10:47 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. Hopefully that’s right. - Jon Azose FOLLOW-UP In case you’re planning on posting the names of the solvers like you did last year, I just thought I’d let you know that the solution I submitted was a team effort from The South Dorm Puzzle Solving Team of Harvey Mudd College (for lack of a better name). If you prefer to have team members’ names, the team members were myself, John Parker, Sam Skillman, Kris Karr, James Moore, Blondie Beckwith, and Martha Cavanaugh-O’Keefe. My older brother Benj (you may remember him from such Annual April Fool’s Day Treasure Hunt Errands as last year’s competition) also popped in to help for a couple minutes. Thanks for the fun hunt. Keep up the good work. -Jon Azose |
8:50 PM ... as far as I can tell, there’s no way to form 3x3 squares on a 4x4 board, due to the attached pieces. There’s nothing that can fit there! Or am I missing something? Geoff 8:53 PM ... Sorry, you mean there can be bits of the 3x3 squares around the edge of the 4x4 board, it’s only on the inside that it matters? Geoff 9:48 PM ... Are you not using a monospaced font? Because that diagram doesn’t line up for me at all... I think I get the picture though. Anyways, I don’t think I’ve gotten my question across very well. If you look at the picture I’ve attached, you’ll see three pieces which must go together, in order to make 3x3 squares. The problem is there’s no fourth piece that fits in between them. Or am I missing something? Geoff 10:10 PM ... Yep, the piece I have a problem with is the bottom right piece of page 2. Actually, the three pieces in the picture I sent are: Top right | Bottom right Geoff 11:19 PM ... “dont try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” that’s not a very nice thing to say. Geoff |
11:48 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. --Lance |
11:13 PM
... Ok, I know this probably isn’t right... 11:30 PM ... Here’s the map we’ve
put together at unfiction.... 11:53 PM ... Ok, so up the first
column it reads Dont Try T.... 11:57 PM ... dont try to teach your gandma? Grandma? Argh. I have something wrong here. to suck eggs! 11:58 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs? It was alot of fun! Although I’m
quite tired and am too pumped to sleep
now. Although I wasn’t the first
to solve it overall, I was the first in
the Q4T and the unfiction chats to get
it :) Yay! I actually solved something!
I wouldn’t have gotten the answer
if I hadn’t gone back and read the
part about up and down on the front page
of your site. Before that I was blindly
anagramming and getting all sorts of bad
anagrams. |
12:02 AM ... “Don’t try to
teach your grandma to suck eggs”
or maybe that’s the ‘obvious’ answer,
and something to do with your website
being backwards adds another step. |
12:10 AM ... “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs.” <catherwood> do nt tr yt ote ac hy o ur gr an d ma tos uckeg gs |
12:00 AM ... I just had to send
an arrgghh! 12:20 AM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. You bastard!! So how low did we rank... I am praying 10 maybe... probably like 15? This was so much fun!!! You must be so tired. (bouncing up and down with glee) I LOVE THIS GAME!!!! xoxo Andie FOLLOW-UP Eek, Not the best recollection of the specific words anymore, So dunno if it is helpful, crap, we should have sent a breakdown then. We blame it on beer and taxes. But here is the best we can recall. All day we were excited and looking forward to it. We both played hooky from work the next day, so we wouldn’t look like drug addicts in case it took all night. Clock struck and the 1st sliding puzzle came on your site. That was a hot pic (giggle). It was like the puzzle super bowl, sliding block puzzle complete, map’s printing, cutting and then what to do. The coolest shock was the mirrored site, we laughed so hard at how brilliant it was to do that to keep hackers at bay. We were very impressed, that was sooo bad-ass. So 3x3 squares, remembered Boo Boo from last year’s hunt (done only about a few weeks before) was doing the lines first before doing the map. This time map had to go first as we had nothing else yet. The pieces of words was where we started to put together and you instantly saw things that could be good words with 3 letters dropped in. All went in relatively easily except the extra K from Keg (later) was the only debate. But after the Blaine challenge our brain’s were running on instinct. Waiting for the clues was a bitch. We weren’t entirely sure of what was to do next. I wanted to start filling in lightly in pencil words that I felt confident about, while we waited, So we printed a second map and I started to do that while he started to hunt for the clues. We switched to keep both heads wrapped around both parts, I went onto the clue hunt and he manned the map. We started to find the 3 letter clues