For the past few years our church has taken students to camp in Glorieta, NM—a trek that is looooong and monotonous. Making matters more grueling for the students, I take up their phones so they are forced to interact with each other. To better unite the group and bolster their anticipation for camp, my team and I create a large-scale, multi-media, two-tiered cryptogram for them to solve. Below is a broad stroke showing the 2023 iteration of our puzzle: UnYusual.

Abstract:

Things have become a bit…well…unusual around the District. As a city of innovation, generosity, and opportunity it’s not odd that the social atmosphere fluctuates between moments of nobility and narcissism, triumph and turmoil, delight and deception. Recently, though, it seems as if most of the inhabitants have become uninspired…spiritless; as if all the things that make life worth living—purpose, beauty, and craft—were pulled right out of their body.

Yu, an up and coming journalist for The District News, has just reached the end of a much needed vacation in the mountains surrounding the District; upon descent, mystery, scandal and a series of cryptic clues engulf Yu as a tale told in silence unfolds into a cacophony between veracity and mistruth. It appears that One.Another—a company supposedly bent on making the District a better place—has hidden some ulterior and corrupt motives in its pursuit of “harmony” within the city.

Using video, podcasts, newspapers, and a confession letter you can help Yu uncover the who, what, where, and why of a mystery so scandalous; a mystery so UnYusual.

Notes:

Because this cryptogram is double sided, it complicates how we work through the information here. As we had it set up for our students, there is the general puzzle for each van to work through as a team, and there is an individual puzzle called the Golden Cactus. Each is imbedded in the clues provided, so the approach to this game is solved in a wholistic nature—looking at all the clues in tangent with one another.

The podcasts feature this year’s graduates as the main characters of the story. Our writing style was curated to their individual personalities.

Gameplay & Flow:

UnYusual begins with a letter from me describing the spiritual intent of the puzzle and student instruction on how it is played. A week before camp each student received in the mail a letter containing the a clue, a sudoku, and a qr code that leads to an augmented reality portion of the gameplay. This puzzle uses the nature of a sudoku to infer its solution. By nature, a sudoku has a rather randomized structure; it’s systematic but lacks the ability to be the foundation for a cryptogram. What I used of the sudoku was its grid and transposed a rigid alphabetical structure over the randomized numbers. Because the player’s are from a sinistrodextral background, this grid begins in the top left corner; this overlay expands the depth of the puzzle by allowing me to ascribe alphanumeric values independent of their numerical value (a=1, b=2) and based upon their grid value.

Augmented Reality

This was my first stab at an AR part of the gameplay…it was more for fun than anything. Because the theme was centered around an app and other technological innovations, it was quite apropos. When the code was followed, users were granted access to the AR (as expressed in the video) which led to two websites, the Golden Cactus represented by a cactus (downloaded for free for time’s sake) and the One.Another logo which I made in Rhino. Tapping the cactus brought users to the first clue (of four) that were to be worked out with the clue and sudoku in the letter. Tapping the logo led to a mocumentary video done in a Ben Shapiro-esk style. This video revealed various easter eggs for the event and allowed insight into the nature of the puzzle.

Travel Clues & Podcasts

At an agreed upon time, each van opened a manilla envelope and was instructed to pull out clue 1; no other instruction was to be given other than, “the first podcast will begin when you tell the driver the hidden phrase.” On the back a sudoku puzzle should have, because of the previous letter, indicated a good place to start. Above the puzzle the instructions read, “How to get started: with Sudoku.” Part of the puzzle was prefilled with each number (1-9) handwritten in once. However, two of them were incorrect. The incorrect numbers and their corrected counterpart would be the four numbers used to decipher the beginning cue. This was found in the superscripts in the various articles and would result in the phrase, gain understanding, win coffee.

While listening to the first podcast, the passenger would hand out newspaper two and the object folded in the paper—a PVC cap. Once the podcast ended, students would work to figure out what the next step was. Located in the upper left portion of the first page there was a handwritten note to ‘tune in _ _ . _’ An article on the back, about plumbing, would use similar language and provide a formula to use to find a radio transmission. Using the pvc cap, students would work the formula and tell the driver to dial the radio to the desired channel. Doing so would begin the second podcast. Once that one was completed students were not given any new physical clues, but had to refer back to the second newspaper. A symbol (our youth group-The District-logo) scribbled over the text would have denoted an article of importance. (Many students got sidetracked with the ads and classified pages in the newspaper. Those were for the golden cactus.) Inside the PVC cap were written “beginning, conference, David, spill, N | W.” One big issue with this clue was students didn’t read the N | W as cardinal directions, but as the number 213 or E12. I found the misunderstanding fun…but they found it quite frustrating. The 4 words reference their numerical position in the article. When counted out they would give the coordinates for Glorieta, NM. For our narrative’s sake this clue allows students to engage in the story as the ones traveling to secret location Glorieta to help regain everyone’s lost spirit. The PVC cap is the cap to each vehicle’s own Spirit stick. After the third podcast they are given the rest of the spirit stick to assemble. The third podcast was reached whenever students gave the coordinates. At the end of this podcast they were handed a burned up letter from one of the main characters.

Podcast 4 revealed the answer to the main question of ‘why steal spirit?’ After listening, students would complete the podcast, deliver the answer and receive the final, congratulatory newspaper, tying everything together.

Golden Cactus

In the beginning, if a student had solved all four steps in the AR clues, they would have found 5 key words. These words were extensively used in a criminal case article. That article led to various other elements of the newspapers and all the clues needed for the golden cactus award were circled in gold on the newpapers. In fact it was one clue: an anagram expressed in multiple forms. Were a student to have not solved the online clues they still could have solved the Cactus. The final page was an anagram challenge which included one ‘conclude stag’ or ‘golden cactus.’ From this the idea was that the clue would be an anagram; each circled text could be broken down to spell “Shirly Dowlripple” the murderer from the previous year’s podcast. She was featured in the new articles and was a fun call back to include. The number of steps in this clue made it difficult for students to solve; no one completed it. I am now the proud owner of a golden cactus.

Product wise, the team really delivered. We had quite a long go at completing this project as it was far more complex than the previous year’s. It is a well thought out project, we refined it to a solid degree, and it was fun to watch the students try to solve. The abundance of text was overwhelming to the students—whether that’s a statement on our communication skills or the general lack of desire to read by teenagers, I don’t know.

The Team

Trent Kelley // Podcast script, podcast recording, podcast production, video directing, video production, newspaper funnies, anagram challenge, photoshopping news photos, burned letter, character development, storyline creation, diagrams, Augmented Reality development, 3d modeling, cryptogram creation

Haley Roark // Podcast script, newspaper assembly, news layout, news articles, classifieds, photoshopping news photos, character development, storyline creation, clue developer, vocal performer

Aaron Tyus // Podcast script, storyline creation, clue developer, vocal performer, actor

Vocal Performers and Actors (A) (many also helped with storyline creation) // Marshall Eberle (A), Lulu Cox (A), Blair Brown (A), Jeremy Irwin (A), Aidan Roark, Sharon Irwin, Keith Collier (A), Will Collier, Michael McLelland, Clayton King, Keighla Blest, Destiny Owens

Chase Meador // Videographer, lighting

Blake Collier // News funnies contributor, hand model

Music for podcast is Toydrum’s Three Pines soundtrack.