by Greg Edelston
cover art by Todd McClary
Answer: BLOAT
Problem: Halloween Town/​Thanksgiving Town

This book is written in the style of R.L. Stine’s choose-your-own-adventure series, the Give Yourself Goosebumps books.

The first thing a solver might notice is that the first letter of each page is bold. The first letter of each page, concatenated in page order, yields the clue phrase FIND TITLES OF GOOSEBUMPS BOOKS AND PARSE DECISION PATHS AS FIVE-BIT BINARY.

The titles of the first 34 Give Yourself Goosebumps books can be found within this book, always on ending pages. Each ending page can be reached after exactly five binary decisions. Solvers should:

  1. find the GYG titles in their canonical order
  2. determine the decision-path needed to reach the page on which each title occurs
  3. convert those decision-paths to five-bit binary (treating the two branching options as 0 and 1, respectively)
  4. convert each five-bit binary string to a letter (using 00001=A, 00010=B, etc.) to yield the phrase SPLIT DECISION PUZZLE TAKE FIRST BIGRAM.
GYG # GYG title Page where title is found Binary path to reach page Binary path converted to decimal Extracted letter
1 Escape from the Carnival of Horrors 52 10011 19 S
2 Tick Tock, You’re Dead! 43 10000 16 P
3 Trapped in Bat Wing Hall 47 01100 12 L
4 The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek 9 01001 9 I
5 Night in Werewolf Woods 15 10100 20 T
6 Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter 62 00100 4 D
7 Under the Magician’s Spell 49 00101 5 E
8 The Curse of the Creeping Coffin 4 00011 3 C
9 The Knight in Screaming Armor 9 01001 9 I
10 Diary of a Mad Mummy 52 10011 19 S
11 Deep in the Jungle of Doom 9 01001 9 I
12 Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum 51 01111 15 O
13 Scream of the Evil Genie 21 01110 14 N
14 The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock 43 10000 16 P
15 Please Don’t Feed the Vampire! 6 10101 21 U
16 Secret Agent Grandma 13 11010 26 Z
17 Little Comic Shop of Horrors 13 11010 26 Z
18 Attack of the Beastly Babysitter 47 01100 12 L
19 Escape from Camp Run-For-Your-Life 49 00101 5 E
20 Toy Terror: Batteries Included 15 10100 20 T
21 The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island 38 00001 1 A
22 Return to the Carnival of Horrors 18 01011 11 K
23 Zapped in Space 49 00101 5 E
24 Lost in Stinkeye Swamp 26 00110 6 F
25 Shop Till You Drop...Dead! 9 01001 9 I
26 Alone in Snakebite Canyon 30 10010 18 R
27 Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel 52 10011 19 S
28 Night of a Thousand Claws 15 10100 20 T
29 Invaders from the Big Screen 48 00010 2 B
30 You’re Plant Food! 9 01001 9 I
31 The Werewolf of Twisted Tree Lodge 20 00111 7 G
32 It’s Only a Nightmare! 30 10010 18 R
33 It Came from the Internet! 38 00001 1 A
34 Elevator to Nowhere 36 01101 13 M

This indicates that there is a split decision puzzle afoot. On each decision page, the two branching options clue a pair of words which vary by one bigram. The bigram of the first word from each branching page can be concatenated in page order to yield the clue phrase YOU MUST LOOK AT THE TIMES WHERE JACK SKELLINGTON IS EXPLICITLY MENTIONED.

Page # Word #1 Word #2 Bigram #1 Bigram #2
1 YOGI MAGI YO MA
2 MUMFORD MEDFORD UM ED
3 MUSICIAN MAGICIAN US AG
7 STATLER STAMMER TL MM
8 SOOTHE SEETHE OO EE
10 KARATE PIRATE KA PI
11 REGATTA REGALIA TT LI
14 THEOLOGY TOPOLOGY HE OP
16 INCOMPATIBLE INCOMPARABLE TI RA
19 MESSENGER PASSENGER ME PA
22 SWORD CHORD SW CH
24 SHERWOOD SOURWOOD HE OU
25 THREONINE THYRONINE RE YR
28 JACKMAN BECKMAN JA BE
29 CACKLE CANDLE CK ND
31 GASKET GADGET SK DG
32 WELFARE WARFARE EL AR
33 LITHOGRAPHY ORTHOGRAPHY LI OR
34 GANG GATE NG TE
37 ENTOMOLOGY ENZYMOLOGY TO ZY
41 CONVENIENT CONVERGENT NI RG
44 SECEDE ACCEDE SE AC
45 EXPORT EFFORT XP FF
46 SLITHER SMOTHER LI MO
50 CONCISE CONFUSE CI FU
53 TITLE TINGE TL NG
55 LYMAN LOGAN YM OG
56 INTENTION INTUITION EN UI
58 POTION POISON TI IS
61 SONATA STRATA ON TR
63 EXPEDITION EXPOSITION ED OS

Jack Skellington is explicitly mentioned by name (first, last, or both) on five different pages throughout the book. On each of those pages, his name occurs a different number of times, 1–5.

Each of these pages can be converted to a letter according to page number (using A=1, B=2, etc.). Ordering these letters by the number of mentions per page yields the final answer: BLOAT.

Page # Number of occurrences of Jack’s name Letter
2 1 B
12 2 L
15 3 O
1 4 A
20 5 T