Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!
The first layer of this puzzle involves solving enough clues to realize that the red circles in the puzzle stand in for the trigram “TED,” which often spans word breaks in answers (and is why word breaks aren’t included in the blanks).
The blanks are listed in alphabetical order by answer, and each highlights one letter. Ordering those letters by clues (and translating the red circles in the clues to TED) yields URL TEDTIDOTME NOT INNOVATED SORT FIRST.
Clues, clue answers, and extracted letters, in alphabetical order by answer:
| Clue | Answer | Highlighted letter |
|---|---|---|
| 1983 album track that can be heard on the Non-Stop Pop FM station in San Andreas | ADULT EDUCATION | U |
| Old-fashioned, or like the first 600 years of Noah’s life | ANTEDILUVIAN | V |
| Jezebel star | BETTE DAVIS | T |
| Former French colony that achieved independence in 1960 | COTE D’IVOIRE | O |
| Welsh festival that pits bard against bard | EISTEDDFOD | O |
| OG version of a book | FIRST EDITION | T |
| M.A., Ph.D., or J.D. | GRADUATE DEGREE | R |
| Big Apple supermarket chain with a red apple in its logo | GRISTEDES | R |
| How an adulterer might be caught | IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO | N |
| When peace means war? | OPPOSITE DAY | O |
| Asimov short story named after an ethically questionable food | PATE DE FOIE GRAS | S |
| Ariana Grande’s ex | PETE DAVIDSON | S |
| Album that an artist released before presiding over Thunderdome | PRIVATE DANCER | N |
| Long-term Oval Office furnishing that was once an Arctic explorer | RESOLUTE DESK | R |
| First king in the Bayeux tapestry, as he became known in the 12th century | SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR | N |
| Parabolic cable alternative | SATELLITE DISH | T |
| Samsung’s EVO, for example | SOLID-STATE DRIVE | T |
| American passport issuer | STATE DEPARTMENT | M |
| Geometer’s tool | STRAIGHTEDGE | A |
| Holiday when you might sing, “Wreck the hulls with rounds of volleys” | TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY | L |
| Winnie-the-Pooh, for example | TEDDY BEAR | D |
| Act fronted by Susan and her husband Derek | TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND | T |
| Ambrosian hymn | TE DEUM | E |
| Persona developed a few years after Ziggy Stardust | THE THIN WHITE DUKE | I |
| Elegy written by the protagonist of a 1997 Stoppard play | TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG | I |
| Incineration or recycling, e.g. | WASTE DISPOSAL | O |
| Type of star, or description that could apply to seven characters from the same movie | WHITE DWARF | F |
| Record on paper | WRITE DOWN | I |
Clues, clue answers, and extracted letters, in clue order:
| Clue | Answer | Highlighted letter |
|---|---|---|
| 1984 song that can be heard on the Non-Stop Pop FM station in San Andreas | ADULT EDUCATION | U |
| Long-term Oval Office furnishing that was once an Arctic explorer | RESOLUTE DESK | R |
| Holiday when you might sing, “Wreck the hulls with rounds of volleys” | TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY | L |
| (just the red circle) | TED | |
| Jezebel star | BETTE DAVIS | T |
| Record on paper | WRITE DOWN | I |
| Winnie-the-Pooh, for example | TEDDY BEAR | D |
| Welsh festival that pits bard against bard | EISTEDDFOD | O |
| OG version of a book | FIRST EDITION | T |
| American passport issuer | STATE DEPARTMENT | M |
| Ambrosian hymn | TE DEUM | E |
| Album that an artist released before presiding over Thunderdome | PRIVATE DANCER | N |
| Former French colony that achieved independence in 1960 | COTE D’IVOIRE | O |
| Samsung’s EVO, for example | SOLID-STATE DRIVE | T |
| Elegy written by the protagonist of a 1997 Stoppard play | TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG | I |
| First king in the Bayeux tapestry, as he became known in the 12th century | SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR | N |
| Caught doing the deed | IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO | N |
| When peace means war? | OPPOSITE DAY | O |
| Old-fashioned, or like the first 600 years of Noah’s life | ANTEDILUVIAN | V |
| Geometer’s tool | STRAIGHTEDGE | A |
| (just the red circle) | TED | |
| Asimov short story named after an ethically questionable food | PATE DE FOIE GRAS | S |
| Incineration or recycling, e.g. | WASTE DISPOSAL | O |
| Big Apple supermarket chain with a red apple in its logo | GRISTEDES | R |
| Parabolic cable alternative | SATELLITE DISH | T |
| Type of star, or description that could apply to seven characters from the same movie | WHITE DWARF | F |
| Persona developed a few years after Ziggy Stardust | THE THIN WHITE DUKE | I |
| M.A., Ph.D., or J.D. | GRADUATE DEGREE | R |
| Ariana Grande’s ex | PETE DAVIDSON | S |
| Act fronted by Susan and her husband Derek | TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND | T |
Visiting the URL tedti.me will redirect to https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_rosenthal_the_joyful_perplexing_world_of_puzzle_hunts. There, solvers will find a TED Talk I gave in November 2018. At the bottom of 9 of the slides are broken lines which encode, in Morse code, nine 9-letter words (one per slide). Writing those in a square and reading the diagonal will yield INNOVATED. As indicated by the cluephrase, this is not the answer. If solvers first sort the 9 words alphabetically, they’ll read a new, fitting word on the diagonal: AMBIGUOUS. This is the answer.
ANTIQUITY
SYNAGOGUE
EMPOWERED
TELEVISES
FIBONACCI
NAVIGATOR
OVERTURES
PLANETOID
EMPOWERED
FIBONACCI
INVISIBLE
NAVIGATOR
OVERTURES
PLANETOID
SYNAGOGUE
TELEVISES
Notes
A big big big thank you to Tanis, Sarah, Greg, Guy, Marcy, Brian, Violet, Colin, Trip, Chris, Jenn, Tom, Scott, Jackie, Todd and Matt, all of whom helped me scramble to put this talk and puzzle together and/or graciously allowed me to use puzzles they constructed as examples.
Here’s how this happened. I work at TED, producing TED-Ed animations. At this year’s staff retreat I gave an internal talk about the Mystery Hunt, in part to tell everyone about the answer hidden in a video for Basic Phrenology. Our design curator, Chee Pearlman, liked the talk, and mentioned that she was putting together an upcoming design salon called “Radical Craft” that it might fit into. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and she had another speaker drop out, so she asked if I might want to give a version of my retreat talk in their place. So with her help and guidance I developed and learned this talk in a whirlwind 9 days, while on the side I discussed with my teammates about how we might hide an answer in it.
My favorite idea that came up was for me to blink out the answer in Morse code as I spoke, but we all decided I probably couldn’t pull it off in the moment. Dan came up with the idea we ultimately went with.
We knew that people (Mystery Hunters especially) would be looking for a puzzle or answer in a talk about the Mystery Hunt, which is why we put in something that would resolve to a different answer with an added instruction. I guess we’ll see whether anyone calls in AMBIGUOUS within seconds of opening this puzzle . . .