fairly early on was up to about 14 the could find no more, Then the seven page came on much later. Copied them in a file and made 2 copies, We had plugged in a fair number of them but still needed to do all the rest. We split into two and delegated so we could hopefully get in a decent time. He crossed checked and I started on the problematic ones. The nice part was that once one fit you had a group of 3 fit in, so it made it faster. The final ah-ha was what I was really afraid of missing, we started to pull the letters out of the circles which was just Gibberish and I was trying to find an anagram engine to check, But it was too big, Must admit was starting to panic abit, both of us were really tired, started to hand anagram...God, would take forever...shit!!!!! Emailed you the gibberish.. The map from the hunt last year the killer
was how to read it correctly. We both
sat and stared, Kareem made a baby mock
up on grid paper of the circled letters
and behold..there it was up and down,
Don’t try to teach your grandma
to suck eggs. Incontrovertible CJ humor
we knew that was it. |
11:23 PM ... TTDAOMYEARAOTSTNCKYTNGEHRUGOSROTUD 12:25 AM ... don’t try to teach your dragon ma to suck eggs 12:27 AM ... D’oh! dont
try to teach your grandma to suck eggs FOLLOW-UP I had planned on commenting (maybe even 'extensively') on my Blaine search as well as the April Fool's thing, but once I started writing I found I was just repeating what I've already posted (not to mention everyone else). Key thoughts from April's Fool: The search was funfrantic until I hit about 11 sets of 3x3. At that point, I simply could not find any more... Until someone in chat shouted that they had found the se7en page (I swear that link was NOT there from the beginning) and now I was up to 20-something. At that point, I was convinced we were too late -- someone else had solved in and now the shortcut appeared. I later refreshed to find all 31 (was it 31?) answers. {34} Silly me, I trusted Anagram Genius to churn through the sassy anagram instead of starting by hand with some trusty keywords taken from the story. That got me a something about ORANGUTANS when I needed DRAGONS. |
12:46 AM ... Answer: “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” -Daniel Weinberg |
1:04 AM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. FOLLOW-UP So, assuming I was correct (which I dearly hope is not too strong an assumption), I guess I only missed by 20 minutes. Do I get bonus points for being a solo act. ;-) Much better than my placing for last year’s hunt. I didn’t pick up on the A-ha of the up and down, up and down. I just stared at the letters long enough that the pattern became apparent. One thing that did confuse me was the fact that I spent 3 1/2 hours searching the mirror sight for 3x3 blocks of letters and found only nine of them. I did a fair job of solving about 1/3 of the puzzle by brute force, but then decided that it was impossible without the real blocks. I almost gave up, but then accidently ended up back fools-errand.com rather than thefoolandhismoney and there was a direct link to all 34 3x3 blocks which doesn’t exist on the mirror site. Was that there all along? If I had know about that it would have been a much quicker solve. Thanks for putting these together, and I look forward to The Fool and His Money. Happy April! -Mark Blattel |
#11 - Dave Phillips 1:11 AM ... dont teach your grandma to suck eggs |
1:21 AM ... “Don’t try to
teach your grandma to suck eggs.” |
11:51 PM ... is it something along
the lines of “eggs can stand such
an odor” ?? or something like that? 11:58 PM ... heres my solution
this time: 1:25 AM ... DONT TRY TO TEACH
YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS |
3:05 AM ... “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs.” At 10:00 we printed out the board pieces and assembled them. At 11:00 we found four of the 3x3 letter grids in various pictures around the site, but couldn’t find any more. We worked out some of the other words by deduction, but couldn’t get very far. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to pull three-letter words out of the story, and failing. Then we gave up since we’d checked the whole site for grids and not found any more. At 4:00 or so, some further poking around the site uncovered a 3x3 letter grid where there hadn’t been one before. Frantic searching ensued, and we found about six more grids before discovering the page with all of them on it. We quickly filled in the board, then got a bit stuck trying to figure out what order to read the letters in. We tried up and down each column of letters, but that didn’t work. We tried to rearrange the letters with the help of an anagram generator, but there were just too many letters. Eventually we realized we needed to read up and down each tile, and got “Don’t try to teach...” at which point I immediately realized what the rest of it had to be, but we spent a little while proving it anyway. We think the story may give directions about how to move from letter to letter since it’s not just up-and-down, but we can’t figure out how. This one was more frustrating than last year’s, because we got stuck at the finding-things-on-the-website stage for so long. Did all the grids go up at the same time? Did that page with all of them go up then too? {At, 8 PM, Pacific Time, there were 17 hidden single grids and 1 hidden page containing the other 17 grids. Once a correct answer was received at 10:47 PM, I put up the hidden se7en page that contained all 34 grids.} |
