Till when is this gonna go on? I still haven't found the 5th one :(
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Man, those houses sure are judging and/or looking down on those poor plants, aren't they.
:realizes they accidentally entered a puzzle thread and swiftly escapes:
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I went out of my way to write a stunning girl into the story to keep you interested enough to at least try to solve it... did it not work?
she really really is stunning! :D
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:scratches head: Are you confusing me with someone else?
You should already be well aware that the way to appeal to me is via baked goods.. :P
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did I not mention the delicious homebaked pie you get to right after the 5th puzzle?
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that was hard! and fun :) thanks for the puzzle, it's very unusual :D
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Bump for (finally! 😅) solving your enjoyable vacation 😁
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I finally finished it! Huh, I almost gave up at #5, but eventually I could solve it (with much more google-ing than I anticipated).
Thank you for the puzzle, it was quite unique (for me)! :)
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I'm glad to see people still managing to solve it!
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When youre Belgian and you know the Dutch name but its still wrong
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you might be thinking of the wrong thing then... read carefully!
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Bump.
Thank you once more for this fun puzzle and the train!
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Finally solved. And in the end it wasn't brute force, but intuition. :)
It was wise not to look at it for a few days.
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ahh, you were so into the story your intuition guided you... that's true d&d right there!
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I'm not stingy when it comes to hints, so tell me where you got stuck and I'll see if I can help.
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Number 2 but you've given a lot of extra hints already so it wouldn't be fair :) I will try again later maybe something will click :P
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Please, more specific hint for #5. 100 people have submitted 1,559 guesses, and only 78 have moved on. Maybe a general direction?
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you need to combine 3 pieces of info (and furthermore maybe use the additional hints here). Did you identify the 3 pieces of info?
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I think I do know the 3 pieces of info, but I am pretty sure I have typed in all the places that are at that specific walking distance...
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Yes, of course. There are quite a few parks within the target distance. There is one closest to the target distance to the SW, but then there are a bunch of possibilities. 1,238 guesses by 126 people, and only 103 of those solved it; people are obviously having to brute-force it.
I think one of the challenging things about this puzzle versus others in the same vein is that you're not focused on major landmarks, except for the very first one. So effectively the venues can be anything.
Anyway, the story was interesting up to this point, so it would be nice to find out how it turns out once the deadline is up. At the preceding spot, dude definitely pulled a creepy move by not taking care of business right away. How weird is it to hang out there for so long and only after that return the wallet? As it is, I can't see the story ending well.
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a few giveaways ended, but most did not yet. So I'll give a more direct hint here now: 'as the crow flies = in a straight line'. With that piece of info you can draw a circel at the correct distance around the place you're at. Combined with the other two hints limits the ammount of possibilities where she can hide immensely.
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bump
thanks for the new hints on #2 and for adding the end date... originally, I had thought puzzle would only be for a few days after post and had kinda given up on #2 after spending way too much time on it.
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Stuck on #5 for now, tried 10+ locations. I'll wait for the ITH hint. :c
Bump!
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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
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