Dawn of a New Era (solution)
by Kai Huang
There are many approaches to arrive at the first aha, since many of the clues are attackable in different ways. The first aha is that each clue refers to an item on the flag of a country. Furthermore, each clued item is either a star or a horizontal stripe. The stars and horizontal stripes come in 7 colors. The clue list is ordered alphabetically by country to disambiguate some clues and to help you search quicker. Here are the clued items:
| Clue | Country of flag | Item on flag | Item color |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dawn of a new era (9) | Antigua and Barbuda | star | yellow |
| Hope, forests (12) | Belarus | horizontal stripe | green |
| Twa, progress (17) | Burundi | star | red |
| Gold in the land (7) | Colombia | horizontal stripe | yellow |
| Saint Paul Parish (11) | Dominica | star | green |
| End of British oppression (6) | Egypt | horizontal stripe | black |
| Costa Rica (3) | Honduras | star | blue |
| Opening verses (19) | Jordan | star | white |
| Rain (2) | Lesotho | horizontal stripe | blue |
| Freedom from American slavery (20) | Liberia | star | white |
| Acrux (15) | New Zealand | star | red |
| Sahara Desert (13) | Niger | horizontal stripe | orange |
| Enlightenment (8) | Rwanda | star | yellow |
| Brotherhood, equality (16) | Singapore | horizontal stripe | red |
| Its name (5) | Sudan | horizontal stripe | black |
| Love, progress (14) | Suriname | horizontal stripe | red |
| Egypt (10) | Syria | star | green |
| Monarchy (1) | Thailand | horizontal stripe | blue |
| Mary (18) | Turkmenistan | star | white |
| Barcelona (21) | Venezuela | star | white |
| Dark past (4) | Yemen | horizontal stripe | black |
The next step is to notice that the numbers in parentheses are distinct and in the range 1-21. So you can reorder the list using the given numbers. After that, notice that the clued items of the same color are all consecutive in the new ordering, giving you 7 color groups.
Finally, the stars and horizontal stripes are meant to remind you of dots and dashes in morse code, a common puzzle encoding. Read one morse-encoded letter from each color group.
| Color group | Clues (in given number order) | Items | Morse code | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| blue | Monarchy(1) Rain (2) Costa Rica (3) |
horizontal stripe horizontal stripe star |
dash dash dot |
G |
| black | Dark past (4) Its name (5) End of British oppression (6) |
horizontal stripe horizontal stripe horizontal stripe |
dash dash dash |
O |
| yellow | Gold in the land (7) Enlightenment (8) Dawn of a new era (9) |
horizontal stripe star star |
dash dot dot |
D |
| green | Egypt (10) Saint Paul Parish (11) Hope, forests (12) |
star star horizontal stripe |
dot dot dash |
U |
| orange | Sahara Desert (13) | horizontal stripe | dash | T |
| red | Love, progress (14) Acrux (15) Brotherhood, equality (16) Twa, progress (17) |
horizontal stripe star horizontal stripe star |
dash dot dash dot |
C |
| white | Mary (18) Opening verses (19) Freedom from American slavery (20) Barcelona (21) |
star star star star |
dot dot dot dot |
H |
The answer to the puzzle is GO DUTCH.