3:06 AM ... DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS. {Any friend of Fagin is a friend of mine.} FOLLOW-UP I was a frog's hair away from giving up. It took me three hours too long, but I finally gave up on finishing fast and decided to take my time using the cut-and-paste-to-mspaint method. After I stopped trying to organize scribbled up scraps of paper on my clutterpiled desk, I solved the dern thing in about 3 minutes. If only I'd started out with electronic move-arounding, I could have spent the rest of the night building a shrine on which to place Sea Jay products. But alas. |
5:43 AM .. I believe the final words are “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” |
5:45 AM ... I’ve come up with a sentence which could be Miss April’s answer: “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” What’s bothering me is that I’ve not really used the story... Either it was a very good diversion, but in that case I doubt I’m first, considered the hour. Or I’ve walked only half of the way, and then prepare to receive another mail from me (much later in the night) ! Anyway, thanks for April Treasure Hunts, and thanks for your past, present and future games, which you can be sure I’ll be playing (grand prize or not). Best regards, Benjamin |
6:06 AM ... “Don’t try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs.” Damn you, Cliff Johnson. I was up till 3:30 a.m. Almost had it. Got it quickly this morning after getting a couple of hours of sleep. It was fun. Thanks. |
7:05 AM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs??? You nearly drove me nuts doing this! I’m just SOOOOOOOO happy to have got here – best thing that’s happened in months! Thank you Thank you Thank you – and if I’m wrong just DON’T TELL ME – I’ll find out on Monday when I get back from Dublin!!! (at least it’s a respectable time in Europe, though!!) Have a great weekend (I know, it’s only Thursday, but so what?) BFN, Amanda |
7:14 AM ... Well, I can’t make much sense of it, but... “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs.” |
7:33 AM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. Jon Severson |
7:40 AM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs Martin F. Doublesin |
7:48 AM ... Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs. |
10:17 AM ... Submitting: Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs Jeff Briden FOLLOW-UP These hunts are too much fun. How about
a "Halloween Haunted Hunt",
"Twisted Thanks again for taking the time to put this together 'pro bono'. |
12:50 AM ... Fascinating Map - tired of April’s Fool Well, I ran the letters I got from the map through the cipher tool and ended up with something approximating the message above. I’ve been at this for six hours now, and frankly I don’t care if that isn’t the answer... David Brain 1:00 AM ... Grrr. I hate you. :-) It’s 8am here in the UK and I’ve been up most of the night trying to make head or tail of this one. I *think* I’ve put the map together correctly, and I’ve started filling in at least some of the boxes which, until I saw the clues, I thought were all symmetrical (same across as down.) But at the moment there seem to be far too many options and I’m just too tired to concentrate any more! It hurts to ask for hints, but can I clarify a couple of things? Are all the three-letter words “real” (i.e. are the six-letter words all two three-letter words put together.) And are any of the boxes symmetrical? (and are there only six clue boxes on the site? I’ve been going mental trying to find any more but have drawn a blank. I really liked the “not for download” gags though.) It just feels so much harder than last year somehow. But just as interesting, even if I don’t have a clue where it is going. David Brain 11:50 AM ... Hello Miss April, Second attempt: Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs (actually, I get “Don’t try to teach your grandma t s eggs” I think.) David Brain FOLLOW-UP > Correct. Thanks. At least I’ll be able to sleep tonight. I had the letters written out at about 9am UK time (that would be about 3am EST?) but just didn’t think to try and make a simple sentence out of them. And I only just came back to look at them. So it either took me five hours or seventeen, I’m not sure which. It’s true about the cryptogram interpretation I sent you though! I stuck the letters into your cipher applet in roughly the grid order and basically turned the first few letters into “April” - then I got “fascinating” and so I experimented with the rest of it and eventually got it to say what I wanted... David Brain |
