2023 April Fool's Puzzle Competition Summary & Solutions

• image #1: Flag of Seychelles
• image #2: Diagram of where Seychelles is on a map

This level was intended as a gentle introduction to the idea of googling unrelated clues and passwords.

The answers are four countries, one per poem. Concatenating the 2-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 gives the solution.

1. Albania (AL), on the adriatic and ionian sea. The rest of the poem refers to its flag.
2. Indonesia (ID), which has 17,508 islands.
3. Ecuador (EC). Not Equatorial Guinea. It's named after the equator, which split ~10 countries in half, along with the world.
4. United States of America (US). The three landmarks named are in the USA.

These are the flags of

1. Bhutan and
2. Wales

The solution is what they are missing, their dragon.

This wasn't actually intended to be a puzzle. Oops.

The satellite photos are of five capital cities, one per continent:

1. Wellington, New Zealand (NZ)
2. Washington DC, United States (US)
3. London, United Kingdom (GB)
4. Beijing, China (CN)
5. Cairo, Egypt (EG)

The solution was the country codes of those countries, catenated together: nzusgbcneg

Photos came from open-source satellite data. Thanks Sentinel Hub!

Eight Lego dioramas of scenes containing famous Danes. Players are expected to find their names and fill out the yellow and blue tiles. The names are (from left to right, top to down):

• TYCHO BRAHE (astronomer)
• OLSEN BANDEN (criminal gang of TV series)
• CAROLINE WOZNIACKI (tennis player)
• VITUS BERING (explorer and cartographer)
• MARTINUS RØRBYE (painter)
• OLE KIRK CHRISTIANSEN (Lego inventor)
• HARALD BLÅTAND (king)
• BJARNE STROUSTRUP (programmer/inventor of C++)

The blue tiles give “HELSINGØRSLOT”, or Helsingør castle. The solution is its famous castle immortalized in Hamlet, Kronborg

The player is given 12 crossword clues. Each one hints at a different country. The correct crossword answer is the TLD (also the two-letter country code, in general) of the country.

Answers:

1. australia (.au). Australia is the only country that is also a continent.
2. finland (.fi). Finland's national animals are the brown bear and the whooper swan.
3. eritrea (.er). "Eritrea" translates as "Red Sea".
4. san tome and principe (.st). San Tome's national anthem is "Total Independence".
5. netherlands antilles (.an). Formed 1954-12-15, dissolved 2010-10-10.
6. germany (.de). The german flag is black, red, and gold. Its coat of arms is a black eagle.
7. namibia (.na). The two languages are Rukwangali and Oshikwanyama. These are spoken in Namibia and Angola, but they are national languages is Namibia.
8. USA (.us). Both organizations are headquartered in the USA.
9. russia (.ru). Chamomile is the national flower of Russia. The crops listed are the ones were Russia is the #1 exporter in the world.
10. india (.in). The tiger and river dolphin are national animals of India. +91 is its international telephone code.
11. spain (.es). Spain has borders with the five countries listed.
12. new zealand (.nz). Both clues are in Maori, the language of the Maori natives of New Zealand. "Kapua ma roa" is a poor re-translation of Aotearoa, a name for New Zealand.

The top line of the crossword reads "Auferstanden aus Ruinen", the national anthem of East Germany (which has the unused TLD .dd).

The solution is eastgermany.

The clues refer to various names for Niue.

• Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Niue is called "The Rock" or "Rock of Polynesia"
• "Macho Man" Randy Savage: Niue was called "Savage Island" after a visit by Captain James Cook.
• New Fort Roughs: Fort Roughs is the original name of the famous micronation Sealand. "New Sealand", "New Zealand", get it? Niue has been part of New Zealand and remains associated.
• Monty Python Horses: These are coconuts (see Monty Python and the Holy Grail). "Niue" translated as "behold the coconut"

The hints:

• ★★★★★ Flag: Niue's flag has 5 five-pointed stars
• "Ate the Sun": "The Shark that Ate the Sun " is a novel by John Puhiatau Pule from Niue.
• Dark Sky Country: Niue is the first (and only) full-country member of the International Dark Sky Association.

The title is a very obscure joke about Captain Cook misidentifying hulahula as blood.

Each of the clues A-G is a national anthem run through a thesaurus to obscure it.

