Solution: Classics Meta

Answer: THESEUS OFFENSE

Written by Jonah Ostroff (with minipuzzles by Amos Eshel, Jason Deakins, Jenna Himawan, Justin Melvin, Kenny Young, and Mike Sylvia)

This is the Classics Meta, which uses the answers to the two submetas: STATELY (from The Crommyonian Sow) and SYMBOLIC (from The Aloadae).

The embedded Dungeonscript maze contains a long path from the start to the final room, with eight dead ends that each contain a minipuzzle. These minipuzzles use mechanics from the eight puzzles in the round, and extract to a single letter. Their solutions are provided below in the Appendix.

The Crommyonian Sow was about Pig Latin, while The Aloadae was about fraternities and Greek letters. As such, we can classify the eight puzzles (and the letters from their respective minipuzzles) as “Latin” or “Greek” according to which meta they went to:

So the Latin letters are {O, U, N, F}, and the Greek letters are {T, E, H, S}. The room at the end of the maze explains what to do with these letters: arrange them into a Graeco-Latin square, with the Latin letter before the Greek letter in each cell. That means the sixteen bigrams are OT, OE, OH, OS, UT, UE, UH, US, NT, NE, NH, NS, FT, FE, FH, and FS.

The final room also contains two maps of cells marked by the Crommyonian Sow and Aloadae containing “bigrams with a certain property”.

This is where the submeta answers come in: the STATELY bigrams are the four U.S. state abbreviations (OH, UT, NE, NH), and the SYMBOLIC bigrams are the four chemical symbols (OS, NE, NH, FE). This is enough to give a unique solution:

Some of the spaces on the tiles are marked in yellow. Reading those spells the answer: THESEUS OFFENSE.

Author’s Notes

This meta (and the two submetas) went through a number of drafts. The idea of having two Latin and Greek metas which combine to form a Graeco-Latin square supermeta was always the plan, but it took a while for the shells to evolve to their current state. Originally, the Latin meta was simpler (just write the Pig Latin-ified answers in a series of blanks, and read the numbered letters), while the Greek version was more complicated (transform each answer using some steps from a list of 24 possibilities, then put the results in numbered blanks).

This had the advantage that the final meta just involved using marked letters from the eight sets of blanks, but the two halves felt too imbalanced: Latin was a quick transformation, while Greek was long and elaborate. (They were also both very easy to solve with 2/4 answers, although this is also still somewhat true.)

Eventually the two halves evolved into their current versions, but the result was that they could no longer directly provide letters for the metameta. And so the callback minipuzzles were born, along with a maze to make the structure feel more minotaur-y. We also placed the Classics department near the end of the hunt, thinking that this would reduce the time between when the puzzles were solved and when the meta was reached. We hope this increased the likelihood that team members who solved each puzzle were still around to help with the callbacks.

Appendix

Here are the solutions to the minipuzzles.

Dis Legomena

The left wall reads “X: This is on the X, not the Y.”
The right wall reads “4: I X you this clue for the Y letter.”
The X and Y can be replaced with LEFT and RIGHT, so we take the fourth letter of X to get T.

The Olympics

The middle wall lists five answers that can be extracted using the same five mechanics as the minimetas. In the order of the original five metas they are:

ADOPTION starts with an A, and can be split into ADO and OPTION, overlapping at the O, so O is the first letter.
A SLAVIC LEGEND contains CLAVICLE starting in the second position, but with an S replacing the C, so S is the second letter.
PIXIE CUT is an 8-letter word with an X in the third position, and opposite the X is a C, so C is the third letter.
DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT contains the weight TALENT, and four spaces to its right is an A, so A is the fourth letter.
CROOKED TOWER refers to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, shown on the map with a two-steeple icon, so we extract the second letter R.

Overall these spell OSCAR, so the letter from this minipuzzle is O.

It’s All Greek to Me

The clue CAPTAININSIVANINSACTORINSININSROCKYINSIVINS can be read as “CAPTAIN IVAN ACTOR IN ROCKY IV”, a clue for DOLPH, and appending INS gives DOLPHINS, which contains PHI. The wall art indicates that we use the pyramid from the original puzzle to fit DOL?NS, which gives a U.

Caesar Studies

The text ULKTY GYPJZTZJK YVEUIZB is DUTCH PHYSICIST HENDRIK but shifted by 17. Shifting its answer LORENTZ by 17 gives CFIVEKQ, so like in the original puzzle we read the fifth letter of CFIVEKQ to get E.

Classical Influences on Modern Architecture

The skyscraper solution is:

The shaded squares sum to 36, and the Lego Architecture set 21036 is the Arc de Triomphe, which looks like a lowercase N.

Lesser Labors

The strings anagram to ONLY IVO GRAHAM EQUALS ONE. Ivo Graham is in the second position in the latest season of Taskmaster, so we extract 01000, binary for H.

The Lernaean Hydra

The art displays one hydra head stump with the word TIMBERLAND, and an arrow to two hydra heads. Burning the head (just like in the puzzle) leaves ASHLAND, an Oregon city, and because there are two new heads we extract the second letter S.

Ozymandias

The wall here is broken into squares, so we can count them to find the dimensions of the broken image: it’s 18x11, so it’s the flag of Finland. Extracting the first letter as instructed gives F.