Just enjoying my vacation

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“Wow, Rotterdam really has great architecture, but how on earth do you live in something like that?!” you think to yourself while taking a photograph. You’re on vacation and while all your friends stayed in Amsterdam to do the typical ‘Dutch experience’, you didn’t feel like parading the Red Light District while getting high on God knows what type of drug… So you went to visit Rotterdam and you love every moment of it.

After taking the photograph you turn around and notice a stunning girl in the distance. She’s about to enter a big horseshoe shaped building. Long copper red hair, a nice figure and a pair of crazy long legs beneath a red summer dress. For a moment the world stops. You can’t help yourself but to stare stupidly at her like a twelve year old schoolboy. She is so beautiful, it almost hurt your eyes. The elegance, the grace….

And then she trips over one of the steps and the magic moment is over. She quickly regains balance though and enters the hall. You rush after her but alas… she disappeared in the crowd. Not sure what to do you, you look around. And then you see a wallet lying on the exact spot the girl stood only moments earlier…

You pick up the wallet and look inside. In it you find a picture of the girl and money. A lot of money. There must be four or five hundred euro in there. “I have to find her and give back the money,” you think to yourself.

You enter the horseshoe shaped building.

201009 EDIT: I made some necessary changes in the text of #2. In the hints below you can see the adjusted original text. This new adjustment you find in the puzzle can well be another hint.

SOLUTIONS:

puzzle 1: Key here was reading carefully. Some just googled the picture and didnt get why that answer was wrong. The picture is the photo you take of the building before you turn around and see the girl IN THE DISTANCE entering A HORSESHOE SHAPED BUILDING. That's the Martkhal.

puzzle 2: You needed to find out that 'the secret garden', Lara, Lizzie, Sybil and David Copperfield are all movies currently playing at Cinerama movie theater, which is situated 6/700 meters southwest of the Markthal. Unexpected international google results made this one hard at first but with the added clues a lot of you were able to find it...

puzzle 3: Here you find yourself in the garden of city hall. You needed to find out that the mayor of Rotterdam (important guy, fancy suit, acts like he owns the place) is a Moroccan guy named Aboutaleb (first Moroccan mayor in the Netherlands, pretty big deal. Speaks out about immigration, extremism, law and order etc etc. Was asked to be on a WH extremism task force led by Biden. Regularly appears in / is covered by (international) media).

puzzle 4: easypeasy: type in irish pub in google maps and find out Paddy Murphy’s is closest.

puzzle 5: I expected this one to be the hardest. You had to combine a few clues to minimize the list of possible hiding spots (or not and just try every possible hiding spot you can find in hope of bruteforcing the puzzle...) 1. as the crow flies = in a straight line. So 12 mins at 10 km/h gives you a nice 2 km radius around Paddy's. 2. zigzagging through trafic, later trees and bushes indicates the hiding spot should be in a green area like a park. The extra hint told you she's hiding somewhere indoor. 3. the girl ran 12 mins at 13.5 km/h and therefor covered a distance of 2.7 km. Google maps will tell you the walking distance from Paddy's to the Euromast is exactly that. The Euromast is a well known (and googable) land mark in Rotterdam.

puzzle 6 well, you deserved a break. Accepted answers were girl, goodies, girl and goodies.

I hope you all enjoyed the story and the puzzles. I tried to be as helpful as possible to those who got stuck. :D

View attached image.

4 years ago*

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261 Comments

Waxlor

reserved for hints

HINT for #2 (and in general): google and google maps are your friends. Pay close attention to the directions given.
HINT for #2 Try googling the thing you're looking for. That might provide an useful insight. EDIT: Indeed most regions don't give the google hits you need. That was unexpected. I updated the description to offer better/more clues: "The woman didn’t hear the entire conversation, but she did hear the girl talk about Lara, Lizzie and Sibyl. She heard her end the conversation by saying she was going to ‘the secret garden’ and she’d be there in a few minutes. You are not sure if this information helps. “Did you see which way she was going? The woman points west/south west. Unsure what else to do you start walking west too."
ADDED some additional correct answers to #2
HINT for #2: 'a few minutes'? Well, that shouldn't be more than 10/11 minutes, tops. Right?

HINT for #5: Rule number one for any girl being chased by a creepy man: hiding behind trees in a park is not a good idea. If (when?) he sees you he can easily drag you away to a less busy part of the park and all the bushes and trees will make it hard for people to notice there's something wrong.... So maybe find a building with lots of people in it to hide?

HINT for the retirementtopic: d4WjI

4 years ago*