Complex

About a month ago, I released a small homage to the MIT Mystery Hunt that was composed of three puzzles and their respective metapuzzle (with their solutions available at the end of the same week). I got quite a bit of reaction on those puzzles, which indicates a good number of 'closet-solvers' around here.

Seeing that my birthday's coming up, I might as well toss up a new set. To be honest, though, my birthday really has nothing to do with it - it just gives me an excuse to offer a small prize to the first person who sends me a correct solution. (More details below, yes.)

The solution to each of the puzzles below is a legible word or phrase, with exactly one correct solution per puzzle. All the solutions must be put together in order to produce one final, metapuzzle answer. Everything is laid out in a manner similar to the MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles, which means that this obviously won't be as easy as many people think.

Should you manage to find the answer to any one of the puzzles below, you can confirm that answer by e-mailing me at saito_ichikawa-at-yahoo.com. Please include your method of solving along with your answer itself. I will not give out any hints to the puzzles at hand, although I reserve the right to tantalize you as I see fit. :)

If you think you have the final metapuzzle answer, send it to me at the above address along with all your other puzzle solutions, as well as your method of solving for the metapuzzle. I won't give out hints here as well, and I will discard any incomplete solutions.

The first person to send me a correct and confirmed metapuzzle answer gets a total of P500 in gift certificates from some combination of fine establishments: Powerbooks, Yellow Cab Pizza, Bizu, Astrovision, Starbucks and a number of other places are possibilities. This 'winner' gets to choose exactly what gift certificates they want, as long as they're within my reach. If they're from the Philippines outside Metro Manila, I'll send these in the mail. Unfortunately, I can't really offer or provide this 'prize' to anyone outside the Philippines, but at least you get some good puzzles, right? :)

You have two weeks to solve this set of puzzles. Solutions will be accepted until 6:00 pm (Manila time) on Friday, April 22, 2005. (EDIT: This deadline has been extended to 6:00 pm - still Manila time - on Friday, April 29, 2005.)

You're free to work alone or in groups, just as long as you decide how to divide the prize beforehand. You're free to use any resources you have at your disposal to solve this, although I must warn you that my relatives and I are most definitely off-limits here.

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. I'll be placing updates on this main article, if applicable. A running timeline of all solvers' efforts at the puzzle is up here.

And now...


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There's nothing about as chaotic as office moving day, particularly when it's the last day in your old office and nobody's really packed yet.

To make matters even more complicated, your boss is on leave. In the message he left for you, he mentioned being needed to do something 'educational' and 'entertaining', which probably means that he's out playing golf.

He did leave you his planner, though, so perhaps he didn't leave you most of the heavy work after all. With a bit of luck, you can probably get your co-workers to stop playing around and move on.

3:00 - Marketing
4:00 - Administration
4:00 - Accounting
6:00 - Design
9:00 - Copywriting

Aside from your boss's relatively simplified schedule, there also seems to be something stuck on the back of the planner.


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