The Holiday Inn Puzzle
The first component of this puzzle was the advertisement for the "Lithuanian Armed Freedom Forces," which appeared in the puzzle booklet with an odd assortment of words subtly highligted. In fact, in the original printing of the puzzle booklet, even noticing that some of the words looked a little different was difficult.
Tired of the same old safe job?
Then come discover excitement in the Lithuanian Armed Freedom Forces!
Superpowers such as the U.S.S.R. got you down? Do they seem too old? too encrusted in bureaucracy?
The LAFF has great things in store for you! We're new! We're unproved! We're interested in you!
The Communist Superpowers provide an excellent opportunity for in-the-field training and confrontational military experience. You'll learn how to get the message through to World Communism!
There's no question that a career in the LAFF has a life for you that promises lots of action. There is no reason why you shouldn't join up today.
Consider this scenario: Coming out of college, Mikhail decides on a career in a corporate law firm. Soon, he finds himself surrounded by lousy neighbors and persistent I.R.S. tax collectors. Eventually he dies from stress and tainted spring water.
Boris, on the other way, cleverly joins the LAFF, where he gets to live in the fresh outdoors air and do what man does most naturally: kill people.
Whereas Mikhail spends his life hid behind stacks of paperwork, Boris lives freely in plain sight!
You, as well, can live a successful life as Boris did by joining the LAFF. We are inserting young men and women into well targeted positions right now.
How can you get into these highly contested areas today? Go to your nearest Lithuanian embassy and say: "Ya khachoo vam dat moy zhizhn."
What? You say you hardly know any Russian words? So much the better! We will teach you fresh how to speak Lithuanian.
As you spend more and more years in our fine country, you will begin to become even more associated with the ground you are fighting for.
Besides coming to live in the world's most beautiful new country, you will be given clothes, food and weapons. What goods does Mikhail get from working in the big corporation?
Join the LAFF. It may not be a holiday, but think where your life is leading you the next time you are stuck in a grid lock traffic jam.
After noticing the "special" words, they could be read in order as:
Discover the message that is cleverly hid
By inserting these words in the Holiday grid.
There was a distinctively-shaped grid (two tall narrow rectangles, side by side, each 10 sqares tall and 7 squares wide) in the booklet which had some squares grayed out, leaving spaces for fifteen interlocking words to be inserted into it.
Beneath the grid was a list of nine three-digit numbers.
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The trick here was first to notice the grid, then to figure out how to insert the 15 words of the above verse into the grid in order to get them all to fit, interlocking together properly.
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The next step was to figure out why the grid was referred to as the "Holiday" grid. Searching through the puzzle booklet, the only reference to the word "Holiday" was the marker on the map locating the Holiday Inn hotel. After making this insight, the list of three digit numbers began to look suspiciously like a list of room numbers.
Once at the Holiday Inn, an important similarity between the grid of words and the hotel should have become evident - the hotel is comprised of two 10-story towers, each with 7 rooms on each side of the hallway on each floor. Furthermore, the architecture of the hotel (light-colored exterior, with darkened windows) is such that if facing the hotel from the road, the building looks very much like two 10 by 7 grids.
By entering the hotel (or by making good guesses from the parking lot), the room numbering scheme of the hotel can easily be determined.
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The nine numbers listed in the booklet next to the grid indicate room numbers that are important. By no coincidence, these nine numbers are all even numbers - because they correspond to room numbers of nine rooms on the west side of the hotel.
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Highlighting the squares on the competed word-grid corresponding to these nine rooms yield nine letters.
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E - I - G - H - T - Y - T - W - O
These nine letters spell out the answer to this puzzle - 82.
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