How Did You Know Katie Otim and Sheldon Hewlett ?

We had a record number of players this month, and a record number of 100% correct submissions on Day 5! Vvvvery well done, gamers. We hope you enjoyed our V-themed hunt this month. We're taking all your feedback into consideration for the next hunt, so thanks for being active on the FB page. Speaking of the Facebook page: We're now over 1,000 fans and we even have our own unique URL: facebook.com/triviahunt. Head over there to find out if you're a random winner, as we'll be pulling those later today. Meantime, congrats to our first place winners, who got all the correct answers in first. Let's meet them now...

We are so excited to have won HDYK this month. We've been playing for so long that we can't remember when we started, but it's been about 2 years. HDYK is definitely something we look forward to, despite the fact that I spend the last few minutes shouting frantically. Sheldon and I live in Chicago, where we originally met in grad school at Northwestern. We've been dating a little over 3 years now. Sheldon is currently a high school physics teacher and I'm working towards my PhD in Materials Science and Engineering (1 year left!). We make a great HDYK team, since Sheldon is great at word games (cryptograms) and I love math and logic puzzles. We both enjoy doing puzzles and reading mental_floss in our spare time. I was also excited to put my French skills to work this time around! We're looking forward to another great hunt next month! :)

Final Answer In the Cyrillic alphabet, the letter that looks like a V is called Izhitsa

Day 1 D1L1 Level 1 Magic Square: 9 4 5 2 6 10 7 8 3 Every Column, Row and Diagonal adds up to 18 Level 2 Men's Names: ACTBCOP Captain BUOXBCP Tristan CPBKPW Antony EYP Ken KSSOY Ozzie MCPAYMKB Lancelot TKTYWY Popeye UKGYK Romeo XCGXKP Samson Female's Names: amyktcbuc Cleopatra kmohy kwm Olive Oyl Byppommy Tennille Lcuuoyb Harriet ndopyhyuy Guinevere oxkmzy Isolde rcuroy Barbie Vdmoyb Juliet zymomcl Delilah Matches: Tristan and Isolde Antony and Cleopatra Romeo and Juliet Popeye and Olive Oyl Lancelot and Guinevere Ken and Barbie Samson and Delilah Captain and Tennille Ozzie and Harriet I solved the above cryptograms by using a cryptogram helper (Hal's Cryptogram Helper), which automatically fills in all designated letters. After guessing a few letters by frequency (E's and T's, especially), I recognized a few of the names. After that, the rest fell into place.

Day 2 D2L1 Level 1 X = 14 (or 15) Each day is a Victory Day (V Day). 5.8.45 is May 8th, 1945 which is the Victory in Europe day, when the Allies accepted surrender of Nazi forces. 5.9.45 is May 9th, 1945 which is Soviet Victory Day, since it was May 9th in the Soviet Union when the surrender of Allied forces occurred. 8.14.45 or 8.15.45 is Victory over Japan day (VJ day), when the Japanese surrendered to the United States. 8.14.45 is the day of observance for VJ day, while 8.15.45 is the day in which the surrender was announced. Level 2 The brands are: 1. Virgin (airplane) 2. MTV (MTV logo) 3. VH1 (VH1 logo) 4. Gibson (Guitar is a Gibson Flying V) 5. V for Vendetta 6. Vimeo (colorful raised v)

Day 3 Level 1 The words in the word search are: Alps Bread Canadian Connection Door Dressing Fries Guiana Horn Hens Kiss Manicure Maid Onion Open Pastry Press Poodle Quarter Revolution Riviera Stewart (actor) Toast Union Vanilla Wine Window The uncircled letters spell out: french word "vous" In French, "vous" is used as both the formal and plural form of "you." Level 2 The names are: 1. Edith Piaf 2. Rene Descartes 3. Marcel Duchamp 4. Charles Perrault 5. Pierre Cardin 6. Brigitte Bardot 7. Louis Vuitton 8. Louis Braille 9. Blaise Pascal 10. Paul Gauguin 11. Ettore Bugatti 12. Hector Berlioz

Day 4 D4L1 If you use a standard alphanumeric cipher (e.g. A=1, B=2, etc), you can convert the letters in the symbol to numbers. Doing this we get: B=2 J=10 I=9 F=6 R=18 Adding these values together, we get 45. If all of these values are supposed to sum to 50, that means we are missing the letter that represents 5 (E). In roman numerals, the number 5 is given by the letter V. Level 2 Here are the cryptic references to the letter/number V that we found in the movie: 1. "Perfect Harmony" - one of the musical harmonies that are considered perfect is the perfect 5th. 2. "Middle of a giant hurricane" - a giant hurricane could be a category 5 hurricane, the highest ranking on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity 3. "it had a savory taste" - savory (umami) is considered to be the fifth flavor after salty, sweet, bitter, and sour 4. "raining Starfish" - starfish all have 5 arms. 5. "fingers and toes" - there are 5 fingers and toes on each appendage (hand or foot). For a more obscure reference, one of the old myths of leprosy was that it would cause the fingers and toes to fall off. The Japanese believed that leprosy was caused by a parasite that ate 5 organs of the body (from wikipedia). 6. "quintessential" - this word is derived from quintessence ("fifth element"), which Aristotle defined as aether (ether). This is the element that makes up the heavenly bodies. The other elements are air, fire, earth, and water. 7. The letter "V" appears on the shelf behind Liz. As we saw in D4L1, V represents 5 in Roman numerals. 8. There is also the letter "L" on the shelf. In Roman numerals, L represents the number 50, which contains a 5. 9. "Two small circles separated by a diagonal line" - this phrase describes the percent sign (%), which shares a key with the number 5 on a computer keyboard. 10. "boy on a horse" - The C.S. Lewis novel The Horse and His Boy was the 5th novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series 11. "first day of school" - in general, American children start kindergarten at age 5 12. "miles from the nearest ocean" - there are 5 oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Southern, Indian, Arctic)

Day 5 Level 1 Hector Berlioz premiered Reqiuem in 1837. According to boxofficemojo.com, the production budget for V for Vendetta was $54 million. Seconds are on the house! Latitude 37 deg 54 min 0 sec The sister salad video premiered on July 27, 2009. --> 07/27/09. Removing the day and zeroes leaves 79. So deg is -79. ABCDEFGHIJK = CRAZYINLOVE Beyonce's Crazy in Love was at peak position 12 on the Finnish Charts Longitude -79 deg 12min 0 sec Plugging in those coordinates takes us to Vesuvius, Virginia. Level 2 In the Cyrillic alphabet, the letter that looks like a V is called Izhitsa