On Feb. 16, many of those who solved the Underworld issue puzzles gathered at Bourbon & Branch, a discreet speakeasy in San Francisco. After giving the password, they entered to discover an exclusive launch party for Wired.com senior editor Kevin Poulsen's book Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground. That meant the puzzle solvers weren't the only people there. They mixed in with professional hackers and FBI agents, the kinds of people with whom one has these conversations:
See, that's just not how normal people answer that question. But anyway, back to the gathering. Upon arrival at Bourbon & Branch, each attendee received a copy of Kingpin containing a bookmark with a solving sheet on it, and a key ring with a mini-Sharpie and a metal Wired capsule. Inside the capsule, each attendee found a secret message that gave them their a unique number (e.g., "You Are Number 006"). They also had a secret contact they could text when they needed help.
In each of five rooms, potential inductees found a ring-themed puzzle. One puzzle called Engagement Rings, unreproduceable online, was a set of acrylic dive rings that overlaid to become a set of nautical flags that led to the answer STATE. You may have already seen the other four puzzles in the online induction exam. If you haven't solved the online test, you may note that that post has now been modified to include a solution page. Consult that if you want to know the answers.
The potential inductees had an hour to crack those ring puzzles. After scrambling down to the last minute, the inductees gathered in the library room for a ceremony wherein we would induct five of them as charter members of the Ring of Dishonor. Doing so would gain them charter member rings, designed (and signed) by puzzle-master Eric Harshbarger.
But first, they would have to show their knowledge using copies of the Kingpin book. You can solve along, if you have a full set of answers (including STATE for the Engagement Rings puzzle) and a copy of the book in either physical or Kindle form.
Solvers had to figure out the connection between the answers and assign each to a page number in Kingpin. Then they got asked five questions that could be answered only on those pages (solutions after the jump):
• Crime Ring: "One of the words on this page has a part of a musical instrument in it. Find that word."
• Engagement Rings: "The word MIRROR has the cryptogrammatic pattern of the word CHEESE. Find the word on this page that has the cryptogrammatic pattern of the word GRINDINGS."
• Rings of Hell: "Find a word on this page that you can reverse and put a letter inside, and you will have a word meaning 'ring.'"
• Telephone Ring: "It's all well and good to be able to read the lines of a book from left to right. Reading straight downward inside one paragraph, find me the name of a gun."
• Ring Toss: "Find a word on this page for which the following is true: If you turn the first and fourth letters upside down, and change the final vowel to a consonant, you will have the name of a major American company."
The first person to text each answer to their contact was inducted into the charter membership of the Ring of Dishonor. The winners, shown here, were Joe Freund, Rich Bragg, John Owens, Alexandra Fiona Dixon, and beatboxer supreme Kid Beyond. We had a virtual tie online, with Wired puzzle contributor Dan Katz narrowly beating out reader Nathan Fung, so we awarded both of them rings. Congratulations to all for their mastery of skulduggery.
The Ring of Dishonor thanks the following people for this underworldly experience:
Ring of Dishonor Creators: Chris Baker, Mark L. Gottlieb, Mike Selinker, and Teeuwynn Woodruff
Additional Puzzle Designers: Eric Harshbarger, Tyler Hinman, Thomas Snyder and the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt team of Jay Lorch, Jon Howell, and Kenny Young
Event Manager: Aryn Dimas of Starfish Creative Events
Wired Game Control: Chris Baker, Alice Cho, Katelyn Davies, Maya Draisin, Timothy Kim, Kathrina Manalac, Rachel Millner, Tessa Miller, Berenice Odriozola, and Kevin Poulsen
Special Thanks: Andrea B. and her crew at Bourbon & Branch, Kevin Nichols and Duann Scott at Shapeways, Dawn Heiberg at Blue Dog Papers, Meredith Stern at PromoShop, Jane Doh at ARGNet, Erica Jewell, Lauren Gelman, Lizzard and Alex, and all the people who worked on the Underworld issue.
__Solutions »__For the answers to the individual ring puzzles, see this page. The answer to the Engagement Rings puzzle is STATE.
Each of these answers — GHOST, STATE, DWARF, FLAVOR, and TROMBONE — is in a phrase or title that starts with a number of those objects: 13 Ghosts, 50 States, 7 Dwarves, 31 Flavors, and 76 Trombones. Those numbers are the page numbers in the book.
The answers to the induction questions are: THREE-DAY (contains "reed"), SPEAKEASY, ELRIC (circle), COLT, and WAL-MART (malware).
