undistinguished puzzle hunt
home
warmup 1 (soln)
warmup 2 (soln)
puzzle 1. cybercop (3 pts) (soln)
puzzle 2. x-ray (3 pts) (soln)
puzzle 3. disproof (5 pts) (soln)
puzzle 4. padlock (5 pts) (soln)
puzzle 5. straight across (10 pts) (soln)
solution to puzzle 1. cybercop (3 pts)
difficulty: *

Filling in the 7-segment displays to spell (almost) unique words gives: GRASP, BOSSY, DOZEN, AGAIN, PIANO. The filled in letters, GOZIO, are identical to the number 90210 on a 7-segment display. This is the famous zipcode for BEVERLYHILLS, the solution to this puzzle (and where you might find a cybercop!).

From the guesslog, some teams were stuck on 60210, spelling a G like a 6. However, the word AGA_N shows that G is displayed like 9. Other teams read the last row as PLAN_, but I hoped this would be demotivated by the many possible words this could form, as well as the I/1 from AGAIN. Realizing that the letters were identical to numbers helped disambiguate words that I missed in other cases (BOSSY/BASSY). Nevertheless, more teams got roadblocked on this easy puzzle than I hoped - next time I'll try to have something with fewer red herrings.