P&A Magazine

About The Fantastic Marathon

The Fantastic Marathon is a trip around the world in puzzle-solving form. As you solve puzzles, you will unlock new puzzles. Puzzles can be:

• Route Info: These are "normal" puzzles. Answers to these puzzles are words or phrases (e.g., PUMPKIN or WIZARD OF OZ). Puzzle answers may be verified on-line and are case-insensitive.
• Detour: In detours, you will be given descriptions of two possible puzzles to complete. Pick one puzzle and solve it.
• U-Turns: When you get U-turned, you must complete the skipped puzzle from a previous detour.
• Roadblock: Roadblocks are activity-based tasks that only one team member should perform. Each task will lead to both a one- or two-letter answer and a picture.
• Pit Stops: There are twelve pit stops in the race. At each pit stop, a team will be eliminated, and a question asked. To answer these questions, you will need to use the answers from other types of puzzles.
• Fast Forward: Hidden in certain puzzles (and elsewhere) are Fast Forwards. Click Fast Forward in the navigation above. This will give you early access to a pit stop.
• Finish: When you reach the finish line, you must use the information gained at the pit stops to determine who the real winners are.

Hints

Route Info puzzles and Detour puzzles have hints available, broken into 3 different levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Bronze hints are generally the least helpful and provide a slight nudge. Gold are the best hints and will often be explicit.

Teams start off with 1 Gold hint, 2 Silver hints, and 3 Bronze hints. You will earn one Gold hint every 24 hours, one Silver every 12 hours, and one Bronze every 8 hours.

Finishing

Your competitors (the 12 other teams) will be eliminated at pit stops. Once all 12 teams have been eliminated (by solving their meta), you will unlock one final puzzle.

The Epilogue

Once you finish up Puzzle Boat 4, you'll have access to a special issue of P&A that serves as an Epilogue.

All the Answers!

All of the answers, including to Fast Forwards and Metas. (PDF file, 4.2MB)

Any Questions

Contact editor at pandamagazine.com. Follow pandamagazine on Twitter for Puzzle Boat 4 updates.