“Yeah, why don’t you Google ‘mohawk man hands in pants‘ and see how that works out for you.”

“Quote board! Quote board!” someone calls, hurrying across the room to scribble the line down on the patch of whiteboard space designated for surreal overheard snippets of puzzle-solving-related conversation. Above the list of quotes is the phone number for event HQ. To the right is a hesitant dry-erase depiction of what might be a constellation, or possibly a Japanese character. Further down the board is a list of team members and their puzzling strengths, so everyone knows who to notify if a cryptic c...