The question is on everyone’s lips: how to be more effective at Pop In the City? How to solve the puzzles?
Even more difficult than an abseiling and more indigestible than a pig’s head at 9am …
So we give you REAL advice here.
It’s true, we don’t spare you. Charades, equations with triple unknowns, oxymorons without tail or head …
A surge of kindness or a hint of pity? Today we give you some keys to become a puzzle cracker and try to explode your stats on the next edition.
For novices: at the start of Pop In the City, you will be given a roadbook made up of puzzles + a score sheet on which you will have your challenges validated. Each team is also assigned a challenge area with which it must begin.
1.WE NEVER GO FAR WHEN WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING
Read the riddle to the end. Without rushing. We don’t stop at the first sentence and say to ourselves “oh my god I don’t speak this language”.
Take it riddle by riddle, to avoid going over the entire roadbook and not understanding anything.
Don’t think you’re being taken for quiches, that’s how it works.
2 recommendations:
- Solve as many puzzles as possible before starting the race; afterwards, we don’t have time!
- Solve all the puzzles in your area as a priority, to know where to go, and take advantage of the possible waiting on a challenge to solve the rest of the puzzles
- WE DON’T GIVE YOU A CARD TO MAKE ORIGAMI
Use the map provided to you and look at it from every angle: front, back, legends included, to try to identify recognizable elements in the roadbook, especially in the “semantics”. When we say “in C2”, it is potentially the C2 box of the card. Or “on the hotel in the center,…”: the middle of the map, the H for hotel, and above: miracle, the place you are looking for.
NB: it is therefore safer to use the card given when you collect your race numbers because your guide’s C2 is certainly not a universal C2 🙂
Sometimes it is also useful to use the City Guide that we have created.
Some information remains incomprehensible?
Call on the locals. They know the city like the back of their hand. It is a sure bet.
Otherwise, on the drafting side, we play it serious. Personifications, metonymies, synecdoques, hyperboles… No doubt, at Pop In we have a sense of the figure of speech. But don’t look too far: behind the peacock often hides a beast bird.
- IF YOU FIND THE NAME OF A “CONCEPT” CHALLENGE, KNOW THAT IT IS NEVER GIVEN BY CHANCE
Indeed, each challenge name gives you a clue as to what you are going to do. Writing the puzzles is a teambuilding moment at Pop In.
We draw up the table for you: 6 women a little crossed out, puns, and a lot of outbidding. Each has their own little commentary to spice up the game.
This is how the riddle of a Paddle challenge in Hamburg, initially called “Bread on the board”, became “Loaves on the board”. Explanation: the paddle is a board and the exercise is perilous. The practice involves work, in other words a lot of work.
In colloquial terms, bread is also called “loaves”, a sweet little name that also refers to female attributes. We therefore obtain “Loaves on the board”. Crispy, isn’t it?
- ORGANIZE YOUR RACE
You are not headless chicks. The puzzles solved, the places identified, you only did half the work! Then you have to organize your day.
Watching the most organized teams, here are the techniques:
- 5 stabilos of different colors, to mark the location of the challenges of each category on its map! Perfect for identifying challenges not far from each other and completing your series
- Do not hesitate to go to the more distant challenges, never overloaded and where you can really benefit from them
- Ask other teams where they come from and where they are going, to get their opinions on the challenges and why not travel together
- ALTERNATIVE TO UNSECURED SUCCESS
Kidnap a team member. Tie her to a chair and try to get her to spit it out. Radical but effective solution.
A priori, the members of the team are overtrained and do not give in to psychological pressure. But each of us has its flaws, it’s up to you to find them. For example – and on the off chance -, Clémentine would sell father and mother for a square of dark chocolate.
