Solution to Feel Your Way

by Jennifer Berk

This puzzle uses a set of three Minesweeper games. The first step is to identify where all the mines are. Then you need to notice that the grid is 34 wide by 21 high, or a 17x7 set of 2x3 areas. Each 2x3 area is a Braille character, with mines indicating dots.

With one clue produced from each grid, you can read off:

1. First a zero then a two then a two then a six then a one then a five then a three then a zero then a six then a one. (ISBN of "Daguerreotypes and Other Essays", by Isak Dinesen)
2. Start with copper and silver and then add iodine and then light and then mercury and then salt and then gold chloride. (chemicals etc. involved in the daguerreotype process)
3. John Adams Whipple's moons and stars, through the fifteen-inch Great Refractor at Harvard College Observatory. (some famous and prize-winning daguerreotypes)

So the answer is DAGUERREOTYPES.

2006 MIT Mystery Hunt