NPL Boston Gathering, October 2003

Back in October 2003, I held an event in Somerville for members of the National Puzzler's League. I arrived dressed in an eyepatch and fright wig, claiming to be Wes Carpenter, a producer of horror movies, looking for a new director. I would pick the directorial team that first figured out the correct name of the new movie I'm producing, and that team would get a prize. (The prize? The winning team had to act out a scene from the movie in character, with the constriction that each line had to start with consecutive letters of the alphabet.)

Solvers were broken up into teams randomly (we did ensure that some pairs got to stay together), and were then given a DVD case (see the cover below) which contained five puzzles and a CD. As solvers tackled puzzles, they got new puzzles (there were 9 puzzles total, below).

While it's possible to solve the puzzles below, and figure out part of the meta-puzzle, but there's something that you would need to get from me to solve it. (And in retrospect, the dvd cover insert should be dramatically different. One of the covers was also mismatched with the puzzle it belongs to, but I believe that might be fixed.)

Errata:

• The covers are misaligned as follows: cover 3 goes with puzzle 1, cover 1 goes with puzzle 4, cover 4 goes with puzzle 3. Hints go with the original puzzles.
• On cover 8, the first line of the number set should read 31977 instead of 31877
• In Frightening Noises, one of the tracks refers to anthem for a European country. It should refer to a North American island instead.

Intro.pdf

Puzzles

• Frankenstein
• The Telltale Heart
• House on Haunted Hill
• Frightening Noises
• The Howling
• Cursed Tattoos
• Interview With The Vampire
• Gremlins
• Signs

Each puzzle was folded in half, like a DVD booklet. Each of these are covers that appeared on the opposite side of the puzzle.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9

DVD Cover and Inside cover

Solvers received a CD containing the following tracks.

• Track 1
• Track 2
• Track 3
• Track 4
• Track 5
• Track 6
• Track 7
• Track 8
• Track 9
• Track 10
• Track 11
• Track 12
• Track 13
• Track 14
• Track 15
• Track 16
• Track 17
• Track 18
• Track 19
• Track 20
• Track 21
• Track 22
• Track 23
• Track 24

All 24 tracks, zipped (17MB)