Hey Everyone!
A couple weeks ago I had a series of Pirate101 Halloween contests. Most of the contests consisted of me tweeting out coded messages and awarding a code to the first person to decode them. I also had a Hide and Seek in game one day, a word search contest, and a retweet contest. The final contest was a culmination of all these previous contests, a scavenger hunt that included all the previous codes, hide and seek, word search, as well as a retweet "step."
I had estimated that the scavenger hunt would last about 30-45 minutes. However, it took a little over an hour to get three winners. Congrats to those three people, @Tallahasee79 (1st), @BrandonOwlSword (2nd), and @_ConfettiWap (3rd).
People have asked me to post the answers to the scavenger hunt, so here goes. If you would like to see what the rules/requirements were, please use the link above to see them on the original post (under the schedule of contest days & times). Also, please note that the links (not including the Twitter links) I describe in the descriptions below will no longer work, since the scavenger hunt is now over. Ready? Here goes!
Here are better images of all the ciphers included in the above tweet:
Anyway, I have had different types of scavenger hunts in the past, but none were this involved. I had a blast setting everything up and watching you all try to figure out the clues. I hope you all had fun with it too, even though it was one of my harder contests. Leave comments below and let me know if you think I should do something similar in the future, or if I should keep my contests more simple. Thanks for reading! See you soon!
A couple weeks ago I had a series of Pirate101 Halloween contests. Most of the contests consisted of me tweeting out coded messages and awarding a code to the first person to decode them. I also had a Hide and Seek in game one day, a word search contest, and a retweet contest. The final contest was a culmination of all these previous contests, a scavenger hunt that included all the previous codes, hide and seek, word search, as well as a retweet "step."
I had estimated that the scavenger hunt would last about 30-45 minutes. However, it took a little over an hour to get three winners. Congrats to those three people, @Tallahasee79 (1st), @BrandonOwlSword (2nd), and @_ConfettiWap (3rd).
People have asked me to post the answers to the scavenger hunt, so here goes. If you would like to see what the rules/requirements were, please use the link above to see them on the original post (under the schedule of contest days & times). Also, please note that the links (not including the Twitter links) I describe in the descriptions below will no longer work, since the scavenger hunt is now over. Ready? Here goes!
Before the Scavenger Hunt
The evening before the scavenger hunt, I made the following tweet with most of the ciphers people would need to complete the puzzles in the scavenger hunt. All of these ciphers had been used earlier in the week.
Here are better images of all the ciphers included in the above tweet:
 |
| Cipher #1 |
 |
| Cipher #2 |
 |
| Cipher #3 |
 |
| Cipher #4 |
Scavenger Hunt Part 1
Step A - On October 30th, the Scavenger Hunt started at the predetermined time with the following tweet:
Using Cipher #1, this says "Retweet this tweet and I will DM you the next clue. Good luck!" As I saw people retweeting the tweet, I sent them the following DM (Direct Message) on twitter: "Go to the Contact Page on my site." I am pretty sure most people figured out this code. I had A LOT of DMs to send and to be fair, I sent them in the order people retweeted the tweet.
Step B - Once people went to the contact page, they could see the following coded message:
This message can be decoded using the following: Emoji=Letter, (#Emoji)=Number. This is where a lot of people seemed to get stuck, so after 10-15 minutes, I started giving out hints. I don't remember the order I gave the hints in, but eventually I told people that the first four characters spell "HOME."
The emojis are: Horse, Orange, Monkey, Envelope, Pig, Apple, Guitar, Envelope, (#3 music notes), Rainbow, Dog, Snake, Lemon, Ice cream, Dog, Envelope.
The key is to take the first letter of each emoji to spell a word and for the "number" count how many things the emoji represents. So this message said "Home page 3rd slide." This meant to go to the home page of my blog and click on the third slide in the slideshow. That would bring you to a page that no longer exists with the clue for the last step of Part #1.
Step C - This final step was the first of 3 hide and seeks. The page that the previous clue brought people to had the following on it:
 |
| SVAQ ZR VA TNZR NAQ FNL NUBL! |
This clue can be decoded using Cipher #2. It says "Find me in game and say ahoy!" The image shows a clue to the realm and the location. I was hiding in Old Scratch realm in the witch doctor office aka Madame Vadima's Sanctum. When people found me there and said "Ahoy" I gave them the first clue to the next part of the scavenger hunt.
Scavenger Hunt Part 2
Step A - The clue I gave to the people who found me at Madame Vadima's was "Go to the Pirate101 Guides page on my site."
Step B - This brought them to a page with the following word search puzzle at the bottom:
Word List
_ _ _ A _ _
C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ E
_ L _ _ _
_ _ _ T _ _
_ _ _ K
The words that needed to be found gave the clue to Step C: "Pirate Challenge Page Click Bottom Link."
Step C - Clicking the last link of the Pirate Challenge page, it would bring you to another Hide and Seek clue.
 |
| URMW NV ZMW HZB SVB YFXPL! |
This clue can be solved using Cipher #3 and says "Find me and say hey Bucko!" This Autumn was hiding in the Buccaneer office in Ratbeard realm. When people found me and said "Hey Bucko" I gave them the first clue to the third and final part of the scavenger hunt.
Scavenger Hunt Part 3
Step A - The Autumn Walker hiding in Ratbeard realm, she told them "Go to the My Pirates page on my site."
Step B - This brought them to the following code, which could be deciphered using Cipher #4.
This code/cipher works like this: The shape shows you which letters to look at on the cipher. The dot means use the second letter in that shape/area. No dot means use the first letter. A "#" means use the number in that space. So the above code says: "Events Page Link 7" which means people needed to go to my Events page on my blog and click the seventh link.
Step C - The seventh link on the events page went to the final Hide and Seek.
 |
| ..-. .. -. -.. / -- . / .- -. -.. / ... .- -.-- / -.. .. -.. / .. / .-- .. -. / -.-- . - |
This code is Morse Code, which I did not provide a cipher for, since it is such a well known code. There are numerous Morse Code translators out there that can be googled. This code could be copied and pasted into a translator and tell you what it says, which is "Find me and say did I win yet." I was hiding in Avery's office in Avery realm.
That was pretty much the whole Scavenger Hunt. When people found me and said the above phrase, I told them to take a picture with me and direct message it. Once they did that I sent them one of the following three images to reply to my original/first clue tweet with.
These last two steps (with the screenshots and tweeting the images) allowed me to verify who had won and completed all the steps. I was also watching and keeping a list of each pirate who found each of my characters in the correct order. This allowed me to be more fair in case someone had somehow found the wrong Autumn at the wrong time or found a way to skip ahead (which did happen a few times.) I would turn those people away and tell them to keep looking for the correct Autumn.
