Forums » Epic Week 2022 » Puzzle 4 Symbol (SOLVED)

This topic is for discussing clues and potential answers to the Puzzle 4 Symbol in Epic Week 2022. Please stay on topic. Remember, these puzzles are designed to be challenging and require a group of people brainstorming together; don't feel intimidated if you don't know the answer right away. Every little idea can help. In puzzles, all information you will need to solve it is contained within Epic Week materials.

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Just a heads-up: I can unlock the second clue in like half an hour

Wow! I unlocked a clue!

Great work!

Hmm. Maybe this one had to do with the plant-growing towers noted on one of the sheets? Infusions are mentioned a couple of times.

It definitely has something to do with that I think.


Central challenge for growth: "Per Gil: maintaining soil quality likely to be central challenge with more intense farming"
Supply in question: "do we have enough soil to build so many towers?"
Created with infusion rather than eruption: "More efficient for tephric infuser, OR manually rotate compost based soil?"

Tephric material as defined by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization: Tephric material (from Greek tephra, pile ash) consists either of tephra, i.e.unconsolidated, non- or only slightly weathered pyroclastic products of volcanic eruptions (including ash, cinders, lapilli, pumice, pumice-like vesicular pyroclastics, blocks and volcanic bombs), or of tephric deposits, i.e. tephra that has been reworked and mixed with material from other sources.

I want to suggest "soil" or "compost", but I'm not sure if that's it?

Maybe the entire Waterfall Tower as a whole?

Great callouts!

I did try compost just on a whim earlier, but that wasn't it.

Also to point out: the number written on the bottom is the golden ratio/number.

If we're looking at 'not eruption', that removes the pyroclastic elements, since they'd be products of the volcano itself.

If it's hinting at something golden, they did mention gold infused glass as well, which is a thing! Gold glass, or gold sandwich glass. There's a German word for it too it seems: Zwischengoldglas.

That might leave ash as one of the main things then, and ash is sometimes used as a neutralizer in soil!

Edit: Maybe we might need to think of the process of keeping soil fertile itself too as possible answers though, just in case. I'm not sure what to suggest other than "soil fertility" though.

Congrats on solving this symbol! The answer was "Andosol".

For those of you wondering how this answer could be arrived at, here's a quick explanation.

If you didn't use Google in solving this, you are an enormous farming or geology nerd, and I salute you! Clues 1 and 2 point as us at the Sketched notes, Jan 38 where we see that "Maintaining soil quality likely to be central challenge with more intense farming" and to two different questions about "ingredients", "More efficient for tephric infuser, OR manually rotate compost based soil?" and "Do we have enough soil to build so many towers? Can more be made?" Hopefully, you caught on that soil was the main topic of this puzzle. The mention of a tephric infuser, along with the third clue, that whatever this was would be created through infusion rather than eruption were meant to be big hints that their solution to this conundrum would be magically/artificially creating volcanic soil (ie, soil high in tephra) which is called either "Andosol" or "Andisol" depending on where you are in the world (I would have accepted either answer). I checked that this word did appear on the first page of Google when looking for volcanic soil when trying to decide if this puzzle was too wicked or not... It did, so I went with it. Don't hate me.

I am not a nerd in either of those things, and did consult Dr of Geology Google about "volcanic soil name", hahah.

Very nice!!!