:10half of the clue answers. Resolution and
24:13revolutions were the first clues I got
24:15and they were right next to each other
24:17and served as a good confirmation for
24:19how to fill in these pyramids because
24:21you can add a V to resolution to get all
24:24of the letters in revolutions. Portion
24:26and positron I actually made a mistake
24:28early on because a proton I thought had
24:30an electric charge of plus one E and
24:33proton is also one letter off from
24:35portion, but positron is the correct
24:38answer. So, that one took me a bit to
24:39correct. Today, I learned the word
24:41orbiculate. And yes, LeCar is a real
24:44thing. One very neat design choice are
24:47the four clues that say vowel that's not
24:49U and that there are four answers, each
24:52of the other four vowels A, E, I, and O,
24:55and those serve as the tops of each
24:57pyramid. Also, it definitely helps to
24:59notice early on as you answer clues that
25:01all of the answers are in alphabetical
25:03order. So, when you're missing some, you
25:05should be able to know from the
25:06surrounding clues what letter your clue
25:09starts with most likely. The answer to
25:11this puzzle is actually a missing clue.
25:13If you count them all up, there are only
25:1443 and there are 11 rows in the pyramid.
25:18Four pyramids makes 44 rows. So, around,
25:21highlighted in green here, is the answer
25:23to this puzzle as the missing word.
25:25Puzzle number nine, anything you can fit
25:27in the circle, I'll pay for. This is
25:29probably the most intimidating of the
25:31first nine puzzles. And if you're
25:33feeling like I have no idea what I'm
25:35looking at and don't know what I would
25:36do, you are not alone. I had the same
25:38experience. But we can always play a
25:40game of find the pattern. So, the circle
25:43on top has six red shaded triangles and
25:47the circle on the bottom has two blue
25:48shaded triangles. If I zoom in here on
25:51the text that we've been given, the
25:53letter in the second position has been
25:55crossed out in blue and the letter in
25:57the sixth position has been crossed out
26:00in red. So, that's a pretty good
26:02indicator that the number of triangles
26:04shaded serves to cross out one of these
26:06letters. And then we have this dot dot
26:08dot that indicates we should be finding
26:10more triangles and that will cross out
26:12more letters and hopefully at the end we
26:14will see a hidden message pop out if we
26:16cross out enough letters. Because this
26:18puzzle resembles somebody's math
26:20homework that they didn't want to do, I
26:21went ahead and asked AI to help. But
26:24first I wanted to do some research so
26:25that I had enough terms in my vocabulary
26:27to talk about what it is we're working
26:28with. And the shape we're looking at has
26:30120 sides. It's called a disdyakis
26:33triacontahedron. And right at the end of
26:35the intro on Wikipedia here, there is a
26:38paragraph about projecting it into a
26:40sphere, which means rounding all of the
26:43edges and making this the shape we see
26:45in the puzzle. And it talks about
26:47defining 15 great circles. And I think
26:50this was the ulterior motive of the
26:52entire puzzle was to make sure that you
26:54came across this term great circle,
26:56which really just means drawing a
26:58two-dimensional circle around a sphere
27:00so that it's centered on the sphere. But
27:03it'll be a long time before I come back
27:04to this topic. It is needed to get the
27:06first half of the final vault code after
27:08you solve the first 100 puzzles. I did
27:10not originally solve this puzzle myself.
27:12I was happy to let somebody else do it.
27:14But in preparing for this video, I went
27:16to Cloud Code and this was my first
27:18prompt.
27:19I need help solving a math problem.
27:21There is a sphere and its surface is
27:23split into 120 equally sized spherical
27:26triangles. Assume the surface area of a
27:28single triangle is one.
27:30I would like to calculate the list of
27:32all unique areas of triangles on the
27:33surface of this sphere. Now that
27:35sentence got me in trouble because I
27:37said all unique areas of triangles and
27:40it assumed I meant areas made up of
27:41triangles, not areas shaped like
27:43triangles. So the first response was all
27:46the areas, all of them are possible. And
27:48then I said no, triangles only. And then
27:50the last thing it did was actually ask
27:51me a question about great circles. So I
27:54was happy I knew what those were. And
27:55then it turned a bit, wrote some code,
27:57and out popped a list of areas. Now of
27:59course I had no way to know if these
28:00were the correct areas until I went and
28:03solved the puzzle. So I asked it to
28:04generate a visualizer in Python.
28:07And here I have the visualizer on the
28:08right side of the screen. I currently
28:10have two triangles selected, but I can
28:12click three and it will show me an
28:14example of three triangles making a
28:16larger triangle, and then four,
28:18and six is very easy to spot, and seven.
28:2315 is probably my favorite. Look at that
28:25nice spiral around the middle. All the
28:26way up to 42, which looks like this, and
28:29the edges are straight. There are only
28:31three edges, and therefore it is a
28:33triangle. So the last thing to do was
28:35take that list of areas and go ahead and
28:37cross out all of the letters in those
28:39positions. And that gave me the final
28:41clue phrase, which is homophone of w h i
28:44r l e d, which is world. So the answer
28:47to puzzle number nine is w o r l d
28:50world. As a quick addendum to talk about
28:52the code in case you're interested in
28:54writing your own solution to this
28:56puzzle, the algorithm isn't too hard. In
28:58this case, it was just a mathematical
29:00details that I wanted to avoid, but
29:01essentially you can look up the
29:03equations of the 15 great circles that
29:05form this shape in the puzzle and write
29:07a loop that iterates over every
29:09combination of three great circles and
29:11then calculates the area of the triangle
29:13formed by those great circles. And by
29:15the end, you'll have a set of unique
29:17areas. There are just some tricky
29:18details along the way such as you can't
29:20select parallel great circles. I don't
29:22know if that's the correct term here,
29:24but what I mean by that is you can see
29:25these pentagons and in the center of
29:27those pentagons, there is an
29:29intersection of five great circles. So,
29:32if you pick any of those three, they
29:33form these long sort of crescent shapes,
29:36but they never actually form any
29:37triangles. For posterity, here are some
29:39of the tools I personally used to solve
29:41these puzzles. The first is Word Plays,
29:43my favorite crossword solver. It has
29:45more ads than it used to, but it's a
29:47great database and can even help with
29:48cryptic crosswords at times.
29:50Next is Nutrimatic, which is a word
29:52finding pattern matching tool created by
29:55the great Dan Egnor. This tool has
29:57somewhat of a learning curve, but it's
29:59very robust, amazing for help with
30:01anagrams and puzzles like number three
30:03with the TV shows and number eight where
30:05each layer of the pyramid scrambled the
30:07previous letters. Dan also maintains the
30:09Puzzle Hunt Calendar where if you liked
30:12these nine puzzles, you can find a
30:13schedule of upcoming competitive events
30:16where you're guaranteed to see a whole
30:17lot more puzzles very much like these.
30:19Next up is Litscape, my backup word
30:21finder. This website is very easy to
30:23use, has some different word lists to
30:25search, and multiple different tools.
30:27The words containing only tool was very
30:30useful for the TV shows. All I had to do
30:32was set the length to two letters less
30:34than I had in order to find some of the
30:36trickier words for that puzzle.
30:38Last, I want to mention Simon Tatham's
30:40Portable Puzzle Collection. This site
30:42has plenty of fun games, and if you're
30:44looking to challenge your logic skills,
30:45you might recognize some Guess, also
30:47known as Mastermind, Minesweeper, right
30:50below that, and the reason I am
30:52mentioning it for this video is Tents
30:54from puzzle number six.