The Haunted Lighthouse
A storm chased you into the old lighthouse on the point, and the door creaked shut and locked behind you. Folks in town say the ghost of the old keeper likes to play games with visitors. In the round room at the bottom of the stairs you see an old ship in a bottle with three masts, two portraits of past keepers, and a row of five candles, only one of them lit. A brass plate on the door reads: 'Five answers, five digits, and the keeper will let you go.'
Solve each puzzle to reveal one digit of the code. Type your answer and press Check. Stuck? Take a hint, or show the answer.
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Puzzle 1Solved
A cold breeze flips open the keeper's logbook to a riddle: 'Radio operators use my name to say the letter E. Shout up these spiral stairs and you'll meet me, but I'll only ever steal your last words.' The number of letters in the answer is your first digit.
Hint: Try yelling 'hello' into a big empty space and listen.AnswerEchoECHO is the radio alphabet word for E and the sound that bounces back, and it has 4 letters, so the first digit is 4. -
Puzzle 2Solved
The logbook continues: 'The spiral stairs have 63 steps. You start on a landing at the very bottom, and there's another landing after every 9th step all the way up. The 63rd step ends at the top landing.' How many landings are there? That number is your second digit.
Hint: Don't forget the landing you're standing on.Answer863 divided by 9 is 7 landings above the bottom, plus the bottom landing makes 8, so the second digit is 8. -
Puzzle 3Solved
Chalk letters appear on the wall: 'DO NOT LET WOLVES IN.' The keeper whispers that a number is hiding in the message, spelled with letters that sit right next to each other if you ignore the spaces. Find the number. It is your third digit.
Hint: Push the words together: DONOTLETWOLVESIN. Look in the middle.AnswerTwoIn 'leT WOlves' the letters T-W-O spell TWO, so the third digit is 2. -
Puzzle 4Solved
Words slowly appear in the fog on the window, but they're written backward: '?FLESTI YB TI YLPITLUM UOY NEHW EMAS EHT SYATS ,OREZ NAHT REHTO ,REBMUN TAHW' Read the message from right to left and answer the question. The answer is your fourth digit.
Hint: Start at the end. The last four letters, read backward, spell WHAT.Answer1The message reads 'WHAT NUMBER, OTHER THAN ZERO, STAYS THE SAME WHEN YOU MULTIPLY IT BY ITSELF?' Only 1 x 1 = 1, so the fourth digit is 1. -
Puzzle 5Solved
The lone lit candle flickers, and the keeper's final message appears in the wax: 'Blow out the candle that's burning and light all the others. Count the candles that are now lit, then add the masts on the ship in the bottle. That sum is your final digit.' Look back at the room description.
Hint: Five candles, one goes out, the rest are lit. The ship has three masts.Answer7Blowing out the 1 lit candle and lighting the other 4 leaves 4 burning, and 4 plus 3 masts is 7, so the final digit is 7.
The lock clicks open!
You enter 4-8-2-1-7, and the door swings open with a long, friendly creak. As you step out into the clearing storm, the lighthouse lamp blinks once, like a wink goodbye.