Olivia Chang

Won the Kistler Chardonnay from The Alinea Group Wine Shop
by cracking the code to get into Goldberg Variation

Oliva (left) and her friend Andrea

How did you hear about the game?

I first saw the 15th anniversary email from Alinea when I was quickly glancing through all the new promotional emails I got in the promotions inbox but I didn't think much of it. It was only when I saw Chef Achatz and Alinea Group's instagram posts about the game did I read the game description in full and was able to find my way into Pilcrow Bar fairly quickly and I was like alright, I can play.

How many of the puzzles have you solved?

I've managed to solve them all.  I almost gave up on one, but knowing that you need to solve all of the puzzles to be able to do the final one made me keep trying.

Walk me through your experience with solving the Goldberg Variation puzzle.

This one piqued my interest more than the previous puzzles because I love Rube Goldberg machines. By looking at the pictures, immediately I noticed how some sections of the machine look like letters, so I figured the answer is probably spelled out by rearranging the different sections in proper order. With this in mind, I began focusing on the descriptive part of the puzzle and noticed that some words are in all capital letters, so I listed those words out in an excel sheet in order of appearance and tried to see if I can see a pattern or grouping the words into categories but it got nowhere. Then I just kept thinking how these words would eventually lead to a 10 letter passphrase. I then counted how many capitalized words there are and realized there are 26 of them, which meant each word must represent a letter of the alphabet, so I put all the capitalized words in a column and all the alphabets in another column, thinking that the order in which the capitalized words are in must correspond to the order of the alphabet once I know where the starting point is.

We know that CORN should go first as it was stated in the description, so I lined it up with A = CORN, B = VENT, C = FUSE etc. in the order of the word appearance. This didn't lead anywhere because I could not make sense of it. Then I remembered my initial thought of how the pictures of the machine look like letters. If A = CORN and I look at the pictures, the corn section is just like the first downward stroke of when you write out the capital A. So I examined the pictures closely to see if I can find sections that would represent the horizontal stroke of "A" and TOES and FOUR both fits. Then I looked for one that looks like the third stroke of the letter A and only SAW fits. So I thought to myself, if A = CORN, B = TOES or FOUR, C = SAW...C..SAW...see-saw, is this ..a coincidence?

Then I realized A = CORN is "acorn" and looked at the B options and saw that FOUR fits since it turns to "before" and that's when I knew I found the cypher. The next step was to associate each alphabet to a capitalized word where they can form new words. Some were harder than another, but process of elimination eventually got me there. Once I got the list of alphabet and its associated word, I took out a pen and paper and just drew out the strokes that each capitalized word represents in the pictures starting with A's word (Corn) and went in order from A to Z and once I'm done, it spelled out the passphrase!

What other kinds of puzzles or games do you play?

I love a good strategic board game.  Carcassonne is my favourite and my wish one day is to play a round of Carcassonne with all the available expansions (I think there are 24) all at once. I have read that it is not fun, though, because it gets very complex and way too much to think about, but I want to try anyway.

Have you ever made a Rube Goldberg machine? What did it do?

I have when I was in elementary school as part of a school project. We had to basically get a ball from one end to another. I don't remember much from it other than that mine was pretty simple and not very creative at all. It did get the job done though.

Have you dined at Alinea or our other restaurants? 

Yes! My friend and I were fortunate enough to dine at Alinea back in July 2019. I was really glad that I found a friend who was also crazy and spontaneous enough to fly from Vancouver to Chicago for a weekend just to dine at Alinea. It was honestly the most fun dining experience I've ever had where all my senses were stimulated. We loved the creativity, seeing how far they are willing to push the boundary and the willingness to break tradition and reimagine food in a different way. We also got to check out The Aviary that same trip. It was a weekend filled with amazing food and drinks. It was our first time in Chicago and I am in awe of the food scene there and it is such a beautiful city. I am definitely coming back for a proper visit.

How do you spend your days? 

Aside from working at a typical corporate office job, I play ultimate frisbee year round once or twice a week and enjoy the weekly spin class or two. I also enjoy trying out new restaurants, be it fine dining or hole in the wall, and grabbing some drinks with friends. The rest of the time I spend dreaming and researching about my next travel adventure.

How are you keeping healthy and sane during quarantine?  

My work switched to working from home around the third week of March and work was steadily busy so the days go by fairly normally for me. During the evenings and weekends, I kept sane by rekindling some old hobbies of mine such as sketching portraits. The Alinea puzzles definitely helped me kill a lot of time also! I'm not really into at home workouts so trying to keep active during quarantine was challenging since my usual physical activities were all put on hold because of the restrictions that were put in place in Vancouver. Knowing that my physical activities have reduced to none, I was definitely more conscious of what I eat on a daily basis. I ate three proper home cooked meals throughout quarantine and only got delivery once for a birthday celebration over the past 3 months. I also barely drank any alcohol which helped. Now that the city is starting to ease up on restrictions, I'm looking forward to getting outside more and just having more human interactions (safely of course). I did play a round of golf this past weekend and it was actually really nice to just be outside for several hours with a couple of friends.

Anything else you want to add?  

I just want to say, these puzzles are so creative and well thought out.  It strikes the right balance of being challenging but not impossible. The food combinations and some of these pop up restaurant concepts are definitely weird and I quite enjoy seeing how much more obscure you can get with each new puzzle.