Solution: Wah-gyu Stakes

Written by Kevin Lin & Shuxin Zhan
Art: Melissa Yuan

This puzzle was themed around the multiplayer browser RPG Kingdom of Loathing.

Each mini-puzzle was one of the 6 classes from Kingdom of Loathing and gave a solution that was a made-up move for the new "puzzle hunter" class.

Seal Clubber

The rebuses correspond with animals that are skills from the seal clubber. Index # of clubs into the skills.

Number	Rebus Explanation	Rebus Solution	Skill	Index #	Letter
1	ORC+A	ORCA	IRE	3	E
2	POTTER-P	OTTER	AUDACITY	8	Y
3	RAIN+DEER	REINDEER	RAGE	4	E
4	SOCK-S	AUK	SCOWL	3	O
5	elon MUSK+OX	MUSKOX	FORTITUDE	1	F
6	W+EASEL	WEASEL	THIRST	1	T
7	WOOL+V+DURENE-D	WOLVERINE	WRATH	5	H
8	PEN+G+WIN	PENGUIN	PRECISION	3	E
9	MOO+SS	MOOSE	MUSK	1	M
10	BELL+OOGA	BELUGA	BUOYANCY	5	A
11	S+NO+L+SHEPARD-SH	SNOWLEOPARD	SEETHING	8	G
12	mrs. PUFF+FIN	PUFFIN	PRIDE	5	E

This gives the answer EYEOFTHEMAGE.

Turtle Tamer

The 7 images are the 7 aspects from the ultimate legendary epic special attack of Turtle Tamers, Turtle of Seven Tails. This gives you the letters associated with each segment of the 7-segment display (and for the NYTimes Spelling Bee layout).

Then the answers to the clues can be spelled out using NYTimes Spelling Bee rules, and on the 7-segment display they will make letters.

Clue

Clue Answer

7-Segment Display

Letter formed

Trifling

MERE

Film unit

REEL

When I may see you

LATER

Primate

LEMUR

This puzzle pt. 1

TURTLE

A data structure

TREE

Necklace

AMULET

It may be dank

MEME

This puzzle pt. 2

TAMER

This gives the answer, CLUEGUARD.

Pastamancer

The pastamancer clues all have answers containing "Ben" which is the name of all Vermincellis. In the word search, these answers are all here with "Ben" replaced with a letter.

Clue	Answer
Backer	BENEFACTOR
Determined	HELLBENT
German luxury car	MERCEDESBENZ
Harmless	BENIGN
Like a sponge	ABSORBENT
London landmark	BIGBEN
Allergy medicine brand	BENADRYL
Officeholder	INCUMBENT
Small car accident	FENDERBENDER
Standard	BENCHMARK
Wood workers' table	WORKBENCH

Reading the replaced letters (highlighted in yellow) in order in the grid yields MINDBENDING.

Sauceror

Solving these Tapas and looking at the letters left over will give a sauce and a number. Associating these sauces with ranks for the Sauceror and using the number to index into the title (using the part without the sauce) will give a letter, altogether spelling out the answer. The other cells in each Tapas puzzle spelled out some variant on "red herring" by stating a shade of red and a fish, indicating that you should not focus on those.

ALFREDO FIVE	SAGE TWO
CILANTRO TWO	CORIANDER ONE
PARSLEY SIX	BAYLEAF THREE
TARRAGON SEVEN	MARINARA ONE
SESAME SEVEN	THYME TWO
ALLSPICE FOUR	ROSEMARY FIVE

Spice	Title	Index	Letter
ALFREDO	ARCHMAGE	5	M
CILANTRO	SEER	2	E
PARSLEY	ENCHANTER	6	N
TARRAGON	THAUMATURGE	7	T
SESAME	SOOTHSAYER	7	A
ALLSPICE	ACOLYTE	4	L
SAGE	SAGE	2	A
CORIANDER	CONJURER	1	C
BAYLEAF	BRUJO	3	U
MARINARA	MAGE	1	M
THYME	WIZARD	2	I
ROSEMARY	DIVINER	5	N

This gives the answer MENTALACUMIN.

Disco Bandit

Filling out the dropquotes gives clue phrases that resolve to fictional alcohols in KoL. These are references to real-life alcohols, and filling those in and using the enumerations, we get the answer SEARCHINGSTARE.

T	H	I	S		W	I	T	H		A
	C	O	C	K	T	A	I	L		O
N	I	O	N		M	A	K	E	S
A		G	I	B	S	O	N

CALCUTTA EMERALD ⇒

P	U	T		A		B	O	T	T	L
E		O	F		R	U	M		I	N
	N	A	S	H		C	R	O	S	B
Y	S		S	T	I	L	L

LIEUTENANT FREEMAN ⇒

P	R	E	M	I	U	M		B	O	T
T	L	E		O	F		B	O	O	Z
E		I	N		A		T	E	Q	U
I	L	A		S	U	N	S	E	T

JORGES INSONTE ⇒

J	O	S	E		C	U	E	R	V	O
		10			5		2	13

Accordion Thief

Identifying the stolen accordions using the clues, we use 20% of the selling cost as indexes into the original owners of the accordions to get letters.

