Hints and tips
Welcome to the forum
Hello readers,
Many thanks for buying the book - or maybe it was bought for you as a gift and you're thinking "what is this?!".
In any case, welcome to the forum. Please feel free to ask questions, post comments and feedback, and help for other readers. You'll normally get a response in some way from one of the authors within a day if you don't find the answer you're looking for.
As a reminder for when you get stuck, here are the hints from the book itself:
The first mystery to each puzzle is figuring out how the puzzle works. There are a number of techniques used to hide or encode the answer words ranging from well known codes to other ways of scrambling or unscrambling letters with clues such as numbers or directions.
Look out for morse code or braille dots, angled lines which might be semaphore or clock hands (or both!).
If you see numbers on a page, these are likely to indicate a sequence of some sort - re-ordering or picking out letters from words. They may even refer to the letters themselves.
You may need to look things up with google - especially where braille and morse are concerned. Having a numbered alphabet is also a very handy thing to have close by. Do double-check you're entering the answer in the correct page and that your device is not interfering with auto-correct.
The answer pages are also case-insensitive - they DoN't cArE how you enter the word.
If you're posting hints - please use the spoiler hide feature on the forum so as to gradually reveal more and more of the puzzle solution - we'd prefer it if you didn't actually post the answer but get creative in your hints. We view these as additional puzzles in their own right and it's fascinating to see how readers interpret and interact with the puzzles, especially readers from different cultural backgrounds and where English is not a first language. This is actually very valuable feedback and helps us in writing future titles.
When you do find a solution, we'd love to hear your progress - drop us a quick message on any of the social media with @theescapages #arrival - photos even more welcome.
We hope you enjoy the book and engaging with other readers here.
If you're reading this in 2019...Happy Christmas.
Matt.
