Solution: Paperboy
Answer: WALK THE PLANK
Written by Caleb Hostetler
These directions are not directions for navigating a city, but rather to navigate the periodic table. This is clued by "periodical" and "elementary" in the flavor text. Each house or block represents an element, and descriptions of the houses and their surroundings represent those of the element and its properties.
The gap between the lanthanides and the rest of the table is referred to as a river, and directions match those that would be on a map.
| Number | Element | Symbol | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sulfur | S | Sulfur has a rotten-egg smell |
| 2 | Holmium | Ho | 67 is the prime number closest to being directly south of sulfur |
| 3 | Tungsten | W | Tungsten (W) is the only single-letter house in group 6 |
| 4 | Uranium | U | Uranium is associated with radioactivity, or glowing. |
| 5 | Sulfur | S | See above. |
| 6 | Yttrium | Y | Directly below Yttrium, some periodic tables will have a gap (the port) where other tables will put Lutetium and Lawrencium |
| 7 | Oxygen | O | Air from the west is Nitrogen, and the coast to the north is the top of the table. |
| 8 | Uranium | U | See above |
| 9 | Roentgenium | Rg | Roentgenium (111) is the only 3-digit element where all three digits are the same. |
| 10 | Rhenium | Re | 186.207 is the atomic weight of Rhenium |
| 11 | Astatine | At | Noble District refers to the Noble Gases, At is the last element before reaching those |
| 12 | Tellurium | Te | Simple directions |
| 13 | Americium | Am | "American" home, plus Europium directly borders Americium. |
This gives "SHOW US YOUR GREAT TEAM". Entering this into the answer box gives the following:
"SHOW US YOUR GREAT TEAM"! - The pirates want proof that you really know what it takes to be a pirate. Some acceptable forms of proof would be a recording of your team singing your favorite sea shanty, an artistic rendition of your team dressed up in pirate uniforms, a video of you reenacting a scene from your favorite pirate story, or any other creative idea you come up with! Send this proof to emupuzzlehunt@gmail.com with "[Paperboy]" in the subject line and we will respond as soon as possible with the answer to this puzzle. (If you send this during the night, please understand it might until morning for us to respond!)
Upon submitting a suitable response, teams were given a pirate-themed response and told to WALK THE PLANK.Author’s Notes
This puzzle, especially the end part, was so much fun. I tried my best to make the first part relatively easy so we could get some responses through email. We ended up only getting two, which will be shown in the writeup. The two we got were great, though!