The Only Way Out is Through
A Portal Hopping adventure
Suddenly a hole opens in the fabric of the world and Jenkins leaps through. As he vanishes, he drops a piece of paper. You pick it up.
Jenkins appears to have borrowed a portal gun from APErture Labs and is now hopping from Portal to Portal throughout the world. Reviewing the paper he dropped, it can be seen that clues were left as to how to find him. Reviewing the clue list, each can be answered by a word that contains OO.
| Answer | Clue |
|---|---|
GROOMSMEN | • A year before his paper anniversary, these guys were indispensable |
FESTOONED | • Covered in ribbons, lights, and bows |
FLOODGATES | • Don't drive your Chevy to the levee, if they are open |
BAMBOOZLED | • Fooled by Spike Lee |
PRECOOKED | • Just like MREs |
KABOODLES | • Kits' other halves |
CARTOONISH | • Like Garfield and Cleveland but not Madison |
SCHMOOZES | • Networks over bagels |
BUFOONERY | • The sort of behavior one expects from a jackanapes |
BALLOONIST | • The Wizard of Oz's farewell job |
Each of the O's in the word represent a Portal where the word made a jump in the provided grid.
Reading the un-circled letters leaves a message on how to follow Jenkins
CONNECT WITH SEMAPHORE TO UNLOCK A PATH FORWARD
Pairing up each half of the words by their portal points yields a valid semaphore encoding (https://www.dcode.fr/semaphore-flag). For example, BALLO-ONIST has BALLO- running West from the portal, and -ONIST running NorthWest from the Portal. This gives the letter O using semaphore.
| Semaphore | Clue |
|---|---|
O | BALLO-ONIST |
P | BAMBO-OZLED |
E | BUFFO-ONERY |
N | CARTO-ONISH |
S | FESTO-ONED |
E | FLO-ODGATES |
S | GRO-OMSMEN |
A | KABO-ODLES |
M | PRECO-OKED |
E | SCHMO-OZES |
Repeating this for the other 9 words pairs and putting the clues in alphabetical order gives the final way to join Jenkins, which is by saying OPEN SESAME.
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