You Are Games:
Letters In Boxes #1
Need a little puzzle diversion? Hop in line and get ready to strain your brain! Welcome to Letters In Boxes, a new puzzle series from us here at JIG that's black and white and read all over! [Let's not make that a catchphrase, thanks. -Ed.] If you can work your way through the wordy woes, you could win a wonderful prize!
Here's how to play: Below, you'll find a small word puzzle. If you click on the puzzle, you can bring up the image in its own window. Follow the directions in the puzzle, and with a bit of mental knowhow, you should come up with an answer. To see if you're right, move up to the address bar (for example, this first puzzle's filename is https://jayisgames.com/images/lib1start.jpg) and change the name of the file to the answer you've found (make sure you keep it as a .jpg filename). If you're right, you've found the next puzzle! If not, you'll probably get an error message. Sorry, we only wish we could put a picture of a sorrowful walrus on every possible incorrect filename.
This batch of puzzles contains four puzzles to solve. On the fourth puzzle, you'll find the email address for sending your final answer. We'll hand out a prize to the first correct entry we receive, plus four additional randomly-selected correct entries. You must be at least 13 years of age to enter. Only one submission per participant, please. Offer void where prohibited. Your deadline for submitting your answers is Monday, May 30th at 11:59 PM (GMT-5:00). Good luck on cracking these devious ticklers, it could pay off for you in the end!
Update: Congratulations to these five winners! :DAll five winners were given a choice of prizes, and all prizes have been delivered. Congratulations and thanks for playing with us! Look for another Letters in Boxes again soon!
- phatjak69 ...First!
- majack
- Pirho Tau
- Grizix
- Ryan
My entry's sent in. Was I too quick?
No, but you're ineligible, SonicLover. ;)
Wasn't all that bad really. Stuck on the 3rd one for a bit, but other than that, the puzzles were simple and straightforward.
Once I figured out what the first puzzle was asking for it was simple.
Got stuck on that, though.
Was I first? Probably not.
I am stumped on the second one...I think I may be making it harder than it is.
Ooo, very fun! The second one tripped me up a little, but managed to finish them off. Hope there're many more to come.
I'm Stumped on the second. I'll keep tryin', but I doubt it.
Ha Ha, wish me luck.
Second puzzle makes no sense to me.
Solved it! I think...
Short but fun.
im stuck on the last one :P
The fourth puzzle is my favorite kind! :)
I'm... ineligible?
...I think I need to lie down.
Stuck on puzzle number 2. Thats really hard.
I didn't see this until it went out on Twitter. Felt like I was fast, but a two hour handicap is just too much to overcome.
Any clues for #2?
I didn't see it til later either, Gorillo. But according to the rules above, only first correct entry is based on speed. Four other winners chosen at random from all other correct entries.
Oh, I love this! Even if there were no prizes, I would do one of these every week. It's like a miniature ARG of sorts.
Whomever designed the puzzles did a good job! The fact that you get confirmation on the first three answers by reaching the next puzzle in sequence is really nice, and the last puzzle was designed in a way that you could be very confident of your correct answer before you sent it. Whether by design or coincidence, it was a really clever set of puzzles!
As Gorillo stated, given the relative simplicity of the puzzles the first prize basically went to the first person to notice the twitter. Maybe this is by design, but I'd have much rather liked to know a day in advance the puzzle is coming out so I can be ready to solve as quickly as possible! By the time I came home today I already knew there was no way I could be first.
Of course, four prizes are given out at random, so if the intent was to give twitter members the advantage I could easily live with that.
Really hope to see more of these! I love these kinds of puzzles!
Well that was fun :)
I feel like an idiot, I'm completely stumped by the first one.
What I've figured out so far:
The letters that go in the boxes would be "terwli." Not like any animal I know. Anagrams turn up nothing.
Every other line reads "better switch middle." I interpreted this as either change the middle lines, middle letters, or rot13 it. None turned up anything.
Blacking out all of the t's, e's, r's, w's, l's, and i's did nothing.
Anyone want to give me a subtle hint?
That was fun! I can never get enough word games.
Here's your hint, Fredzorz:
You're overthinking your incorrect results. Remember: some of those columns have more than one solution.
@Fredzorz: there is more than one possibility for each 6 letter word. Way more. You'll know you found the right possibility when you have
an animal
Fredzorz:
You're definitely overthinking it.
You just need to fill in the blank spots. Sometimes there's more than one letter that could complete the word (for example: "m_te" could be "mute" or "mite" or "mote").
Hmm. Thanks for the tip, you're right, I did realize that there were several more options for most of the columns. As I still haven't gotten the answer yet, is it a common animal, or something more obscure (like tapir, or something weird like that)?
It's relatively common. Just keep leafing through the possibilities until it clicks.
Ah, thanks so much. (I'm not too proud to say that I ended up googling "animals with six letter names" and cross referencing with my list.)
Well, I did finally beat it. After that initial failure, I found it fairly easy. Thanks to soniclover and nerdypants, wouldn't have gotten it without you two.
