The Moving Box Puzzle, Part 1
The
audience reads the letter aloud:
You must help me.
It is difficult for
me to communicate directly. I must guide you
through intermediaries, through objects. But please, I need
your help. Soon
they will become
part of the house. They are unpacking.
Take these thirteen
boxes. Match
against each
other the sides with the same number. Do this for each
labeled room, one room at a time,
for all the numbers
in the room at once (for each room,
ignoring the numbers from the other rooms) and
you will form the
clues to unlock the first mystery. You must keep the
boxes within the space marked on the floor. The
lock waits,
hanging from above.
First number in
the
combination: Kitchen.
Second number in the
combination: Bathroom.
Third number in the
combination: Den.
Fourth number in the
combination: Storage.
Some
cultures view certain birds as protective spirits, the souls of the deceased
who, although they have no memory of their
former lives, are a helpful force, and
should be treated with respect…
Thirteen
of the boxes
in the living room are different from
the rest. On the edges of the top of the box are labels like "Kitchen
10" or "Den 2, Storage 2." On the floor is a 3x5 grid, with each spot
on the grid the
size of a moving box. This grid helps keep the audience on the right
track by
limiting the physical space available to them. To solve the puzzle, the
audience must match the labels on the boxes. For example, two boxes are
labeled "Kitchen 10," and those two sides must be placed next to each
other. Matching
all the "Kitchen" boxes creates this shape:
Which
is the number 8. Repeating the process for the other
three numbers gets the numbers 3, 7, and 7 again. A security bag
hanging from a
string has a combination lock with four dials, and the combination
8-3-7-7
opens the bag.
Meanwhile,
without the audience noticing it, the radio has
started playing music from the 1920s.
David:
This puzzle
was a great way to teach the audience that they could start solving a
puzzle
without necessarily understanding what kind of answer they were looking
for.
The audience had a set of objects and a set of instructions, but they
had no
idea what would happen when they applied the instructions to the
objects. At
some point while matching boxes together, each audience had that
"Ah-ha!"
moment where they saw that they were forming numbers. Puzzles often
have many
steps, and if you get hung up on understanding every step before you
try it,
you’ll never get anywhere.
Continue
to 4 - The Moving Box Puzzle, Part 2
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