We have occasionally had players muse that it would be fun to trickle out a “long game” sort of puzzle via team name in the monthly Puzzled Pint standings over the course of many months. To my knowledge, we now have our first standings-based puzzle.
There is a team of players in Portland that, since October, have been putting their team name on their answer sheet as a sticky-label of symbols and letters. For instance, when they started this weirdness, they were known as “! XEHPOH !” on the answer sheet and in the Portland standings. I’m not sure I know the entire team, but I do know the two responsible for this puzzle. One has been a Puzzled Pint guest author and another will be soon.
This past month, their team submitted an unusual answer sheet that seemingly ties together the past 7 months of mystery team names:
It was a fun little puzzle that I’m reprinting here as a bonus puzzle for everyone. To save you a trip to the standings page, here are their previous team names:
Team Names ~~~~~~~~~~ 2014-10 ! XEHPOH ! 2014-11 @ PGTODD @ 2014-12 ~ HTUI.Z ~ 2015-01 % RDORK! % 2015-02 $ IFRCYI $ 2015-03 # KQXIRZ #
And please try to avoid putting spoilers in the comments!
Genesis of the idea: It was easier to make a months-long puzzle than come up with a team name that we all like!
But now you must come up with a real team name! Unless…
…to the puzzle design!
Very nice puzzle! I got stuck after the first section for way too long, but finally figured it out! Pretty cool that you’ve been building it for 6 months, too!
That was a perfect puzzle! Just the right level of difficulty. Happy to hear this team is contributing to one of my favorite activities. They rock!