Description	Accordion	Owner	Cost/5	Letter
This one appears to strongly dislike conflict.	peace accordion	WARHIPPYSPACECADET	10	P
This one appears to not follow rules by Greek mathematicians.	non-Euclidean non-accordion	CUBISTBULL	8	U
This one appears to be a non-manual muse.	autocalliope	STEAMPUNKGIANT	8	N
This one appears to be covered in bat excrement.	guancertina	PERPENDICULARBAT	3	R
This one appears to be related to a song by The Who.	mama's squeezebox	WERECOUGAR	2	E
This one appears to be small and charged.	accord ion	HELLION	4	L
This one appears to originate from Louisiana.	cajun accordion	LIVELYCAJUNACCORDIONIST	2	I
This one appears to wake people up.	alarm accordion	ALERTMARIACHI	10	A
This one appears to store many important documents inside.	accordion file	KNOBGOBLINACCOUNTANT	4	B
This one appears to phase through physical objects.	ghost accordion	SKELETALSOMMELIER	8	L
This one appears to focus on 1880s French music.	Bal-musette accordion	DEPRESSINGFRENCHACCORDIONIST	2	E
This one appears to be played by very short people and a small version of a small version of a small thing.	pygmy concertinette	DRUNKPYGMY	9	M
This one appears to be in the male range and is fairly deep.	baritone accordion	BAR	2	A
This one appears to focus on the number 5.	pentatonic accordion	NINJASNOWMANCHOPSTICKS	6	S
This one appears to be skeletal and popular in Argentina.	bone bandoneon	TOOTHYSKLELTON	5	H

This gives the answer PUNRELIABLEMASH.

Final Answer

Inputting each move name will give a response with your damage, the monster’s damage, and a number of ouch sounds. Sorting by the number of ouch sounds and using the damages to index into the move names gives the final answer MEDIUM RARITY.

# of ows	Class	Move	Your damage	Your damage letter	Monster damage	Monster damage letter
1	Accordion Thief	PUNRELIABLEMASH	12	M	4	R
2	Disco Bandit	SEARCHINGSTARE	14	E	3	A
3	Turtle Tamer	CLUEGUARD	9	D	8	R
4	Pastamancer	MINDBENDING	2	I	9	I
5	Sauceror	MENTALACUMIN	9	U	4	T
6	Seal Clubber	EYEOFTHEMAGE	9	M	2	Y

Author’s Notes

The theme of this puzzle was conceived starting with the desired answer of MEDIUMRARITY. This answer lended itself well to a theme about steak (rarities of meat), which in turn led to Kingdom of Loathing (KoL), a game that interestingly uses meat as currency. (This is apparently to parody/highlight the strange phenomenon where enemies in video games always drop currency, even when it makes no sense for them to carry currency.)

We ended up deciding on the format of this puzzle as mini-puzzles as it is a round 1 puzzle, and mini-puzzles tend to be more approachable and easier to find areas to make progress on. Even if solvers got stuck on one or two of the mini-puzzles, having enough of them solved would be enough to progress and eventually solve the puzzle. It also let us showcase a bunch of common puzzling techniques and structures. (This was before round 3 was created, so sorry if it felt like there were a lot of mini-puzzle puzzles!)

Originally, we worked from the wordplay and intended the title of the puzzle to be "High Steaks/High Stakes," and so the puzzle's parts were planned around the activities in KoL's Casino. The original mini-puzzles of the first iteration, however, were weakly themed and difficult, largely because theming around a very niche part of a somewhat niche game didn't give much material to work with. We eventually shifted the theming to a more central part of the game, the 6 classes, and ended up scrapping the original puzzles over iterations. The resulting mini-puzzles stuck much closer to the central theme and were more approachable, usually by just having 1 or 2 small "aha"s in each mini-puzzle. This unfortunately led to some great puzzle ideas being shelved, like a poker logic puzzle and a pirate coin dilemma puzzle - but maybe they'll come back some day.

To tie the mini-puzzles together, we decided to theme around fighting a puzzle monster using thematically silly puzzle moves for a "Puzzle Hunter" class. This gave some context to the theming of mini-puzzles around character classes (each class would help out the puzzle hunter by teaching them a move to use) and also gave us an opportunity to have our artists make some beautifully thematic stick-figure art.

This puzzle ended up definitely being a bit longer than some of the other round 1 puzzles, but solve-times showed it was reasonably in line. Ideally teams could solve without needing to solve all the mini-puzzles (ideally 4-5 would be enough to extract, 3 for clever guessers). The hardest puzzle of the set was definitely Turtle Tamer, which had a seven-segment display for extraction, which threw some teams off, and Accordion Thief, whose "20% of sales" made for some difficulty in finding appropriate indices.

As a final side note, the move input dialogue box (mini-puzzle checker) was a good source of early action and funny inputs throughout the hunt and provided some great entertainment.