Solution to Space Bar
CMD AND CTRL
For our first puzzle, we wanted to lean into the punctuation and typesetting theme that we established with the ¶ in our name, so we built a puzzle out of a keyboard.
The first step is to notice the following things about the initials of the food items:
They’re pretty strange. Lots of X’s and Q’s.
Each card has a unique set of initials.
All of the initials within a single food item are clustered together on a QWERTY keyboard. This is clued by the puzzle’s title, Space Bar.
Then, it’s a simple matter of drawing a path from one key to the next, forming the shapes of English letters. These spell CMD AND CTRL, a nod to other keys that you’d find adjacent to the space bar (on a standard American Mac keyboard).
Xenomorphic Zesty Quinoa Waffles
Celestial Electrolyzed Fried Tofu Bites
Nourishing Yellow Unprocessed Kelp Milk Nuggets
Cosmic Espresso With Quince Zest And Dill
Vigorously Reconstituted Nectarine Yogurt
Musk's Ultimate Kumquat Milk
Wholesome Quickfreeze Zodiacal Xylocarp
Virtual Reality Edible Tempura
Nanotech Yams (Unsalted)
8-spice Kosher Lentils
Notes
About 6,500 people solved Space Bar and submitted their email addresses by the deadline, which was only 24 hours after it was released. This was more solves than any other puzzle, and also the shortest time frame.
We had lots of fun writing these names. Since our only constraints were a) the initial letters, and b) a need to make them sound roughly like real food, this was a fun chance to make up our versions of Alinea-sounding nonsense foods.
Obviously there are lots of keyboards in the world, and this puzzle breaks if you don’t use the standard American keyboard. Fortunately, keyboard mappings are easy to find online, and if you are aware of the ambiguity, you should be able to guess that we went with the keyboard most commonly found here in Chicago, USA, where Alinea is located.
We chose to use a different “D” shape on the second word in order to not cause the paths to overlap on a given word. The first “D” shape is definitely better, but forcing the 2nd “D” path to use the comma key seemed like more trouble.
Similarly, the “L” on the third keyboard is shifted up a little to avoid the punctuation keys. I enjoyed working the 8 key in there.
No, we’ve never heard of non-Kosher lentils either.
Notes from solvers
Several solvers responded with their own food lists, like this one from Jeremy:
Quietly Zipped Sounding Xray Eels
Tofu Fried By Heat Treatment
Yellow Nectarines Jicama Mango Infusion
Ryan said: “Looking forward to Space Bar, a great place to + to my roster of places to Esc and open a Tab.”
Robert: “I solved the Space Bar one inadvertently because I went to the bathroom and when I came back my hands were wet and it made the answer method very visible!”