Transfiguration

Answer: PETER PETTIGREW

By Ben Coukos-Wiley and Jonah Nan

Part 1: Acrostic

The first step is to fill in the two sections of clues and acrostic-style blanks. Each section's answers are in alphabetical order to make this step easier.

BEFORE

1 Neighborhood celebration B L O C K P A R T Y
5 22
2 A top UK school C A M B R I D G E
4
3 Unstaged photo C A N D I D
18
4 In a nonchalant manner C A S U A L L Y
14 24
5 Cabbage-based side dishes C O L E S L A W S
29 9
6 Pokémon which evolves into Arbok E K A N S
3
7 Absent G O N E
6
8 Vehicular pallbearer H E A R S E
26
9 Smee's superior H O O K
34
10 Nobelist Doris L E S S I N G
7
11 Less energetic, as food L O W – C A L
8
12 Wolflike L U P I N E
30
13 Dollars and cents M O N E Y
35
14 Deutsch denial N E I N
21
15 Hoarse R A S P Y
27
16 Frightened S C A R E D
20
17 Kilt or tutu S K I R T
1
18 Gonzales of Looney Tunes S P E E D Y
42
19 Stashed, perhaps overwinter S Q U I E R E L L E D
15 25
20 Initiated S T A R T E D
38
21 The devil's interval T R I T O N E
37

AFTER

1 Scott Pilgrim:The World::___:Evil Dead A S H
2
2 Motor Vehicle C A R
17
3 The greater___ G O O D
16
4 Catches wind (of) H E A R S
41
5 Follow, as advice H E E D
39
6 Niantic game I N G R E S S
28
7 Head Norse god O D I N
12
8 Cartoon bear P O O H
36
9 Uncurved test grades R A W S C O R E S
11 10
10 Item stolen by the Knave of Hearts T A R T
23 32
11 Stumbles T R I P S
13
12 Ariel's father T R I T O N
31 33
13 Pressed CTRL-Z U N D I D
19
14 Most of the time U S U A L L Y
40
T H E M A G I C W O R D I S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
S D C A N E E T T A L E P S L E T T O K E H T T E Y E D
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

The last word seems to be total gibberish, but “THE MAGIC WORD IS” confirms that the extraction is correct, and also suggests that this string is in fact the incantation mentioned in the flavortext. Now we need to find the other spells mentioned in the flavortext

Part 2: Matching

All fourteen "After" words can be made by applying a specific string transformation to one of the "Before" words. There are seven of these "transfiguration spells" in all, and each is used on a total of three "Before" words. The third word per transformation does not create an "After" word, instead outputting the name of a professor who taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

a table matching before answers to after answers and professors

Note: For Carrow's transformation, in the case of odd letters, the first half will have one more letter than the other

Part 3: Simon Says

With the seven "spells" found, we now need to use them to extract the final answer. This last portion is essentially a Simon Says puzzle. First, we order the professors by the year they worked at Hogwarts. Then we apply their transformations to the nonsense incantation in that order.

Year Transform Example Application
1 Remove initial S; remove final ED SQUIRRELLED SDCANEETTALEPSLETTOKEHTTEYED
QUIRRELL DCANEETTALEPSLETTOKEHTTEY
2 Remove final Y; remove first letter; P -> H BLOCK PARTY DCANEETTALEPSLETTOKEHTTEY
LOCKHART CANEETTALEHSLETTOKEHTTE
3 Remove final E LUPINE CANEETTALEHSLETTOKEHTTE
LUPIN CANEETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
4 NE -> OD MONEY CANEETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
MOODY CAODETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
5 Initial CA -> U CAMBRIDGE CAODETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
UMBRIDGE UODETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
6 Reverse; K -> P EKANS UODETTALEHSLETTOKEHTT
SNAPE TTHEPOTTELSHELATTEDOU
7 Switch halves; R -> L LOW-CAL TTHEPOTTELSHELATTEDOU
CARROW HERATTEDOUTTHEPOTTERS

By doing so, we go from "SDCANEETTALEPSLETTOKEHTTEYED" to “HE RATTED OUT THE POTTERS.” The person who betrayed James and Lily Potter was a rat animagus named PETER PETTIGREW. We know to use his full name because the flavortext asks us to give our answer in complete form.

Authors' Notes

The genesis of this puzzle came from Ben noticing that several of the Harry Potter professors’ names are similar to real words, such as UMBRIDGE and UMBRAGE, or QUIRRELL and QUARREL. The theme of transfiguration seemed a natural fit - the professors are transfiguring themselves into these other words.

Of all the puzzles in the hunt, this one probably went through the most revisions. At first, we didn’t provide extra examples for each transformation beyond the professors. We also wanted the pre-transformation “magic word” to consist of real English. Adding extra examples made figuring out the transformations less ambiguous and also let us use an acrostic to extract the “magic word”. We also changed several of the transformations multiple times throughout the writing process. Lockhart and Carrow in particular were difficult.

Carrow’s transformation is simple on paper, but in practice people had trouble applying it to odd-length words. At first, we had the middle letter staying put while the two halves swapped. This was unintuitive, so at the last minute we changed it to have the middle letter join the first half. This led to perhaps the biggest red herring of the hunt - adding the middle letter to the second half results in a final cluephrase of SHE RATTED OUT THE POTTER instead of HE RATTED OUT THE POTTERS. Thus, several teams guessed MARIETTA EDGECOMBE or variants thereof. Oops.

Still, this was one of the most successful puzzles of the hunt, recieving the highest ratings by far on the feedback form. What we've learned from this is that cooperating on puzzles is a huge boon, and that getting lots and lots of testsolves - and reacting appropriately - is key to a puzzle's success.