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Good Griddance

By now, the most SHARP-EYED among you have noticed, that interspersed amongst the CAPITAL-LADEN and ENTIRELY LARIOUS shop descriptions are a few words that are.... well let's say a bit DIFFERENT.

Using the 16 SPECIAL words that appear in the shop descriptions, and using the letters that appear in the badge image itself to help you figure out what order the special words should go in, make a grid of letters for each of the 4 sets of Summer Game Shop prizes:

  • a 4x4 grid for the 2,000 point prizes
  • a 6x4 grid for the 5,000 point prizes
  • an 8x4 grid for the 10,000 point prizes
  • a 10x4 grid for the 20,000 point prizes.

Then use those grids to find these 4 codes! Don't worry about the prize images in the badge; they're just DECORATION.

p.s. And of course, it wouldn't be a shop puzzle without a bonus code... those of you who are survivors of Unique Ode might use the clues in this description to lead you to an old newspaper ad in our community collections (search under all formats). The advertiser includes two different phone numbers in their ad, so that customers of both local phone companies could call them. Add up these two phone numbers to make a bonus code! If you think that's the WORSTED, don't worry, it's just a bonus!

This badge has been awarded to 245 players

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Comments

I was stumped on the bonus code for a long time, until I went back and realized that one of the phone numbers is different in the actual scan of old newspaper ad, from its transcription in the library catalog's OCR text. Without giving away the phone numbers, if you're adding it based on the actual scan of the picture (and not the OCR-generated text written below) you need to add another 10 to the number to get the bonus code.
I even downloaded the pdf of the whole issue of that newspaper and zoomed in just to be sure it was the OCR and not my eyes/monitor giving me the wrong phone number.

I'm totally baffled by this! The OCR on the bonus code node is not intelligible at all for the part of the page you're looking at. Sorry you got stumped, but I wonder if you're looking at a different version of the Ad that ran a different day?

I went back and redid the search and you're right, I'm getting different results this time than yesterday. I must have made a typo last time and got a similar ad from a different day like you suggest, and the phone numbers are different.
It's sort of funny, the first number in the correct ad is 10 more, but in the OCR in the incorrect ad, the second number is the one that got 10 more added on. So, I just got lucky that the different phone number was different exactly by the error of the OCR, sometimes, by chance, 2 wrongs make a right!

Wow!! That was a tough but fun badge! However, I got the first one just by guessing. Not sure how those letters relate to a power pose...

what is this so called power pose? I can find none with six letters, since two vowels are supposed to be missing making a four letter word.

This feels weird to ask, but is there an archived version of last year's Unique Ode clues anywhere? I solved it then, but am having trouble translating that to this year since I can't work through the clues again (or: since we aren't starting with emoji, I'm having trouble figuring out whether I should be working in decimal/hexidecimal/something else).

You can still visit the unique ode badge from your player page, but you're right that it won't show you the clues if you already solved it. However, you don't need it in any way. There's no base conversion, emoji, or unicode required to solve the bonus code. Just the right search to lead you to the right old ad...

For what it's worth, I loved the Unique Ode! But I'm sure it was a lot of extra work for Eli to (patiently) respond to all the comments from frustrated players ;-P

Badge Series
Event 2020

Game
SummerGame2020

Difficulty
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ambitious 4 of out 4 difficulty

Badge Points
100

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