Solution to the Easter puzzle 2020

Easter 2020 is long gone and our Easter puzzle 2020 also came to an end a few weeks ago. We are delighted that so many of you took up the challenge again this year and before all memories of our questions fade completely, here is the promised insight into the complete puzzle including all solutions and some explanations. As the new puzzle master, I would also like to take this opportunity to give you a brief summary, as the 2020 Easter puzzle was new territory for me to a certain extent.

The puzzle in numbers:

Before I get to that, here are a few numbers about how you did in the puzzle. Numbers sometimes say more than all the words in the world - so I don't want to deprive anyone of them. So let's take a look at where the participants got to on average:

All beginnings are difficult, of course, and so we always have a few dropouts, especially in the first few questions. But you can also see very clearly that many participants really take the Easter puzzle very seriously and have come a long way despite the difficult questions. As many as 3.3% of all participants even made it to the last question, respect!

The new puzzle master

I started planning the Easter puzzle shortly after Christmas. With enough lead time and time to plan, I wanted to do justice to my new task of creating a Nerd Easter puzzle in the best possible way. Many of you are already long-time veterans, but for me it was my first ever contact with Easter puzzles and the independent creation of puzzles. Although I like to do puzzles myself in my spare time, it soon became clear that creating puzzles is no trivial task. Especially when it's a puzzle of the "getDigital Easter puzzle" caliber. The coming weeks presented me with many new challenges. Especially the particularly difficult puzzles in areas that are not necessarily part of my own area of expertise could cause headaches. Nevertheless, I started in good spirits and began by brainstorming ideas and concepts for puzzles. I'll spare you the details here, but after a few weeks I had a well-filled list of questions and ideas, many of which you will have seen in the puzzle.

The crisis:

I was in good spirits overall and the preparations were progressing well - and then Corona came along. What is now part of everyday life for many of us had only just become a problem in Germany shortly before Easter. Although that was less than three months ago, it certainly seems longer to many. In fact, the first lockdown restrictions were only imposed two weeks before Easter, which put a pretty big spanner in the works for me and my plan for the Easter puzzle.

Originally, I had plans for several tasks that would have interacted with the "real world" in different ways. Yes, the world out there. :P Of course, you can have different opinions about this and maybe some people are glad that it turned out the way it did. For me, however, it was a bit of a disaster. Two weeks to go until the deadline and suddenly a few questions are missing, including the difficult final question, which usually takes a long time to plan. So what to do?

An adventure at home

Once the initial shock was over, the search for a solution began. I thought the idea of tasks requiring interaction with the outside world was actually cool and I didn't want to give up on the concept just yet. However, I also found it slightly irresponsible to send you out of the house during a pandemic and despite curfews, so a new "outside" had to be found. The solution was found in an already completed puzzle, the infamous question 51.

The foundation had already been laid, and the idea was to expand the whole thing just a little to turn it into a little adventure. Unfortunately, the idea quickly took on a life of its own and over the next few days the idea for the accompanying game emerged. It's actually a good idea: we build a small world in which you can walk around and talk to a few people. You have to find a few things and solve a few puzzles, no problem. That's how the first ideas for Nerdtopia came about. However, as I said, two weeks before the launch there was none of that and besides trying to design good puzzles, story writing and game development were suddenly on the schedule. It's annoying that when I have a good idea, I often find it hard to let go - on the contrary, new ideas keep coming in and suddenly you have to be careful that it doesn't become too much. :D

Most of you have already seen the result during the puzzle, our companion game in "Nerdtopia".

Story and game:

When developing the story, I ultimately started from the existing questions. There was a new idea for the last question, where you had to figure out the 42-digit code for a crypto address. Hiding this within the puzzle and the game world seemed like a good idea to me. (Not 100% confirmed, but oh well... :D) I also wanted to have an adventure, so there had to be a real storyline, but I didn't want it to be completely detached from our world. The story of Nerdtopia developed from this over time and while working out all the questions.

Of course, some questions had to be adapted again for this, while others were created from scratch. The real difficulty was to ensure interaction between the accompanying game and our puzzle engine. As the time factor didn't allow for complete integration, I had to resort to my bag of tricks and include control questions to check whether you were actually using the game. The question about the hats of the man on the mountain, for example, is of course not a difficult puzzle question, but rather a check to see if you were actually there. To compensate for this, there were a few more questions this year.

For the final question in particular, parts of the solution were hidden all over the map. The opportunity to breathe some life into the story in the puzzle using the game was also really fun and I really hope you enjoyed it too. If you haven't already done so, you can even visit the premises of getDigital in the game, if you only know how 😉.

However, as time was short, we had to cut corners. For example, there is no option to save. Maybe not so bad considering the size, but it would still have been nice, maybe next year?

Completing the puzzle was pretty much a precision landing, one of my specialties...! However, a few last-minute changes meant that a few errors crept in. That's annoying, of course, but luckily you learn from it if something doesn't work out 100%. This brings us to the last section:

Lessons learned

So what is my conclusion? Overall, despite the problems I encountered, I'm quite happy with my first Easter puzzle. Most of it worked and I had the feeling that most of you had a lot of fun.

Especially through the interaction with many of you during the puzzle support, I also got a lot of input and feedback on what could perhaps be done better. Thank you again for being so positive and constructive. It was a lot of fun to supervise the puzzle, just like creating it, and I think that's mainly down to the community. You guys are great!

I look forward to working on the next puzzle for you and of course hope that you will all be there again. Thank you for your participation. I hope the puzzle has made your everyday life a little easier in these difficult times. Stay healthy and see you next time!

The solution to the puzzle can be found here:

Sample solution to the Easter puzzle 2020

Have fun with it!