The following are the answers to the 2021 Virtual Charter Day Adventure Race puzzles. If you have an alternate answer that is as justified as the answers below you may contest your answers by emailing team@theAVAdventure.com by 6:00 PM Saturday night.
Notable alumni and guest speakers appear below.
Going down, take the first of the last for six and the first of the first from the rest to spell out this previous moniker.
First, identify the pictured individuals:
Mike Tomlin Katherine Rowe Kofi Annan Ralph Northam Jon Stewart James William Fulbright Ellen Stofan Robert Gates Desmund Tutu Antonin Scalia Yancey Strickler
Then take the first letter of the last name of the first six names, and the first letter of the first name for the other five:
Mike Tomlin Katherine Rowe Kofi Annan Ralph Northam Jon Stewart James William Fulbright Ellen Stofan Robert Gates Desmund Tutu Antonin Scalia Yancey Strickler
This gets you the answer, TRANSFER DAY, the original name of what we now call Charter Day.
Complete the limericks to find the first and last of some important stages in William & Mary’s history.
What are the ones in between?
Solving the two limericks gets you the words “Warrant” and “Enrollment,” the first and final of the four stages W&M’s charter passed through before being issued as a public decree. The second and third stages are the answer to this puzzle: THE KING’S BILL and WRIT OF THE PRIVY SEAL.
Note: this information is normally found on a Swem Special Collections wiki article, which unfortunately was experiencing technical difficulties during the early hours of the virtual race. Still, the information could be accessed via a cached version of that page, or by reading the Story of the Royal Charter, hosted online by the W&M Digital Archive.
Take the two secretive campus groups with numerical names. (The 7 Society & 13 Club) The larger figure is big secret (13) and the smaller figure is little secret. (7) Multiply little secret by itself. (7×7 = 49) Add the product to the number of years that have passed since the first W&M female graduate received her degree.(2021-1921 = 100; 100+49 = 149) Multiply that sum by big secret to get an important year for William & Mary’s celebratory history. (149×13 = 1937)
The answer is 1937, the year of the first official Charter Day (previously known as Transfer Day).
It’s the big 328! To celebrate, check out the :28s below, and join W&M as we all embrace this!
To solve this puzzle, you need to identify items in each of the featured videos at the :28 second mark, then use the number prompts to take a letter from each item:
POST
SCARF
FOOTBALL
BAND
WINDOW
EARTH
FACE PAINT or TIE
SOCKS
GLENN
This gets you the word TRADITION, the answer to this puzzle. Also note all of these videos are featured in the Traditions playlist on the W&M YouTube channel!
Call upon ancient Rome to “decypher” this clue. When combined, what is created? IFLKXKABXDIB
To solve this you use a Caesar cipher to shift the letters presented. Doing so manually (shifting three letters forward) or with the assistance of an online cipher solver will get you LIONANDEAGLE. Combine these two elements to get the answer to this puzzle: GRIFFIN
To solve this puzzle, first identify the Glenn Close movie stills on the left, and their corresponding release years:
Albert Nobbs (2011)
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Air Force One (1997)
Dangerous Liasons (1988)
101 Dalmations (1996)
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Then connect the still and their years. Each connecting line notably intersects a single letter:
These letters are EUOGLYL, which when unscrambled gives you the answer of YULE LOG.
President Rowe announced this puzzle during this year’s Charter Day ceremony.
What’s her number?
Rowe’s full riddle from the end of Thursday’s ceremony was:
I have no wings, yet fly higher than a bird Spin like a compass without lifting my foot I am as learned as a professor – can tell you how the gale blows What’s my number?
This riddle refers to the weathervane on top of the Wren Building, and the answer is 1693.
