Humanities Week 2023, Time Present / Time Past

For IHGC’s Humanities Week 2023, Puzzle Poesis put on its second annual grounds-wide scavenger hunt of puzzles and riddles.

As the Humanities Week theme for this year was “Back to the Present,” we designed the cipher hunt to be accordingly time-oriented. Teams began with a map of the UVa grounds marked with four blank clockfaces, each indicating a location at which a QR code was to be found:

These first four “primary locations” were the Sarah Brown Library, the sundial near the Rotunda stairs, the Circadian Rhythms Lab at Gilmer Hall, and an upstairs alcove in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Teams exploring these locations discovered small laminated cards, each numbered and labeled with an apt line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Upon scanning the QR code at each location, teams then faced a Qualtrics form containing a unique puzzle — each requiring interaction with, or attention to, the immediate environment to solve.

Location: Sarah Brown Library

PUZZLE: This number of eyes may help you to see
Columns well worn yet still anomaly.
Look up: divided thus with equal flair
A wealth of words will in disguise be there.
A vice, an atom, a madness, a roll —
Let each be each, although answer with all.

SOLUTION:
ENVY IRON MENTAL LIST

Location: Sundial

PUZZLE:
2:12, 1:04, 3:06, 5:20, 7:08
11:03, 11:07, 7:05
10:04, 7:08, K, 1:04

SOLUTION:
HENRY VAN DYKE

Location: Circadian Rhythms Lab

PUZZLE:
Circadian rhythms cycle up, down,
but do not stress, for your clue has been found.
Peek at the clock and turn your thoughts to time,
up a meter and some feet you will climb —
reach hazily into the world of dreams,
where the ultimate prize your team redeems.

SOLUTION:
5:10

Location: Special Collections Alcove

PUZZLE:

Right might be slow
Left might be fast
But the fastest are right
And the slowest get left behind

SOLUTION:
POWER HOUR

Entering the correct answer into the form yielded a time in the form 00:00. Teams then had to discern that in order to progress to the next stage of the hunt, they would have to plot these times onto each respective clockface and extend the minute hands until they intersected, like so (see red lines):

These two intersections on the map thus indicated the next two locations in which QR codes would be found. These two “secondary locations” were the Rotunda Planetarium and the VR Station on the third floor of the Clemons Library.

Location: Rotunda Planetarium

PUZZLE:
Castor and Pollux may not get to play,
Though the rest are all twinned except two.
What time is it?

SOLUTION:
3:50 (or 10:15)

Location: Virtual Reality

PUZZLE:
Teams donned the headset and played a game involving shadows and the sun in a stonehenge setting in order to arrive at the solution.

SOLUTION:
“Time, Real and Imaginary”

Teams then repeated the same procedure as before. In this round, however, inputting the correct answer yielded two times: one, just as before, was unique to each location and was to be plotted onto the map like so (see purple lines):

The other time, however, was the same between the two secondary locations, which in fact indicated when teams were to show up at the final, “tertiary location,” the University Chapel. There, at the appointed time — 1:00pm on the final day of the hunt — members of Puzzle Poesis sat in wait with the final, determining QR code and puzzle based on a piece of music written and performed by a former member of Puzzle Poetry.

Final Location: Chapel

PUZZLE:

Follow the link to Cameron Church’s musical performance: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jV7dr8AG8)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jV7dr8AG8]

Tell us, what is the official name of the thing on screen from 25:32 to 25:35?

SOLUTION:
TRAFFIC LIGHT

Congratulations to: The Henchmen (Kyle Peterson, Thomas Harlow), Army of Schmee (Connor Rose, Everett Vereen), and little green (wo)men (Alexander Templeton, Claire Thilenius)!

Credits for Humanities Week 2023, Time Present / Time Past
Site Developer: Colin Buyck and Brad Pasanek
Cipher Authors: Jason Bennett, Aleyna Buyukaksakal, Brenna Courtney, Miranda Wang, and Ben Wieland
Designer: Alexander Maksiaev
Data Entry Specialist: Jason Bennett
Marketing Executive: Maryann Xue
Instagrammer: Aleyna Buyukaksakal
Humanities Week Liaison: Rebecca Barry
Puzzle Poetry Co-Leader: Brad Pasanek