Puzzle #12 — 2026-07-31
The answer was Senegal. The scene was built from Thies. Difficulty: hard. This day ran before launch and had no players.
The clues, in the order they were revealed
- A flat dry sandy plain with baobabs standing alone in the farmland.
- Houses are low concrete around courtyards, upper floors left unfinished with bar standing up.
- Horse carts share the road with the cars, traffic on the right.
- Signs are in Latin script, in a Romance language beside local ones.
- The country is the westernmost on its continent.
What the scene was built from
The location is chosen first, from a hand-curated whitelist, and the image is generated to match the description below. That order is what makes the answer checkable: the scene is built for the place, not guessed from the picture.
| vegetation | baobabs standing alone in dry farmland, millet stubble, thorn scrub |
|---|---|
| terrain | flat dry sandy plain with no relief at all |
| architecture | low concrete houses around courtyards with flat roofs, upper floors left unfinished with reinforcing bar standing up |
| roadside | right-hand traffic, horse carts sharing the road with cars, minibuses painted in bright patterns |
| signage | Latin script, a Romance language beside local ones (never rendered legibly) |
| light | strong Sahelian sun with dust hanging in the air |
Where this actually is
Thies, Senegal sits at 14.79, -16.93 — see Thies, Senegal on OpenStreetMap. The clue ladder and the table above were both written from that place before any picture existed.
This day was not in the image-quality sample — its answer key was checked, its picture was not second-guessed. How the pictures are made, and why none of them is a photograph.