A Puzzling Proposal

1) Puzzle Box

The plan begins with Melissa unwrapping her Christmas present: a 3D printed puzzle box with a voucher for a “Personalized puzzle experience” from a company called “Sc4venger Hunt”.

2) Web Puzzle

The code inside the 3D puzzle box can be redeemed at the Sc4venger Hunt website. This unlocks an HTML puzzle in the style of “HD White’s Puzzle of Doom” or “NotPron” requiring her to change the URL to move to the next puzzle.

3) App Download

Upon finishing the web puzzle, Melissa receives an E-mail from Mark Crowton, the CEO of Sc4venger Hunt, asking her to try out the beta release of their new android app which will be a real-life personalized puzzle experience. Upon downloading, the first clue reveals that this scavenger hunt will take place in New Orleans on Dec 29th and requires her to put in her airline confirmation code to continue.

4) First Package

At 10am on Dec 29th, Melissa’s scavenger hunt is activated, telling her that somewhere in our Airbnb is a care package has been hidden with something that will help her on her trip. She finds 2 Jazzy passes (1 day metro passes) and a puzzle piece clue with the word Muffaletta on it.

5) Muffaletta

The next clue tells Melissa to start the day with a snack at the Italian deli that originated the famous muffaletta sandwich. She needs to find the deli, Central Grocery, and check in on Swarm. Once she’s done this, the next clue is unlocked.

Once at the Central Grocery, the next clue instructs her to make sure to get some Zapp’s potato chips, specifically the “Voodoo” flavor chips. In the rack of potato chips, she finds a voodoo doll with another puzzle piece clue pinned to it with the word “Voodoo” on it.

6) Voodoo Authentica

Melissa needs to find out where the voodoo doll came from. It has a note about its creation and says it was ogirinally blessed by “Voodoo Authentica”, an old voodoo shop in the French Quarter. Aided by a GPS locator that tells her how many meters away from her location she is, she finds her way there.

Once there, the next clue tells her that someone should be expecting her. When asking if there’s someone waiting to talk to “Melissa”, she is sent to a room where a tarot card reading is arranged. After giving her a fairly accurate reading, the medium gives her the next clue, “FELIX”

7) Felix Oyster Bar

This clue leads her to our second lunch at Felix’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar, one of the famous oyster houses in the French Quarter. After checking in there on swarm, the app tells her to keep her eyes peeled for the next clue.

While opening a straw, she sees a piece of paper rolled up inside. Fishing this out, she sees that it’s a ‘nonogram’, also called a japanese crossword. While eating tons of oysters served every which way, she finishes the puzzle to reveal a picture of a carousel.

8) Carousel

She is told to find a bar that has something to do with a carousel and find their specialty. Nearby, inside the Hotel Monteleone, is the Carousel Bar, the birthplace of the drink, the Vieux Carre. The centerpiece being, of course, a round bar all lit up and decorated like a carousel and slowly rotating around the bartenders. Once again, Melissa is told to be on the lookout for her next clue.

This time, a napkin appears under her water with the words “Text for a good time 623-223-8996”. Upon texting this number, she begins getting messages back from “Mastermind”. To unlock the next clue, she must guess a 6 letter word made from the letters in CAROUSEL. She’s given unlimited guesses and the person on the other end will tell her whether she has the correct letters and whether they’re in the right position.

She finds the answer “CREOLE” in only 2 tries and the character tells her to go get some ice cream using the Jazzy passes from the beginning of the scavenger hunt.

9) Trolley to Ice Cream

At this point, she sees that we need to go get some ice cream at Creole Creamery which we can get to using the St. Charles trolley, the oldest continuously operating street railcar in the world. The trolley takes us on a nice ride through the Garden District, filled with gardens (duh) and old victorian mansions.

10) Wine Bottle

After taking a break with some ice cream, the next part of the clue from Mastermind told her to pick up something in the wine cellar for Mastermind’s friend, William Alexander Jr. She figures out that there is a wine store 2 doors down called The Wine Seller.

Upon entering the store and asking if anything is being held for a Mr. William Alexander Jr., the clerk gives her a pre-paid bottle of Sancerre with another puzzle piece clue around the neck of the bottle.

11) Cemetery

While this clue was meant to send Melissa to the Lafayette No 1 cemetery, one of the only historic cemeteries in New Orleans that is open to the public and doesn’t require you to be part of a tour, I didn’t account for the fact that the cemetery actually closes at 2:30pm.

What should have happened is she would have realized that the design on the clue was actually a map of the cemetery and if she went to the location where the tiny red box was, she would have found the grave of a William Alexander Jr., the person for which the wine bottle was being held.

Luckily, I had images of the proper gravestone which allowed her to solve not only this clue, but move on to the next clue.

12) Long Distance Calling

Since she was supposed to meet William Alexander Jr. buried at his tomb, she is told to use the dates on the grave to make a phone number with which to call him from beyond the grave. Once she figures out the phone number, she begins the longest and most complicated puzzle of the day. Luckily she gets to do this from the warmth of a cafe rather than outside in a cold cemetery.

The voice on the other end says that he was supposed to tell her a certain year as her next clue but he can’t remember what it was. He reveals that he runs a ghost diner and he does rememeber that the year was the same as the total bill of one of his 4 customers. She then has to listen to the accounts of the diner owner and the four customers to construct a logic grid to figure out how much the bill was. To make matters trickier the customers speak English, Cantonese, Russian, and French.

13) Gondola

After solving the previous clue, she is directed to City Park, a massive greenspace even larger than New York’s Central Park. Directed once again with a GPS makrker, she is sent to a random spot in the park by a lake and told to wait for her contact. While waiting, a man on a gondola slowly rows up to the dock and has everything ready to take us on an hour long trip through the park. Cheese, crackers, a blanket and 2 glasses for the wine that we picked up earlier.

The app tells her to keep her eyes peeled for the next clue with the title of “City of Lights”. This doesn’t narrow it down since there are tons of christmas lights all over the park for the holidays. At one point in the ride, the gondola man points out a floating, glowing object in the water and tells us to pluck it out. Once she pulls it in, Melissa can see inside there is a flashlight and another puzzle piece.

More importantly, the flash light is a blacklight which now reveals that all the puzzle piece clues have blacklight writing on them: “Broussard’s 9:00pm”, our dinner reservation.

14) Reveillon Dinner

At this point, Melissa thinks the scavenger hunt is over and the dinner is her final reward. The restaurant is one of the old classic creole restaurants in the French Quarter that is currently serving their Reveillon menu, a celebretory dinner traditionally served around the holidays with typically creole dishes. We enjoy the dinner and eat far too much, as usual.

15) Proposal

Aside from the food, one of the main reasons I chose this restaurant was for it’s beautiful courtyard. Once we finish our food, I retrieve a wrapped gift from a friend waiting outside and take Melissa to the back courtyard to give her one last gift. She unwraps the present to find an empty photo album which I tell her we can use to document all our future travels together. On the first page is a collage of dozens of the photos we have taken together over the years with text in the middle saying “Insert something sweet here”.

I then activate one last clue that I tell her will help fill in the empty space. When looking through her phone at the empty space in the middle of the collage, a bouquet of ring pops appears through augmented reality. With her already in shock, I tell her the coolest thing about it is if you look really close, you can see a real ring in the pile. At this point, I reach into the AR pile of ring pops and pull out an actual ring and finally pop the question.

After she says yes, my friends emerge from their hiding places along with the bartender with 4 glasses of champagne for us. I leave relieved that months of planning actually worked while Melissa is completely overwhelmed for the next ~12 hours. :)