Last year, we attended the music and arts festival Electric Forest. This festival takes place nestled within a pine forest in Rothbury, Michigan. With all of the infrastructure and art installations throughout the festival grounds, it is a very magical sensory experience. Part of the experience is a time travel themed puzzle game produced by The Wild Optimists. As puzzle lovers and creators ourselves, we absolutely loved this part of the festival and wanted to share the experience with you here.
Overview
Upon arriving at the Electric Forest festival, we quickly discovered that the event hosted a game… A puzzle game. This sign pointed us in the right direction to begin the journey, starting from the Time Travel Agency:
This of course being right up our alley, we spent a good amount of time over the next few days of the festival seeking out and solving these puzzles. Beginning at the Time Travel Agency, we picked up our passport card which would be used to track our progress through the game:
The puzzles were not required to be done in any particular order, and shared a similar format; find the puzzle, solve it to get a three digit code, then use the code to open a lockbox and use the stamp inside to stamp your passport card.
Time Traveler’s Feast
WITHIN THE FOREST IS SET
A TIME TRAVELER’S FEAST
LAID WITH SUCH CARE YOU’LL
WANT TO EXAMINE EACH PIECE
Near one edge of the Forest a table could be found, with many things on it, secured so as they could not be disturbed…
It was difficult to get a good picture of the sign, as one time we were there it was raining, and another there was very bright, blinding sun. Between the twop pictures below, however, you can make out the message… The sign in the middle of the table laid out the puzzle:
“A TIME TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO ETIQUETTE – It’s vital to know who is seated at each place. If you want to know a secret seek out: Artemis, Basil, Sarah. Don’t forget to count what is right in front of you.”
This, along with a few framed clues, indicated it to be a deduction puzzle. Use the framed clues from around the table along with the place settings in front of each seat to deduce who was sitting where. There were six seats total, indicating six diners; two on each of the long sides, and one on each end.
Step 1 – Deduce the Seating Arrangement
The first step in this puzzle is to determine where everyone was sitting using the framed clues and the place settings. The framed clues read:
- Artemis did not drink alcohol.
- Basil sat next to Marty.
- The Doctor’s cup has neither stem nor a handle.
- Link and Basil sat at the ends.
- Marty has a drink with a handle and sat across from Sarah.
It’s a little difficult to see in the pictures, but here is how the place settings were arranged, and a gallery of each place setting:
The Doctor
“The Doctor’s cup has neither stem nor a handle.” There are only two place settings with cups without a stem or handle, so the Doctor had to be in one of those two places, and since one of those two places is an end seat and we know that “Link and Basil sat at the ends”, we know definitively that the Doctor sat at the one of the two seats that was not on the end, the seat with the angel.
Marty
“Marty had a drink with a handle and sat across from Sarah.” There are only two cups with handles, and one of them is across from where we now know the Doctor sat. Therefore, Marty has to be in the seat with the other handled cup that is not across from the doctor, in the seat with the birdhouse.
Sarah
Because we now know where Marty sat, and “Marty sat across from Sarah”, we now know that Sarah sat across from Marty in the seat with the chicken.
Basil
Also because we now know where Marty sat, and because “Basil sat next to Marty”, Basil had to be on one of either sides to Marty, either next to Marty on the long side of the table, or in the end seat next to Marty. Since we also know that “Link and Basil sat at the ends”, we now know which end Basil sat at, the one next to Marty, in the seat with the key.
Link
Because we know that “Link and Basil sat at the ends”, and we now know at which end Basil sat, we know that Link is at the other end of the table, at the seat with the anchor.
Artemis
Finally, as there is only one seat left undetermined, Artemis must have sat in the seat with the bell. This place setting also has a teacup, the least likely cup to hold alcohol, also indicating that this should be where Artemis sat as we know that “Artemis did not drink alcohol.”
Step 2 – Count the Items
The second step in this puzzle was to inspect Artemis, Basil, and Sarah’s places and count the items on the table that matched the item on each one’s plate. We unfortunately did not get good pictures of the rest of the table decor in the center and surrounding each place setting, but in the decor there were some additional items matching those on the plates. You’ll have to take our word for the counts:
Artemis sat at the seat with the bell. We found that there were 5 bells on the table.
Basil sat at the seat with the keys. We found that there were 7 keys on the table.
Sarah sat at the seat with the chickens. We found only 2 chickens on the table.
Step 3 – Open the Lockbox
The code to the lockbox was the numbers of items in order of the people listed: 572. Using this code on the nearby lockbox, it granted access to this puzzle’s passport stamp:
Creation Station
SEEK OUT THE BACK OF
ART BAR: CREATION STATION
MAKE THE TITLES THE
OBJECT OF YOUR FIXATION
On the backside wall of the Creation Station were three pieces of art with their titles below them:
The note about the art to the left of them gave a clue as to how to decipher the titles. The message says “The key to my art is in the titles. What lies within? How can we erase the spaces in between?”
By removing the spaces from the titles, you’re left with “WEIGHTLESS”, “HEARTWOW”, and “IFIVER”. Looking for something in the titles, you can spot three numbers written out, which are “EIGHT”, TWO”, and “FIVE. Thus, the answer to this riddle was 825.