Huh. Everything I did looked decent up to the last entry on the 4th puzzle, but I got a mailer daemon error. I've even tried the "go through the alphabet" trick. Guess I'm not gonna figure it out, but it was such a fun puzzle set regardless! More please!
Second page baffles me. Do the black boxes represent a space, or do they simply signify that nothing goes there?
@kleril: Treat those black blocks as you would treat them if it was a crossword, even though it's NOT. ;)
I guess I am stumped I got a pic of a leader board with jayisgames and words at the top
Solved. I'm clearly not the first entry, but I'm really hoping I get picked as a secondary. (I don't win often enough.)
Took me a little bit to get rolling, but once I cracked the first puzzle the rest went pretty smoothly. Nicely done!
can someoone give me a hint for the second page? im really stuck
I think i figured out what animal then the answer i was lookin for then the third one i was lost in space lol
I am lost
Second page hints:
Within a row, the black squares mean nothing. For instance, C_AB would be "cab".
But, if you visit another row further down, a row with four empty spaces, you might add a letter to C_AB and get "crab".
OK, think I figured it out. Had some trouble with the first one (had the right idea pretty quickly but missed some possibilities,) the second and fourth ones were pretty easy to figure out, and the third one took a little bit of going off completely in the wrong direction before it clicked.
The second one was killing me, though in retrospect I see why I should have been able to figure out how it worked.
The rest seemed much easier by comparison. A fun little diversion.
fun. thanks everyone for the hints for #2.
... the last one is just too much!!!
The last one is simply a...
...word ladder. You change 1 letter going from row to row, like the following:
row
rot
rat
cat
Hope that helps?
kind of =) ty
I need help.
I'm sure i tried every possible path for "answer" on the third one. Or did i miss one?
Sent my entry in! Now I guess just cross my fingers and twiddle my thumbs.
That was a nice break from working on finals. Still required thinking, but a different sort of thinking. Just the thing I needed.
I'm stuck on the third one. I thought I had to trace A->N->S->W->E->R but I got nothing. Did I miss a possible trail? Or am i doing it wrong?
Does it have something to do with
North South West East?
Thanks everyone for the hints on the second one... it made this so enjoyable!
@cams:
You are looking to trace the word "ANSWER", but it DEFINITELY doesn't have to do with N/S/E/W.
Try looking for the answer in a straight line.
That was fun. By coincidence, the meeting I went to today was about trading riddles, so that helped me get in the mood for this. I felt that the puzzles got easier as I went along, but I don't have a problem with this. It took me a strangely long time to get the 3rd one, even though I knew what I was supposed to do from the start. The last one, however, I finished in seconds.
I really enjoyed that. Thank you!
Puzzles that even I, as a german could solve on my own. with quite a bit of help of the internet and synonym databases. i thought the difficulty was building up nicely, the last one surely took me longest. didn't check the time, but i think it took me about 30-45 minutes all in all. i'm not 100% percent sure about my last answer though, even though from my logic there could only be two answers. must be a saying in english i never heard about. hope i win, then you'll have to send the prize to germany :) greets
Got it! That was fun...reminded me of all those old Change-The-URL riddle sites that were so prominent a few years ago, only without the "drive me out of my mind trying to figure it out" part.
As English isn't my native language, the last puzzle was a little challenging. But it was fun to figure it out and the puzzles are well designed.
Could you just explain a little bit more about that, nerdypants? I'm afraid I couldn't understand the hints...:$
Raddya:
The letters in each column are the same.
The letters in each row spell a word.
So, for instance
WRESTLING
W.EST.... (direction a young man should go)
.REST.... (lie on a couch)
...ST.ING (angry bee does this)
...S.LING (David's weapon)
Hope this helps.
I think sleeping helped I managed to get to the Fourth one. And know I am waking up my Brain!!
thanks a load alkanar :)
Onto the third one! I found where, ahem, it matches up. Can't find the significance of it though...ah well, I guess it has to be *slightly* hard!
I'm an English speaker and I'm still confused by one of the puzzles on the fourth puzzle...
think the bear clue might be an American thing?
Edd:
Wait a second, why am I getting this message when I try to post a spoiler: Invalid Comment Format: unmatched start tag, ""?
My god, it wouldn't even let me post the tag. The above is the tag, with spaces added.
I figured it out!
The first was a toughie, but I eventually worked it out on my own. The second would have been impossible if someone hadn't nudged me in the right direction -- I was approaching it ALL wrong -- but once I got the hint, it solved itself.
The third was by far the quickest and the fourth was a breeze. :)
Wow, I didn't think I'd get through it, but I finally understood the second puzzle with Alkalannar's hint.
I know I wasn't even remotely close to first, but entered anyway in hopes of being one of the random 4. First one threw me for loop until I had looked at it on four separate occasions, for the life of me I couldn't wrap my head around what I had to do. I blame the allergy medicine I'm on though. :P
Okay, what is the deal with part 3?
