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Eurostar Da Vinci Code Quest PDF Print E-mail
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Written by Michael Salsbury   
Tuesday, 16 May 2006

OK, I suppose it could be argued that I'm being a bit greedy going after prizes in the Eurostar Da Vinci Code Quest after snatching up a cryptex in the Google Da Vinci Code Quest.  But, hey, I'm sharing my answers here so you'll likely solve these puzzles a lot faster than I did... meaning you're more likely to win something than I am on the Eurostar quest.

I will list the puzzles below by their name on the Eurostar Quest Map since they can be done in more or less any order you like within each level.

Level 1 - V&A Museum:

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In this puzzle we're given a scrambled word or phrase and asked to unscramble it.

This turns out to be pretty simple:

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The answer, in case it's not readable above, is "Albertopolis".

Level 1 - Regent's Park

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This one is a bit nasty. You're asked to match Shakespearean characters to the plays they were in.  For someone who finds Shakespeare pretty much uninteresting, overrated, and generally boring in written or acted form, this was not easy.

The correct answers, however, can be found with some careful Google searching, and are:

Laertes - Hamlet
Octavius - Anthony & Cleopatra
Desdemona - Othello
Mercutio - Romeo & Juliet
Katherina - The Taming of the Shrew
Falstaff - The Merry Wives of Windsor
Oberon - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Calpurnia - Julius Caesar
Celia - As You Like It
Prospero - Tempest
Orsino - Twelfth Night
Earl of Cambridge - Henry V

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Level 1 - Sacre Coeur:

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This one takes a while. You're basically rearranging the shapes until you fill in the outline provided.

The solution looks something like this: 

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Level 1 - (Not Sure About the Name):

This one asks you to identify the four national monuments Mitterand erected in Paris.

The answer is:

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The monuments' names are: Bibliotheque National, Grand Pyramid, Opera Bastille, and Grand Arche de la Defense.

For the Level 2 Answers (and eventually Level 3) see the "Read more..." link below if you're viewing this on my home page, or simply scroll down if you came to this page directly...

Level 2 - South Bank:

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This puzzle asks you to locate some letters hidden carefully in the photographs on the strips.

The letters you're looking for spell out "TEABING" (the next part of the puzzle).

The "T" looks like a crack in one of the tan buildings.

The "E" is hidden in the railing on one of the shots.

The "A" is hidden in the supports to a table in the "bookselling" shots.

The "B" is in plain view on the art gallery shot.

The "I" is in plain sight on a clock tower on a building in the set of strips with the booksellers.

The "N" is woven into the up and down grooves on the right-hand side of one of the brown/tan buildings.

The "G" is more or less in plain sight in the image with the tree, in the bottom right corner near the trunk.

When those letters are arranged properly, you'll have:

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Level 2 - British Museum

This one shows you artworks by Da Vinci and Michelangelo.  You're asked to identify which artist created which work.

These are the correct answers for each artist:

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Level 2 - Place des Vosges

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The point of this puzzle is to assemble the strips of a torn map into the correct order.

There are two clues for the puzzle. The clues cause numbers depicting the correct order of the strips to appear on the screen for a little while.  This can help you rearrange them. 

My advice for solving this one is pretty simple. Get the image as close to the correct picture as you can without touching the clues.  When you think you're close, use the first clue. Grab a screen shot of the browser window while the numbers are being displayed by activating the browser window and (on Windows) pressing "Alt-PrintScreen" to capture the image to your clipboard.  Then paste the image into The Gimp, PhotoShop, Microsoft Photo Editor, or any other application you have handy that will take it.  Then do your best to use that screen shot to help you rearrange the pieces to the correct order. If you think you've got it and it's still not solved, use your second clue to get another look at the numbers as they are now (and be sure to get another screenshot if you have any out of place).

When solved, it will look something like this:

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You'll then be asked a question

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"A famous French Writer lived at number 6 Place des Vosges. Who was he?"  The answer is Victor Hugo

Level 2 - Market Place

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This one is pretty straightforward to solve.  The center of the puzzle wheel is a "lock" that locks the two rings together.  When it's in the locked position, turning the outer ring turns both rings together.  When it's unlocked, turning the outer ring only turns the outer ring, the inner ring stays in place.

When you spin the inner ring around, you'll see the words: Mile, Place, Street, Cross, Bridge, and Park appear in the holes in the ring. The other positions will give gibberish.

When you spin the outer ring around, you'll see the words: Kings, Market, Oxford, Knights, Royal, and Queens appear in the letter holes.  The other positions will give gibberish.

The combination you're looking for is "Royal Mile" which is a non-existent location in London.  To get it, turn both rings together until "mile" appears in the center ring.  Then, press the "rose" in the center to lock the center ring into position and begin turning the outer ring until "Royal" appears in it.

