Chaos & Confetti

It’s no secret that we here at Chaos y Confetti love puzzle challenges, whether we’re doing them in the comfort of our own homes or out in the wider world.  

Previously, we’ve had the opportunity to complete some of The Great Gotham Challenge’s at home puzzle kits, including the 2022 Crate Gotham Challenge.  The depth, ingenuity, and immersiveness of the puzzles from GGC’s experiences were a lot of fun and very rewarding.  They were high quality trials that left us extremely satisfied.

This year, when GGC reached out offering us an invitation to The Great Gotham Challenge MMXXIV (2024), we knew we couldn’t pass on the chance to take part in an immersive puzzle experience that would have us running through the actual streets of New York City.

TELL ME MORE: WHAT IS THE GREAT GOTHAM CHALLENGE MMXXIV?

The Main Objective:

The Great Gotham Challenge MMXXIV was a puzzle hunt spread over the streets of Manhattan.  Teams of 2-4 players raced around New York City looking for clues, interacting with actors, solving puzzles, searching for artifacts, and eating treats.  The adventure pulled from real life history and culture to create cohesive theming and narrative for the puzzles and clues.

Each team started with a packet that contained their first puzzle, and had access to a website where answers needed to be submitted.  The puzzles throughout the game would be made up of physical and digital elements, but the final answers would always need to be submitted online.  The physical elements would require players to walk (or run) over a large section of New York in order to find ways to progress on their journey.

If at any point players got stuck, they could get hints from the website for a time penalty.

The entire event is estimated to take about 3-5 hours.  In the end, the team who reaches the secret finish line with the best adjusted time is declared the winner! 

The Side Quest:

A new twist on this year’s adventure was the inclusion of hidden GGC logo medallions.  These medallions were placed high and low throughout the city.  If teams saw them, they could hold their phones over them to get a few minutes knocked off their final time.

OUR EXPERIENCE

We competed as a four person team, and spoiler alert: even though our overall puzzle solving performance was a bit lacking, we all had an absolute blast.  

One of the best parts of the challenge was getting to experience New York in such a unique way.  While we’ve all been to New York City before, this visit was nothing like our previous ones.  The challenge took us to some more prominent locales like the Moynihan Train Station, Chelsea Market, and The High Line (something none of us knew about).  We also stepped into shops and places we never would have bothered with otherwise, like a local laundromat.  What made this even better though was the theming of the puzzles.  The GGC used real life history of the area to inform and flavor their puzzles and clues.  We learned a lot through what can only be described as one of the most creative self-guided tours of New York ever.

We also appreciated all the elements that allowed the challenge to rise above a traditional scavenger hunt.  We didn’t just visit local landmarks and areas, but we also interacted with them in entertaining ways.  During our journey we met actors, climbed through hidden passages, ate treats, gave secret messages, and more.  Thanks to GGC I had boba tea for the first time.  We never knew what fun wackiness might come next.  These payoffs to solved puzzles, which then often led to more puzzles, littered our day with priceless memories.  We had plenty of people on the street asking about what we were up to as different points of our adventure. It’s not everyday you see people pour water on their shirts for answer or entering Fedex on a special mission. 

With multiple city blocks in play, the challenge had an open feeling that was thrilling even if it did sometimes lead to confusion.  When searching down specific actors, we definitely approached a few people who weren’t part of the game, and at one point, I was trying to get into a real UPS truck while my team members were interacting with a package we actually needed (whoops).

This was a fantastic way to experience New York and spend a day in general.  We loved taking part in The Great Gotham Challenge MMXXIV and hope to play in another of their in-person events again soon. 

THE PUZZLES

We were pleasantly surprised at how many puzzles the challenge provided us. While the event was marketed as a 3-5 hour experience, we took closer to seven hours.  Some of that may have been us just being slower, but we definitely had quite a few teams wrapping up their final puzzles alongside us.  GGC really did set up a jammed pack day of puzzling.

The puzzles throughout the day varied in type and difficulty.  We were able to breeze through some puzzles while others took a lot more brain power (or even hints).  Thankfully none of the puzzles ever felt like repeats of ones that came before.  Sometimes we were using logic and deductive skills to crack crosswords and figure out how to use props, other times we needed our special skills to line up clues or to position our sights just right, and other times we worked with ciphers.  The puzzles kept us on our toes and allowed different team members to shine as different skills were needed.

The connective narrative and a lot of the cluing came through the game’s website, and overall, we felt well directed.  Even when we struggled to crack a puzzle, we usually knew what we should be doing (except one time when window cleaners were mentioned and put ourselves on a wild goose chase with our sights set a bit too high).  The few times we did take hints, we weren’t too surprised to see we were on the right track and just needed slight nudges to progress.

Presenting the puzzles in unique ways that often incorporated the locations and physical clues we encountered over the course of the day helped bring the puzzle solving alive in fascinating ways.  It’s not an exaggeration to say we had to use all five of our senses to find success (yes, even taste and smell).

We loved the puzzles GGC provided in their home experiences, so it was great to see their in-person adventure took everything to the next level.

THE WRAP UP:

If you couldn’t tell by our write-up so far, we really loved our Great Gotham Challenge MMXXIV adventure.  This is an experience we’ll be talking about for a long while, and it opened up our eyes to so many new aspects of New York City.  The surprises, twists, and wow-moments kept our energy high as we put the miles in that day.  We definitely hope to take part in another challenge again before too long and highly recommend it to those who have the opportunity.  

While this particular challenge only ran in June of 2024, Great Gotham Challenge does run other public events during the Summer and be used for custom events and team building experiences as well.

*disclaimer – we were provided a complimentary team registration. All thoughts are our own.