Jeff Suliga

Hydrology Solution



This puzzle takes place on an open field with lots of buckets out to catch the rain. The flavortext of the puzzle is written in these buckets to spell out

“the key to catching rainfall is to shift and alternate types of buckets”

The audio and visuals show that it is raining with certain buckets catching drops of water throughout the video.

Discovery 1: The keyboard

The player notices that the water buckets are laid out in the shape of a typical computer keyboard. Words “key, shift, alternate, type” in the flavortext is hinting at this as well.

Discovery 2: Catching rainfall

The player can then notice that certain buckets catch rain throughout the video. Tracking the letters within the buckets that catch the rain yields no meaningful message, but translating these drops back to their respective keys on a standard QWERTY - style keyboard gives the following message

puzzle url: 298x335

\(298 \times 335\) is \(99830\), and if entered players find this is not the answer. So we have to look deeper at this message.

Discovery 3: Puzzle URL

Looking then at the puzzle url the player notices that, instead of having the puzzle title, it ends with “Circumference/Diameter.” Of course, this is referring to the famous constant \(\pi = 3.14159265\), which is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter. The player can then use 298 and 335 as an index of these first nine digits of pi to get “156x445”, whose value is 69420, the answer to this puzzle.


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