
It’s been too long since I wrote a new puzzle, but inspiration struck today with the two-punch speaker event I attended as part of Red Bull Mind Gamers covering puzzle design and long distance space travel.
I’m also taking a little inspiration from the MIT Puzzle Hunt, as I’ve reviewed a few of the puzzles coming out of that and got a little taste of puzzles designed with serious puzzlers in mind.
I don’t think mine is that hard, but we’ll see- I may have unintentionally included some red herrings that’ll make this harder to solve.
Space Fantasy
(You are looking for two words as the answer)
Hilary looked out the window of space shuttle Atlantis, gazing at the moon.
She cracked open a can of soda and took a sip- it was the only can she brought on the trip.
As she was preparing for the flight, she had prepared to go a long time without the little luxuries.
Being in space introduced many challenges in day to day living.
The radio came to life with a message from mission control and startled the ship’s cat, which went running out of the cockpit.
In space, any little conversation that can alleviate the loneliness and isolation is welcome.
These challenges are unique to space- even in solitary confinement on Earth, it’s comforting to have people nearby.
As Hilary looked out the window, the shuttle suddenly banked a hard left and swooped past a satellite.
All sorts of satellites orbit the earth, several thousand in total- Hilary always marveled at the number.
This was truly a unique and wonderful experience, to see the planet from a different perspective.
Rock & roll music blasted from the satellite, and Hilary could hear it while they swooped past.
Science: _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Fantasy: _ _ _ _
Looks like the first part of the puzzle is figuring out what the puzzle is… But assuming the question is to explain the scenario, my answer would be “Virtual Reality” since it would explain the many impossible details.
Good job picking up on one of the key details of the puzzle. I’ve added a little bit of prompting for the answer to make it clearer what the objective of the puzzle is.