Jul 22, 2024 3 min read solutions

Winner and Solution for The Traveler

The Traveler puzzle has been solved and we have a winner. Read on to learn about how to solve the puzzle.

We have a first time winner for The Traveler, Badwolf. They successfully submitted the winning solution Monday July 15th at 2:15pm to be the first to the coin. We had multiple correct submissions over the next 2 hours just behind our winner.

While the coin wasn't found by solving the full puzzle it was found in a way that was anticipated to happen should someone be a true Doctor Who fan, or just a thorough puzzle hunter.

Street view of the virtual Coin location in England

Puzzle Solution Step Notes

Download the puzzle pdf file
Start with the Compass on the Elephant
- Use Google Lens or similar to identify the symbols on the elephant, or just be a totally Dr. Who fan and realize what they are right away. It is Gallifreyan and says Dalek.
  - https://shermansplanet.com/gallifreyan/guide.pdf
  - https://www.letteringdelights.com/lettering/doodlebats/db-whovian-gallifreyan-db-p20482
- Okay what about Daleks and Dr. Who do we need to find?
- We can check the metadata of the PDF file. See some notes in the keyword field “playfair; puzzle hunt; games; retro13; 8-letter-key; tv”
- Alright so TV version of Dr. Who. And we have playfair encoded stanzas needing an 8-letter key.
- On the Elephant we see 2 of 2. Wonder what that means.
  - We also have the elephant. And in the background we have the Battersea station smoke towers.
- We search Doctor Who TV episodes for matches and find the second serial of the second season is one titled The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dalek_Invasion_of_Earth
  - https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dalek_Invasion_of_Earth_(TV_story)
- We have an 8 letter word in the title “Invasion” and we can now decipher the playfair code.
Words of the Path
- The path is before us. And this went unsolved during the search for the coin.
- We get some funky lines of phrases. They don’t seem quite right. But those last two lines seem to make sense.
  - “A year of progression will lead you to a pierced heart holding the key.”
- “Lead you to”, that sounds like some path language.
- Maybe we should look for a year?
- What year was the TV episode set?
  - If you use the Fandom site you will see it is set in 2167.
  - If you tried 2164 or other you might have started to see a pattern and needed to find 2167 to get it right.
- Okay what now? This is the tricky part.
- The year needs to be used on the lines above progressively. 2 + 1 + 6 + 7

So line 1, 2nd character = T, 3rd character = W, 9th character = O, 16th = T.
If you restart the pattern on each line you will find a hidden address in the stanza.
TWO THREE TWO EARLS COURT RD - A real life Tardis, police box, with a virtual tour of the Tardis from the show on google maps.

The Virtual Coin
- The coin would be found by following the defined path or setting out on your own and searching England for a real life Tardis.
- Once you find the Tardis you need to use street view to be looking for the heart pierced by the key.
- And just like that you see the sticker next to the Tardis on Earls Court and enter your winning guess of TLCSW5

A follow-up challenge by FireflyInNM

Once we learned that the path puzzle was not fully solved Amanda, aka FireflyInNM, issued a challenge in discord for people to solve. Within the day and knowing an address needed to be found player Unicorn figured things out.

Thanks again and Next Puzzle

This seemed like a fun and fast paced puzzle for the community. We appreciate you playing and participating in these puzzles as they are released. Your constructive and positive feedback continues to help improve puzzles and also encourages more players to join in each new release. The theme and concept for the next puzzle has been selected but the full puzzle is not yet complete. I will continue to work on it and hope for something later this summer.