Solution to Sandwich Castle

I NEED A HERO

This puzzle started with a desire to depart from static image puzzles and make something more interactive.

The primary mechanic of the game is as follows: push sandwich ingredients into the pink “portals” to insert them into the sandwich on the wooden table, aiming to recreate the sandwich template shown on the left side of the screen. The portals come in four types:

  • White bar on top: insert the ingredient above all the current ingredients

  • White bar on bottom: insert the ingredient below all of current ingredients

  • White bars on top and bottom: insert the ingredient above and below.

  • Red bar on top: if the ingredient matches the highest ingredient in the sandwich, remove it.

Here is a full playthrough of the quickest way to win each level:

The puzzle itself is sandwiched throughout the video game. Before and after each level are sentences with uppercase words. In each sentence, the first uppercase word applies to the preceding level and the second applies to the following level. In other words, each level is sandwiched between two words, A and B.

These two words imply a third word that fits between them, similar to the Before & After theme on Wheel of Fortune: you’re looking for a word that can follow word A and precede word B to form two common words, names, or phrases. For instance, level 1 is sandwiched between LADY and CAGE. This leads to the word BIRD, which can form LADY BIRD and BIRD CAGE.

For the next step, one has to notice that the game has particularly large dimensions. Specifically, it is 26x26, a clue that you can label each spot on the playing field with two letters of the alphabet: one for column, one for row. But what to do with that? There’s one other part of this game that is peculiar: each level reveals a trophy upon completion, and those trophies appear in seemingly arbitrary spots. Using the upper left corner as the origin (marked with a subtle plus sign), you can convert each trophy to a pair of letters. For example, on level 1, the trophy appears at (I, D).

Back to those words. You can now use these pairs of letters as the “bread” on a letter sandwich: find them in the word, and read the letter sandwiched between them. Putting those two examples from Level 1 together, you want the letter that appears between I & D in BIRD: an R.

Finally, notice that the Sandwich King is sitting at one of 10 seats on each level. Using those chairs as an ordering mechanism, you get the final answer phrase I NEED A HERO.

King Level Before Middle After x y
1 8 CHESS PIECE MEAL 16 5 P E I
2 2 HOPE DIAMOND BACK 15 4 O D N
3 5 ROAST BEEF WELLINGTON 2 5 B E E
4 7 BITTER SWEET TOOTH 5 20 E T E
5 4 STORM WINDOW DRESSING 14 15 N O D
6 3 FAIR GAME THEORY 7 13 G M A
7 6 FLASH LIGHT HEADED 7 20 G T H
8 9 SPOT CHECK MARK 8 3 H C E
9 1 LADY BIRD CAGE 9 4 I D R
10 10 MAY FLOWER POWER 12 23 L W O

Notes

  • This puzzle had 3,641 correct submissions in the 48 hours the solve window was open.

  • When we started making the meta, we filled out a grid with 10 possible answers, as a proof of concept. Most of those answers changed over time, but this one was in that original set, and our favorite. Once we landed on the punny title, we knew we had to make it.

  • This was one of the most labor-intensive pop-ups to create. The underlying puzzle itself was fairly straightforward to construct, but the game took close to 40 hours to design and implement, spread over the course of 5 days.

  • The game is built in Puzzlescript, an open-source HTML5 engine which makes building tile-based puzzle games like this pretty easy. Check it out and try making your own game - it’s lots of fun!

  • We went through many iterations of this puzzle, trying to develop an in-world justification for having an arcade game at restaurant. Or for an arcade game be a restaurant. At one point the idea was that you’d order your sandwich by selecting and playing a certain level. Or that you’d choose your toppings via your in-game avatar. Eventually we simplified it to its current form.

  • We didn’t build any way to see how many people played the game without even attempting the puzzle layer. If this was you and you have any comments or funny stories about playing the game, shoot us a line!

Notes from solvers

  • Nate M. won the comment game by sending us functioning Puzzlescript code for the following level:

Screen Shot 2020-08-05 at 2.34.22 AM.png

  • Many solver comments, expectedly, quoted lyrics from the Bonnie Tyler song “Holding Out for a Hero.”

  • Some solvers suggested that I NEED A GYRO could be an equally appropriate and arguably punnier answer. Matthew grew up in Pennsylvania and still stand by our HERO sandwich solution!