Rise of the Eldrazi Puzzle Contest — Part 3
The second puzzle was mechanically difficult, and perhaps a bit subtle. This one will truly test your knowledge of Magic cards and rules.
To find out the contest rules and prizes, go here. For part 1, go here. part 2 is here. I’m leaving the other parts up longer so people can still try them and take a shot at winning the custom extended art Blightnings and Worldwake intro packs. Now, onto the puzzle.
In Sorin Markov’s travels across Zendikar, he finds himself dueling the former Godking of Madara himself, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. Markov has had a terrible draw and keeps drawing swamps, while Bolas has been content to play a seemingly nonsensical series of artifacts and enchantments. Sometime around turn 7, Bolas’ board looks like this (click for full size):
Markov only has some vanilla creatures out, and nothing that will affect Bolas during his turn. Markov’s swamps are also all tapped.
At this point, Bolas chuckles. It is a deep, rumbling sub-sonic sound. Then he speaks, in his slow grinding voice.
“Dude, I am going to blow your mind. I’m going to win the game next turn, because I’m going to create infinite mana and summon a bunch of huge mythic Eldrazi creatures. If you can guess what I’m going to play that will set the combo off, I’ll concede and you’ll win instead.”
Markov frowns. “You already have the tools on the board to create infinite colorless mana. You don’t need to play anything else.”
“Way too easy. No, I’m going to use a card that requires every single permanent I currently have in play. All six lands, both enchantments, and all five artifacts. Here, I’ll make it easier. Just tell me the first three letters of the card’s name. And here’s a hint: it’s Legendary.”
Here’s a list of the cards in play, if you’d rather look at the pop-ups than the tabletop image above.
One last thing — although I think I’ve narrowed it down enough, it’s always possible that there’s more than one way to solve this, what with there being like 10,000 Magic cards in existence. When you find a solution, feel free to email me. I can’t tell you if you’re right or wrong until next week, but if I get multiple answers I can check to see if they work and find out if there might be more than one answer to this puzzle (in which case I will email you and post something about it here).
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March 30th, 2010 11:36 PM
You’re determined to make us work for those cards, aren’t you?
March 30th, 2010 11:39 PM
At this point I’m just having fun. But yes! You guys are going to hate me Thursday at midnight.
March 31st, 2010 12:52 AM
The only possible solution is Krark’s Thumb.
March 31st, 2010 9:38 AM
This puzzle seems to be meant to weed out the n00bs. Consider me weeded. heh.
March 31st, 2010 10:32 AM
Well, Gatherer might help…
March 31st, 2010 10:43 AM
Oh, I’ve been using all sorts of Magic websites.
March 31st, 2010 11:35 AM
There is a hint in the cards on Bolas’ table that narrows it down.
March 31st, 2010 6:07 PM
Oh, Gatherer isn’t much help, I went through every legendary red, blue, white, or colorless card in the game, none of them seem to get infinite mana, though I can think of a few non-legendaries that will get you infinite life and mana. Well, at least not that I can see.
March 31st, 2010 6:38 PM
Final hint: if you look at the mana being generated by the cards on the board, and what kinds of cards are effected by the cards on the board, you can do an advanced search in Gatherer that gives you a results page only one page long.
April 1st, 2010 1:54 PM
Another hint, since this one is really stumping people.
What you’re looking for is asymmetry between the mana needed to bring something into play and the mana it can generate just before it dies to Aether Flash.
April 1st, 2010 2:00 PM
One more hint that should make this really easy. The colors of mana produced by the combo cards already in play (not counting lands) are the ONLY colors needed to cast [solution card].
With that info, you can do a Gatherer search with only three cards in the result.