Katniss Everdeen

12 Solves   &   24 Attempts

lightbulb_outlineANSWER
  • YULBRYNNER

by Aylwin Low

An item is hidden in each scene. Teams that solved all mazes would have found eight items in each act, and got a total of 16 items. Googling descriptions of these items, eg "pipe dream", "flower drum", reveals that the items can be mapped to musical titles from Rodgers and Hammerstein. This observation can be confirmed by the rod-hammer maze character, and the use of 'act' and 'scene', which suggest theatrical productions, to describe the maze levels.

Teams might also realised that Scene 8 in Act 1, and Scene 6 in Act 2 have split paths that meet before splitting again, and such scenes can be considered to have two maze segments. All other scenes contain only one segment.

Also, teams might have also discovered that there could be either one or two ways to obtain the item in each maze segment. Also, maze segments either contain only coloured cells, or both coloured cells and encounters. The significance in the sequence of the coloured cells and encounters is exemplified by the recorded path.

By grouping similar maze segments together and considering those that have only coloured cells and two ways to obtain the item (ie. Scene 7 in Act 1, and Scenes 2,3,4 & 6 in Act 2), teams might have been able to trace out the following paths:


Act Scene Segment Path 1 Path 2
1 7 -
2 2 -
2 3 -
2 4 -
2 6 2

Teams that leaped with the assumption the paths within the same scene have the same "path value", and that the red cell has an assigned value of 1 (deduced from the flavourtext) would be able to assign values to the coloured cells, as such:


Coloured Cell Value
1
2
4
8
16

The coloured cells are ordered by rainbow colours, and are all exponents of 2. The "path value" could be obtained by summing the coloured cells. Team might also realise that ambiguous paths can be resolved by considering only paths that do not trace onto itself. With this discovery, teams would be able to obtain a 'path value' for the mazes that contain only coloured cells.

Next, examining the names of the encounters closely, team might have discovered that they are suspiciously similar to math operators:


Symbol Encounter Transformation
(where x is the sum before encounter)
Gnarly tree roots x
Insect-infested log log2x
Muttation doppelgangers x * 2
Murderous halflings x ÷ 2
Power charged field 2x

This observation can be verified in scenes Scenes 6 & 8 in Act 1, and Scenes 6 & 7 in Act 2 by crossing checking paths containing encounters with equivalent ones that have only coloured cells. Additionally, all operators involve the number 2 which is clued by the dual occurrences of each encounter type (2 root hairs in the case of Gnarly tree roots). To this end, the path values for all mazes can be determined, as shown:


Act Scene Segment Path(s) Path Value
1 1 - 4
1 2 - 11
1 3 - 11
1 4 - 8
1 5 - 11
1 6 -
9
1 7 -
21
1 8 1
10
2
2 1 - 6
2 2 -
7
2 3 -
8
2 4 -
4
2 5 - 5
2 6 1
3
2
2 7 - ( )x8
( )x8 ( )x6
7
2 8 - 8

The thematic 2 in this puzzle suggests that double indexing may be needed. With this assumption, teams that took the (path-value)th musical song in the respective act, and extracted the (path-value)th letter would have obtained KING AND I BALD LEAD, which clues the answer, YUL BRYNNER.


Act Scene Path Value Musical Song Letter
1 1 4 Pipe Dream “All Kinds of People” (Reprise) – Jim Blaikey K
1 2 11 Flower Drum Song “Fan Tan Fannie” – Frankie and Girls I
1 3 11 South Pacific "Younger Than Springtime" – Cable N
1 4 8 Allegro "Winters Go By" - Ensemble G
1 5 11 Oklahoma! "Pore Jud Is Daid" – Curly & Jud A
1 6 9 Flower Drum Song “Grant Avenue” – Linda and Ensemble N
1 7 21 Allegro "What a Lovely Day for a Wedding" – Ensemble and Mr. Brinker D
1 8 10 South Pacific "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" – Nellie and Nurses I
2 1 6 South Pacific "Honey Bun" (reprise) – Billis B
2 2 7 Carousel "Billy Makes a Journey" – Orchestra A
2 3 8 Allegro "The Gentleman Is a Dope" – Emily L
2 4 4 Flower Drum Song “Sunday” – Linda and Sammy Fong D
2 5 5 Carousel "You'll Never Walk Alone" – Nettie L
2 6 3 Carousel "There's Nothin' So Bad for a Woman" – Jigger and Chorus E
2 7 7 South Pacific “This Nearly Was Mine" – Emile A
2 8 8 Carousel "If I Loved You" (reprise) – Billy D

 

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