Prout's Hunt Puzzle Hunt [back to main page]

Stop 9: Cliff Path (Answer)

The overhead images are all identifiable places. From left to right, top to bottom (with tips on how to identify):

• MIAMI (distinctive terrain)
• BERLIN (Brandenburg Gate)
• SEATTLE (Space Needle)
• CAIRO (Tahrir Square)
• LOS ANGELES (Santa Monica pier)
• LONDON (see the shadow of the London Eye)
• MOSCOW (the Kremlin)
• AMSTERDAM (canals!)
• TORONTO (CN Tower)
• CAMBRIDGE (Harvard Square)
• LAS VEGAS (the Bellagio Pool and other locations on the strip)
• KUALA LUMPUR (Petronas towers)
• PARIS (Ile Notre Dame).

Each picture can be identified with a three-letter word. From left to right, top to bottom, these are:

• RON (Weasley, of Harry Potter)
• UMP
• MIA (Farrow)
• DAM
• ARI (Gold, of Entourage)
• AIR
• LIN, (Jeremy)
• SEA
• GAS
• GEL
• DON (Draper, of Mad Men)
• CAM (of Modern Family)
• COW

Each word (which has a number) happens to appear in one of the city names (which has a direction). The sequence of directions, in alphabetical order by the things, is thus:

C(AIR)O, 4S, E
P(ARI)S, 2E, C
(CAM)BRIDGE, 3SE, T
MOS(COW), 3W, 0
AMSTER(DAM), 4N, R
LON(DON), 1NE, Q
LAS VE(GAS), 3S, U
LOS AN(GEL)ES, 2NE, A
BER(LIN), 3N, N
(MIA)MI, 1SW, T
TO(RON)TO, 3E, I
(SEA)TTLE, 3SW, T
KUALA L(UMP)UR, 3SE, Y

We started on the letter V, so this spells the answer: VECTOR QUANTITY.

This puzzle is substantially different from the one I had my family do. For them, I made all the cities be cities that people in our family had lived in. So they had to identify Oberlin instead of Berlin, which is harder in some ways (less distinctive) but they could use the “What other cities have we lived in?” heuristic to move make progress. For this website, I made all the cities identifiable to a general audience.