Recently I added a new creature to my snake game collection. But before releasing the new game mode, I created this puzzle. The puzzle has a compass surrounded by 8 different pixel art animals drawn by myself. The answer to the puzzle is the new creature!
I gave people only 24 hours to solve the puzzle, and unsurprisingly no one was able to do it, as far as I am aware 😀 Which is fine, since I wasn’t expecting any person to solve the puzzle solo, unless they worked together with other people!
The puzzle took around 2 days to make. It surprised me how long it takes to make something like this. The puzzle is probably very hard, but also obscure. And probably lacking in clues. If I make another puzzle in the future, I will definitely be nicer and provide more context I think.
Puzzle
Here is the puzzle, everything you need is in the image. I wish you luck in solving it! But the the solution has been posted immediately afterwards, if you get stuck!
Solution
The centre of the image shows a compass with 8 directions, which points to 8 animals.
The top of the image has a poem which spells out SOUTH EAST, using the first letter of the 9 words. This points to the crab on the compass and the 2nd letter of the crab which is R. Since there are two lines and two snakes.
The left side of the image has 9 triangles with 9 numbers inside. They are all prime numbers, except for the 4.
The circles (dots) and rectangles (dashes) are morse code. Which spells out NORTH EAST, and points to the badger. The 4th letter of the badger is G.
The bottom of the image has 4 illustrations of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, which are:
- Water Margin
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Journey to the West
- Dream of the Red Chamber
So the answer is Journey to the West. Since it is the only book with a compass direction in it’s title, which is WEST. The animal to the WEST on the compass is the LION.
Below each Chinese book is a number. The number is in the binary base-2 number system. The 11 below Journey to the West is 3 when converted. The 3rd character of LION is O.
The grid of letters on the right side is a word search and has the word HEX hidden in it.
The arithmetic expression of 15 + 11 – 12 = 14. 14 is represented as E in the hexadecimal base-16 number system. And the E corresponds to EAST on the compass.
The animal to the EAST is the FOX.
So we have: _ROG. Since R is the 2nd letter of crab, O is the 3rd letter of lion, and G is the 4th letter of badger. Now we just need to work out the first letter using the FOX. The first letter of FOX is F. So if we put F into _ROG. Then we get FROG! 🐸
Conclusion
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!
And here is a screenshot from the game. As you can see, it is hard to be a frog, when you are surrounded by snakes! 🐍
Agate DRAGON Games 