Tap on any hint box to view it.
Meta
- You may find our archive page helpful in finding which set these icons came from (honoring our long history of great puzzle authors), but if you are short on time or not interested in surfing our comprehensive archive, the next hint reveals the seven central words.
- The initial letter of the sets referenced by the icon in each letter spell out a specific “crystal” to be written in the inner ring of the gem:
ROCK: (R)oad trip, the (O)ffice, binary (C), (K)angaroo
GARDEN: (G)illigan’s island, (A)lice in wonderland, ternary (R), (D)octor who, (E)lection, (N)ightmare before christmas
BILLY: (B)art simpson, (I)nternet shopping, (L)abyrinth, (L)ife in 2020, hexadecimal (Y)
PRISM: (P)intopia brewery tours, (R)obots, (I) puzzled, morse (S), the (M)uppet show
WATCH: (W)edding, (A)vatar: the last airbender, braille (T), (C)ondiments, (H)aunted house
PALACE: the (P)hantom tollbooth, (A)rt heist, (L)et’s talk about…, semaphore (A), (C)harlie and the chocolate factory, (E)lection
CLEAR: (C)hess, pigpen (L), (E)ights, (A)fternoon tea, (R)ats
- Make a path from each inner CRYSTAL through adjacent sections to words that pair with them to make a phrase – the boxes beneath each word indicate the number of pairs you need to find.
- Did you catch the dot or dash on the border between each section and the next ring?
- Form seven different morse code letters from the path you make through adjacent word pair sections.
- Starting with ROCK, make a path to OUT (since ROCK OUT is an acceptable word pair). Then, end the path since ROCK cannot be paired with CONSCIENCE or PICTURE. This leaves a single dot (E) as the morse code letter for ROCK.
- The word pair connections for each CRYSTAL are ROCK-OUT, GARDEN-CLUB, GARDEN-GNOME, BILLY-CLUB, OPTICAL-PRISM, TRIANGULAR-PRISM, GLASS-PRISM, WATCH-FACE, SMART-WATCH, SUMMER-PALACE, PALACE-COURTYARD, ROYAL-PALACE, PALACE-GUARD, CLEAR-OUT, CLEAR-CONSCIENCE, CLEAR-DIRECTION
- The morse codes for all 7 crystals spell out EMERALD - the 20 year anniversary gemstone.
- The authors' names can be found in the exterior rings of the puzzle.