The anthems are:

• A. "Kimi Ga Yo" of Japan.
• B. "Il Canto degli Italiana" of Italy. It starts from the second verse, which was an error. The hints are the sheet music and a music clip of "Tarantella Napoletana".
• C. "O Canada" of Canada
• D. "The Star-Spangled Banner" of the United States
• E. "God Save the King (Queen)" of the United Kingdom
• F. "Deutschlandlied" (3rd verse only), of Germany. Since 1952, the national anthem has been only the third stanza. The hint is "99 red balloons".
• G. "La Marseillaise" of France.

These seven nations make up the Group of Seven, commonly called the G7.

Encoding "捯敀摂樵匳甦倣報 杌核慍帰娮圠祩渲" as UTF16-BE gives, as raw bytes: S="coe@dBj5S3u&P#X1\x00 gLh8aM^0Z.W yin2".

These happen to all be valid ASCII/UTF8, confirming the correct path. yin/yin2/yín is a reference to the yin-yang symbol. It also confirms you're on the right track.

"䷚䷊䷛䷈䷒䷊䷔䷞ ䷐䷛䷌䷊䷛䷍䷟䷇" are I Ching hexagrams. Following the King Wen numbering of hexagrams, they read: N=[27,11,28,9,19,11,21,31,17,28,13,11,28,14,32,8]

Using N as a lookup table into S, results in the string "Wu Shuang Pu #25", which hints at the final solution: huamulan

A "treasure map". Directions are given with a 2048-point compass rose, and esoteric units.

The starting location is the fictional null island at 0°N 0°E.

Translated from esoteric languages, the units are: lightseconds; stadia (olympian); fingers (egyptian); parasang; cubits (babylonian); smoots; cubits (egyptian).

Translated to standard units and degrees, the directions read: From 0° lat 0° long, travel 4995km at 32.63°E, 601km at 75.33°W, 1041km at 130.92°E, 687km at 18.60°W, 1631km at 102.86°E, 1661km at 63.97°W, 953km at 157.50°E.

As hinted in "The real treasure is the friends you made along the way", the seven points are important, not the final destination.

The points are, in order:

• Null island
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Statue of Zeus in Olympia
• Lighthouse of Alexandria
• Mausoleum at Helicarnassus
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Temple of Artemis in Lydia
• Great Pyramid of Giza

The solution is sevenwonders

London, Paris, and Poland are all cities on Christmas Island, also known as: kiritimati

The solution to the nonogram is a visual picture of: italy

The beeps in the audio are DTMF phone dialing tones. They decode as:

• (test.wav) 123456789*0# - this was for testing decoders only.
• (hint-dontcall.wav) 13052647772 - a phone number for IATA, an airport authority
• (clue.wav) 01168642###### / 01155663565#### / 01135821####### / 1231223####. None of these are valid phone numbers, although they would be if you put numbers in place of the "#" symbols.

Each of the clues represents an area code, as dialed from the USA.

• International call (011) Kiribati (+686) Nonouti (42)
• International call (011) Brazil (+55) Mato Grosso (21) Aripuanã (3565)
• International call (011) Finland (+358) Pori (21)
• North America, USA (implicit +1) Michigan (231) Traverse City (+223)

The clue "K-N; B-M-A; F-P; N-U-M-T" is the first letters of each location above, to confirm progress.

Each city has only one airport:

• Nonouti Airport (NON)
• Aripuanã Airport (AIR)
• Pori Airport (POR)
• Cherry Capital Airport (TVC)

Putting together the airport codes gives "NONAIRPORTVC". Or combining with the sed hint, "NO AIRPORT V.C."

The answer is one of the handful of countries with no airport: vaticancity

Each photograph was of a capital from above. See A1 for the format and details. The capitals were:

1. Helsinki, Finland (FI)
2. Canberra, Australia (AU)
3. Montevideo, Uruguay (UY)
4. Singapore, Singapore (SG)
5. Cape Town, South Africa (ZA)

This is a wiki-hunt style puzzle. The player is given an image with four marshalls, hinting the player toward the Marshall Islands.

• Virgil Earp, a US Marshall at the OK corral
• Birth certificate of Alphonse Juin, the Marshall of France
• Marshall Law, a Tekken fighting game character
• Kris Marshall, a well-known british actor

Genesis 14:18 reads

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.)