The other combinations would spell out Market Place, Golden Square, King's Cross, Queen's Park, and Oxford Bridge, which are all valid locations in London.

Level 2 - Chartier

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This one has you unscrambling a slide puzzle (also known as a Lloyd's puzzle) showing a picture of a man looking at a bunch of books through a metal lattice.

There are good tips for solving this kind of puzzle here.

As the bottom of the page linked above indicates, there are some combinations of this puzzle that can't be solved because they are, in essence, broken.  I found that several of the random puzzle the site generated for me ended up in that situation, where I couldn't solve them.  I even fed one of the puzzles' details to a program designed to solve them and that program came back saying it could not be solved.

 BE WARNED!

Level 3 - Covent Garden

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This one is a cipher puzzle. This is the unsolved version: 

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Using a program I developed to try to crack the Zodiac 340 Cipher, I analyzed the names in this puzzle and came up with the following statistics about the enciphered text:

Q = 13
B = 12
C = 11
K = 9
V = 7
Y = 6
A = 5
R = 5
L = 5
D = 4
E = 4
Z = 3
F = 2
G = 2
U = 2
O = 2
H = 1
N = 1
T = 1
W = 1

Based on this, I deduced that the letters Q, B, C, K, V, and Y were likely to be  E, T, N, O, R, and I.  This wasn't too far from reality.  In the end, it turned out to be Q=E, B=A, C=L, K=R, V=I, and Y=G.  But thanks to my initial deductions, I was able to figure out that "FQLQK" looked like "PETER" and "JQCCQKJ" looked like "SELLERS".  After filling in that name, I began to very quickly deduce the rest.

XJDBK AVCGQ = OSCAR WILDE
AVRJLXR DEUKDEVCC = WINSTON CHURCHILL
DCBKO YBHCQ = CLARK GABLE
AXCNYBRY BZBGQUJ ZXTBKL = WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
YQXKYQ ABJEVRYLXR = GEORGE WASHINGTON
WXCLBVKQ = VOLTAIRE
FQLQK JQCCQKJ = PETER SELLERS
AVCCVBZ JEBOQJFQBKQ = WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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This solution earned me the following message:

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Level 3 - Louvre

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This one is a word search, where you have to locate the names of famous people believed to be past Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion.  The names you're looking for appear to be:

Leonardo Da Vinci
Jacques Sauniere
Nicolas Flamel
Jean Cocteau
Claude Debussy
Isaac Newton
Victor Hugo

They can be found (assuming you get the same puzzle I did) as follows:

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Leonardo Da Vinci

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Jacques Sauniere

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Nicolas Flamel

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Jean Cocteau

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Claude Debussy

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Isaac Newton

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Victor Hugo

After locating all 7 names, you will get a message indicating you're done:

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All Done!

Level 3 - Notre Dame

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This dice puzzle was challenging and I have to admit that I stumbled on the solution entirely accidentally while trying a couple of different die faces:

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 And received the following congratulatory message:

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Level 3 - Pompidou

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This jigsaw puzzle was interesting in that it took some time to decide which pieces went to which side of the picture.  When I was finished, this was the resulting image:

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And this was the congratulatory message:

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Level 4 - Temple Church

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This is the old "Concentration" board game with a twist.  After so much time has elapsed, the cards are shuffled around the board a bit and you have to remember their new locations when matching them.

When I finished, my board looked like this:

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And I received this congratulatory message:

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Level 4 - The Prize Puzzle

As with the previous prize puzzles, this one was a variant of the old "Mastermind" game.

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The general strategy in playing this game is first to throw down a set of numbers.  Any "green lights" you get tell you that you have the right number in the right place, and you shouldn't change the number in that position again. Any "yellow lights" tell you that you have found a number in the solution, but it's not in the right position.  On your next attempt, you should move it to a position you haven't put it in before.  Any "red lights" tell you that the number isn't in the solution and you shouldn't use it again.

A more specific strategy I recommend for this puzzle is to write down the numbers 0 through 19 on a sheet of scratch paper.  Make your initial guess.  Cross off any numbers you get a "red light" for, and circle any that you get a "green" or "yellow" light for. 

Make 10 marks on the page to represent the 10 dials in the puzzle.  Any time you try a "circled" number in one of the 10 dials, write it underneath the mark you made to remind you that you tried this number in this spot already.  If you find the "green light" number, write it on top of the mark.  If you get a yellow light, try that number in one of the other dials you haven't already tried it in.  Eventually you should find the green light position for all the numbers.

One the remote chance that you might get the same puzzles I did, here are the solutions I found:

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 08 June 2006 )
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