Using this code on the nearby lockbox, it granted access to this puzzle’s passport stamp:
Grandfather’s Clock
IN THE FOREST LIES
GRANDFATHER’S CLOCK
WITH A CODE HIDDEN
IN EACH TICK TOCK
Near the Library, against a tree, you could find the Grandfather’s Clock:
Nearby was a riddle:
Within the clock, there were letters associated with a line pattern representing hands on an analog clock face. Matching up the times provided in the riddle with the matching clock face patterns reveals the answer:
| 5:45 | S |
| 7:55 | I |
| 1:35 | X |
| 11:00 | T |
| 1:30 | E |
| 5:35 | N |
The answer to this puzzle was 610.
Entering this code in the nearby lockbox granted access to this puzzle’s passport stamp:
Colorful Towers
THE FOREST HOUSES COLORFUL
TOWERS TO SIT
CARVED WITH DESIGNS
TO TEST YOUR WIT
A section of the Forest had many colorful towers with benches along the bottom edges for people to sit and rest on. The purple towers had tops carved with various designs:
Nearby, a clue:
When looking at this sign, if you turned around, you would be facing the tower. The sign shows you on which panel to start, which direction to go around the tower for each subsequent panel, and what number each shape represents. By adding the numbers for the shapes in each panel, you would receive a total for each panel:
On the first panel were three butterflies. The sign indicated that you start on these butterflies, but there are no values for the butterflies on the sign, so this panel must be zero, or not used.
The second panel had a swirly thing and a cloudy thing. The sign tells us that the swirly thing is 3 and the cloudy thing is 6. Add these together and you get 9 for the panel.
The third panel was the inverse of the second panel. Being the same shapes as the second panel, this panel was also a 9.
The final panel had five birds. Birds on the sign were equal to 1 each, so the total for this panel was 5.
Putting together the numbers gave us the code 995. Using this code on the nearby lockbox granted access to the passport stamp for this puzzle:
Dream Emporium
JUST INSIDE AN EMPORIUM
OF DREAMING DELIGHT
FIND A PUZZLE IF
YOU ARE BRIGHT
The Dream Emporium was a massive building with sprawling hallways, themed rooms, and was a bit of a maze. Fortunately, you didn’t have to go far into the Emporium to find this puzzle, as it was essentially right inside the door:
Each little light was a spinning string of LEDs which when in motion showed various words. They’re hard to see in our photograph, but if you took the first letter of each one, they spelled out “FIVETWOFOUR”. The answer to this puzzle was 524.
Entering 524 in the nearby lockbox granted access to this puzzle’s passport stamp:
Wall of Doors
NEAR A PLACE
WHERE DREAMS RESIDE
STANDS A WALL OF DOORS
WITH ENIGMAS INSIDE
Near the Dream Emporium you could find a freestanding wall with many small doors in it:
The doors didn’t lead anywhere, but revealed messages, numbers, and other writing behind them. There were doors on both sides of this wall and the wall had screened holes cut in them, next to framed instructions to guide the Player through the process. It was clear that this would be a collaborative puzzle, requiring two people, one on each side of the wall, communicating through the holes. Or a very determined solo puzzler, going back and forth from side to side. Fortunately, we had multiple people…
FIRST
The first step instructed the Player to “Open in order.” and “Tell each other what you find”. The doors were numbered, like this:
We unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the numbers on the opposite side, but they were not in the same positions. Once all of the doors were opened The two sides of the wall looked like this:
Starting with door 1, you matched up the letter position indicated by the box with the corresponding word. The answer to this step was “FOur”.
SECOND
The second step instructed players to open a specific door based on the answer to the first step:
Since the answer to the first step was “FOur”, and four is an even number, the other side opened their top door. The two sides of the wall looked like this with their doors open:
Working with the top doors, the instructions were to count the hourglass and watches. This resulted in the number 8.
THIRD
The third and final step instructed the Players to add the numbers from the previous two steps, and then told them what door to open if the result was in certain ranges:
Adding 4 (FOur) and 8 from the previous two steps results in 12, so the information the Players need are behind doors C and F:
Using the letters from door C, “TWF” and the translation table from door F, we can translate the letters into “SIX”. The answer to the third step is 6.
Solution
Putting all three steps together, you get the code 486.
Entering the code into the nearby lockbox granted access to this puzzle’s passport stamp:
The Reward
After completing all six puzzles, Players returned to the Time Travel Agency to turn in their passport and claim their reward. The reward was a little pin, which granted access to a special area of the Dream Emporium that was not available to anyone who hadn’t completed all of the puzzles:
Using the pin to enter the door to the exclusive area, behind the door was found… a roller disco! A literal roller rink with disco music playing. You could don roller skates and skate around. Behind the roller rink was also a trampoline that you could bounce on, and a private exit of the building out to a side area beside the building. The extra, exclusive experience was quite a nice reward for completing the puzzle game.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we very much enjoyed this game at Electric Forest, and being puzzle fanatics, it was a huge part of our experience there. We’ll be back again this year, and a little bird told us that The Wild Optimists will be as well with a whole new game for us to play. We’re looking forward to it and can’t wait to see what puzzles they have in store for us this year…