This leads the player to the Domain of Melchizedek, a micronation involved in bank fraud.

The Dominion of Melchizedek claims the Bokak Atoll in the Marshall islands, also known as: taongi

Hints:

• A stick chart from the Marshall Islands
• A croissant, hinting at the shape of taongi
• priestofgodmosthigh.com hints at "Domain of Melchizedek" (I misremembered "Dominion" as "Domain")
• "uninhabited" hints at taongi
• "micronation" hints at Dominion of Melchizedek

"+" represents simple concatenation of 2-letter country codes. However, some flags are backwards.

The flags in order are: - Spain (ES) - Aruba, Reversed (AW <> WA) - Italy, Reversed (IT <> TI) - Nicuragua (NI)

The solution is "eswatini"

21 pictures are given of regional food dishes, 19 of which have letters superimposed on them.

The correctly identified dishes are:

• Baguette:O
• Mochi:_
• Injera:L
• Lokum (Turkish Delight):Y
• Natto:C
• Turkish Coffee:O
• Tajine:R
• Espresso:C
• Lavash:R
• Fish and Chips:E
• Champagne:_
• Chambo (with Nsima):S
• Jalebi:E
• Vodka:T
• Baklava:N
• Black Pudding / Blood Sausage:I
• Bunny Chow:N
• Borscht:O
• Poori:A
• Wonton (Soup): S
• Salted Licorice / Salmiak: R

Arranging the foods in alphabetical order, the letters on them spell "ONIONS CELERY CARROTS".

The answer is mirepoix.

Each photograph was of a capital from above. See A1 for the format and details. The capitals were:

1. Paramaribo, Suriname (SR)
2. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PG)
3. Valletta, Malta (MT)
4. Kampala, Uganda (UG)
5. Delhi, India (IN)

A chat "transcript" with GPT is given. There is a section in a mysterious script.

The first step is to identify the script as one of the three Georgian scripts, Mkedruli.

This gives access to https://files.ircpuzzles.org/2023/mkhedruli.txt, which gives no new information but saves time transcribing.

Transliterating

თგჰაუზმჯბჰზჯუჰფ ჰგმზქზგგმოფუთოა უჯლგუჰმლლსდფდჶთ ეთმევჯნექნთუონდ

to latin characters and ignoring newlines gives

tghauzmjbhzjuhphgmzkzggmoputoaujlguhmllsdpdftetmevjnekntuond

Taking odd positions ("odd" is hinted in the instructions, in "odd, even", and in "two different null ciphers") gives:

thumbzupgzzgououlumlddttejenun

A subtle thumbs up in the image and the hint "1. 👍...nun" confirm correctness.

Appending the section of latin text to the result is given as explicit instructions in the text as well as step 1.5 in the hints.

thumbzupgzzgououlumlddttejenunURMUREEZFFMKPKOUOPARAUPFRTVDFTJJDMMTSSTOPAZJONJIFINFGFIUMTTG

Taking letters which occur only an even number of times (hinted in the instructions, hinted by "odd, even", given in "2. keep only even occurences", and hinted by null cipher) gives:

ggoollddeennrreekkoorrddssoonngg

Or removing double letters:

goldenrekordsong

The name of the Georgian song on the Voyager Golden Record is the solution, chakrulo (there is a variant spelling mentioned in the hints)

The player was presented with an HTML page filled with rainbow text and nyancat references.

There were 7 marquee hints (some blinking), each some kind of bad joke or pun related to countries or cats.

The largest element was a 5x10 grid of colored words, many related to cats, the puns, or countries.

Almost everything was a red herring--the foreground colors and text generally didn't matter. Instead, the only interesting thing was two adjacent cells, with the colors "Purrple" (hinted at by two puns and one of the topic hints) and "LightRed" (hinted at by a topic hint). Neither was a real HTML color, but they render as blue.

Digging into why, the player would learn that in fact ANY word renders as a color in a complicated way (somewhat hinted by "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6" at the bottom of the page).

Rendering the color for each word (many players chose to do this as a color/bgcolor) gave a series of 50 colored squares. Arranging them into a 7x7 grid ("square" was in several puns) and a leftover black square gave the final picture.

The grid colors matched the Wiphala flag, the solution.