I have found two possible answers, one which is in a straight line and one which is bent, but none of them work? I am sure they are both English words, and they both spell out ANSWER on the left grid.
I'm confused Jay, why is Sonic ineligible?
I really enjoyed these puzzles. It was lots of fun and just the right level of difficulty for me.
Edd:
The bear clue is an American thing. I had to resort to asking my American friends for help to get the answer. It was the only clue I couldn't work out and they found it really easy.
Responding to the fourth puzzle discussion:
I am American and I didn't understand the bear clue until I did a search. *shrug*
Great puzzles!
Out of interest, where could I find the rules for the contest? I'm curious if it's US-only, and other than a vague "void where prohibited", I don't see anything suggesting that it's not open outside that area; however, that depends on exactly 'where prohibited' is.
Matt, apparently in some places it goes against the laws to enter such contests. Thus, prohibited there.
ThemePark, this may be going overboard with the hints, but
on the left side, you can find the word "answer" in its entirety somewhere
Look at the right side after that
Did anyone else try to enter the final answer as another file name? I was so caught up in the puzzles that I didn't even notice
the email instructions at the bottom.
i think any visitor to JIG can enter. SonicLover is ineligible coz he's ONE OF THEM (sinister voice)
Is it prohibited in the Philippines? I'm 11, and think I found the answer. Mom says I can send it in her name.
[You will have to have your mother send in the answer for you. You are ineligible being under 13 years of age. -Jay]
Fantastic puzzle, some creative ideas here I haven't seen before. I'm inspired to go finish mine...
Well, finally figured it out. I know I'm not the first one, but it was really fun anyway! I <3 word games and puzzles!
Sorry, I LOVE word games and puzzles like these! Not sure why it cut some of my comment off
[It's because you used an open tag indicator "<" without using it's HTML entity "<" (without the quotes). The browser thinks it's the beginning of a new tag, so it ignores what comes after that. Anyways, I fixed your previous comment. -Jay]
This was a really easy puzzle by JIG standards.
I solved it in about ten minutes, without any hints.
Jay, I'm ashamed of you! ;)
[Truth be told, Steve had a much more difficult puzzle set up first, but I suggested that we start out easy so more people can participate and get the feel for these new puzzles. We plan to have more again soon. :) -Jay]
I was confused about how the second one worked before some hints here (and it took a while to figure out the answer to the first puzzle), but otherwise I figured stuff out pretty quickly. I feel smart :D
Really clever puzzles. Would like to see many more of these!
I loved playing, even if I don't get picked for the prize. I just wish it was more interactive. I had to copy the images into paint so I could solve them. It would be so much easier if I could just type on the image.
[Hmm, that's really a great suggestion, and it may be possible to do something like that and yet keep the URL-changing component. The file extension would have to be .swf instead of .jpg, but that's not really a problem. Let me give it some thought for the next one. Thanks for the feedback. :) -Jay]
About the 4th puzzle can anyone give me a hint about the
"everything changed by the middle" I got every word of the puzzle and I'm only missing the answer. But it doesn't seem to be a connection between the upper and the lower parts of the puzzle
How do you play? I clicked on the image but there are no instructions...so frustrating :'(
Who won ?
Since the contest deadline has passed, here are the answers for this set of puzzles:
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 1 Answer
The challenge here was to find a word that could be placed in that empty row so that all of the columns spelled out words. The tricky bit was that each vertical word had multiple possibilities (ANTICS/ATTICS, BATTER/BETTER/BITTER/BUTTER, etc.). With a bit of trial and error, you hopefully came up with the animal answer, TURTLE (spelling ATTICS, BUTTER, CROWNS, STITCH, FLIGHT, MEDDLE).
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 2 Answer
The trick to this puzzle was to realize that the same letter appeared throughout its column, with black spaces representing times when the letter didn't occur in a clue word. The answers to the clues were PIE, SIN, PINE, SPIN, and SINE, which lead to the final answer at the top, SPINE.
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 3 Answer
This puzzle featured a double word search. There were plenty of six letter words hidden in the grid on the right, but you had to find the one that was in the same position as the word ANSWER in the left-hand grid... and believe it or not, it appears only once! The word in the corresponding position on the right-hand grid was RECORD.
Puzzle 4
Puzzle 4 Answer
The final puzzle in this series was a word ladder, where you change one letter in the previous word to get a new word. The message on the left indicated that every letter in either the first or last word (CRASH and BRAIN, respectively) had changed by the middle clue. This caveat was necessary, otherwise FLAWN might have been an answer to this puzzle! The solved word ladder was CRASH, CLASH, CLASS, CLAWS, FLAWS, FLOWS, FLOWN, FROWN, BROWN, BRAWN, BRAIN. The middle word, FLOWS, was the final answer. (Also, apologies to our international participants who might have struggled with the "bear CLAWS" clue.)
Winners will be announced soon!
I don't get it, I got the answer right and double-checked the email address, but it sent it back to me in error.
[What was the error? And what was the email address you sent it to? -Jay]
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