11:52 AM ... Miss April’s last remark to Inspector Bellows was: ----------- Thanks for the great puzzle. It was a lot of fun to solve. Aaron Turiello |
8:40 AM ... Am I too late? Has someone already won the hunt? 1:15 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. That was a blast! I love slide puzzles, the map placement was great and the scavenger hunt was fun. I just didn’t think “outside the column,” going up and down columns instead of boxes. I didn’t care that it made jibberish because I thought certain letters would be ‘collected’ based on “this and that.” Thank you for the fun hunt. These hour long (or day long) puzzles are great. You should make a Sea Jay Puzzling Club, where you have monthly 2-hour long puzzles or something. Anyway, thanks for the fun and I look forward to TFAHM and the Third Annual Hunt. Thanks, Nicholas Perry |
1:37 PM ... I’m not quite sure how this fits in with the story, so I’m not sure if it is correct, but I have a solution of: DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS. Is this possibly correct? Steve |
2:14 PM ... DONT TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS! Happy AFD. Ralph |
2:44 PM ... I think the answer is: “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” (with no punctuation on the map, of course) I have to confess, if there are clues in the story that tell you how to organize the letters once the map is assembled, I haven’t seen them yet. I arrived at this answer basically by looking at the completed map and realizing that you could spell “Don’t” by starting in the lower-left corner and moving upward. I drew my own small copy of the map with just the double-circled letters and tried to see if there was an ordering. This resulted in an exercise in connecting the dots so that they spell out words. This makes me suspect that perhaps I missed something having to do with the story, but I am not sure what it could be, and hey, the sentence I ended up with does seem appropriate! I had lots of fun, even if I fell into the trap of an obvious-looking, but wrong answer! :) I am looking forward with great anticipation to “A Fool and His Money” later this year. Talk to you later -- Sean |
4:32 PM ... Dont try to teach your grandma to suck eggs |
1:51 PM ... “DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRAND MOCKS ATE EGGS” Your Pal Goldball 4:39 PM ... “DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS” Love to Hate You, Your Pal |
5:02 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. Joseph DeVincentis |
5:59 PM ... “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs!” -James |
6:19 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. |
2:32 AM ... Hi CLiFF, Can I have one of the following options
made available to me? 2) Tell me one of the words created by the 35 letters to send me on the right track (no matter how small the word is). 3) Tell me I tried hard, despite my setback,
and deserve some sleep. Adam {Sorry, I went to bed already.} 6:25 PM ... Ahem... My answer to TSAAFDTHE, in relation to Miss Aprils response to Inspector Bellows is: DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS! (Exclamation point thrown in for flair.) Thanks for the challenge, CLiFF, and I hope you get some time off soon. Sins Yearly, |
7:32 PM ... Is it “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs”? |
7:42 PM ... Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs. Castor |
7:43 PM ... As the grid reads: |
1:13 AM ... I concede defeat at 4:12 am eastern for today. I was able to put together your map no prob, but as to what to fill it in with....hoo boy....after hours of trying to figure out “Is it true 3x3 squares or just filled in 3x3 squares and what words to use?” You’ve traipsed upon rhymes, homonyms, and anagrams in the story. Some of the 3x3’s play out as true squares (using only three words), while for others it’s nigh impossible! I’ll hope for either divine inspiration in the night or a helping hint in the morn.... -A tired brain-frazzled alternate CJ 9:36 PM ... I think I’ve got it....I hope.... “Don’t try to teach your grandma how to suck eggs” I originally got “Don’t try to teach your grandma how to ruck eggs” So let me send them both and pray that one is correct.... Yea for extra clues! The other CJ 9:40 PM ... Sorry just read my solution again....let’s try this again... “Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs” or perhaps “Don’t try to teach your grandma to ruck eggs” -A Contrite re-read CJ |
9:41 PM ... don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs LOL |