I’m really into puzzle hunts right now, and last year even co-hosted one. I want to do another one this year and, based on people’s reactions, the most enjoyable puzzles are the interactive ones and/or ones that give people an experience they will (probably) never experience again, as opposed to plain paper ones.
So one of my ideas for a puzzle was to give teams a wine bottle with something inside that they needed to extract, but could not do it simply by turning the bottle upside down. What they would have to do is seek out a source of water and fill the bottle, lifting the object out. However, I’m open to any ideas along similar lines, even the whole Mentos/Diet Coke think. I almost think I’d prefer this, it would be a unique interactive puzzle.
My inital tests were with a ball bearing (to plug the neck) and a piece of cork. Filling the bottle with water does get the cork out, but so also does turning the bottle upside down, since the ball bearing falls out (obviously, since I was able to get it in). My tests with Diet Coke and Mentos found that Diet Coke is extremely reactive, losing a large portion of its fizz (and thus Mentos reactivity) just from the ridges at the bottom of the bottle. I also tried taping the ball bearing and cork together with a piece of fishing line, attempting to hide the cork in the dark liquid, but the Diet Coke dissolved the stickiness of the tape and lifted the cork out of the bottle as the carbination released.
So I’m open to any ideas or suggestions, as long as it fits the basic idea of having to extract an object from a bottle that can’t be done any other way other than add something new to the bottle.
What if you poured about 1/2 an inch of sugar in the bottle, dropped in the ball bearing, and added a tablespoon of water. When the whole mess dried, you’d have to desolve the sugar to get the ball bearing out. Banging the bottle on your hand might dislodge it, but that seems to go against the spirit. Also, you can’t just put it back together when you’re done with it, you’d have to start from scratch.
You could prolly stuff a nerf ball down into a wine bottle. Not sure how the hell you could get it out without breaking the bottle, but that ain’t your problem…
Love the ideas, certainly has me thinking. But I do need a solution, so to speak, for these ideas. The (possible) location for this puzzle is in the middle of a baseball field, where the only mainly accesible materials to them would be water from a drinking fountain. Any other requirements to solve this puzzle would either have to be provided and/or required to bring to the puzzle hunt.
I like the ice idea, since there are two possible solutions: wait for it to melt (via sun, body heat or something else) or add water (and salt? I could provide them with a salt packet at the beginning of the game).
How would Jello dissolve? Or parrafin? Would a carbonated beverage dissolve crystalized sugar? If so, would adding Mentos speed the process?
If you could get some sort of rubber cone and then cut the end off it would look like this -> / \
Then stuff that into the bottle hole/point first to the point where it can regain it’s original form. Now turning the bottle upside will get the object wedged between the cone and the bottle wall. Unless they were really lucky. Now they could fill it up with water till the small floaty things get close enough to the top that they can use some short straw and create a suction to stick it to the end of the straw and pull it out.
The straw would have to be short enough so that it couldn’t reach the bottom of the bottle and straight enough that they couldn’t angle it through the hole to get the ball.
If you had a place that was yours, you could drive in a few narrow PVC pipes, like 4 feet deep or so, and at the bottom stick, say, ping-pong balls with the clue written on. Then they’d have to ferry water over and float them out?
I saw this once in a Baskin-Robbins: A large glass bottle, maybe a milk bottle, inside of which was a smaller glass (about the size of an eyewash glass). The large bottle was full of water, or some liquid. The challenge, not exactly a puzzle, was to drop a coin in so that it would fall through the water and land inside the smaller glass. There were lots of pennies outside the small glass and only a couple inside it, so it was harder than it looked.
If you could get the density right, you could do something like:
You fill a bottle with half dyed water and half oil, and drop in a small ball or pellet that floats on water but not oil (so it sits in the middle.) You then give them a small squirter of some sort (small enough that both the ball and the squirter could fit through the nose of the bottle at the same time) and an emulsifying agent. Depending on how cloudy the mixture becomes, you might want to give them a flash light as well. You’ll also want to make sure that you fill the bottle only enough so that there’s room for the emulsifier without overflowing.
The goal is, of course, to get the ball out without spilling.
I’ve never tested this, so I have no idea how realistic it is, nor how long it would take to force the ball to the top, using only a water squirter.
Layers in a plastic bottle.
Fill plastic bottle 1/5 full with colored water (red) and with small ball bearing.
Freeze.
Then put thin layer of melted candle wax, make hole with stick a little larger than ball bearing.
Then fill bottle up to 2/5th but the next layer is dyed green water.
Freeze.
Then another layer of wax. Again, put a small hole, but on another side of the wax large enough for the bearing to go through.
Continue until bottle is full, you have five layers of different colors of water and four layers of wax. You have to wait until water melts to try to get the bottom bearing to go through the wax holes by turning the bottle upside down - but the trick is, to do it in the time the water melts, but before the wax melts.
Might be time consuming to make, but could be fun and colorful.
When I read the thread title, I pictured a maze likethis one (but flat and without the magnet) except that instead of little balls, there would be a bit of colored water in it, two different colors in two different locations of the maze. Your goal would be to get them to switch places or something, without letting them mix. So, kind of off-topic, but just an idea.
If this is some sort of Road Rally, you could try this (kind of using DMarks’ idea as a jumping point)
First layer:
Baking Soda + Clue Ball.
Second Layer:
A wax seal, maybe about 1/8th inch thick.
Third Layer:
Vinegar… just enough to mix with the baking soda and cause enough pressure to build (once the wax layer melts) to pop out the cork. It’s imperative that they don’t have a way of getting the cork out otherwise. Make the top of the cork, flush with the lip of the bottle. Any obvious tampering with the cork = disqualified.
Solution: Turn on the vehicle’s heater to max, and hold the bottle close, waiting for the wax to melt… once the seal is breached… stand back.
I think a lot of the suggestions here are getting too complicated. Why not just put some sand in along with a ball that floats, or a cork, or whatever? Tell them they have to get the ball out, but have to keep all the sand in the bottle.
