Puzzles in Plain Sight

There are few things more satisfying than finding an easter egg – a hidden surprise, a secret message, something tucked away that can only be uncovered by solving a puzzle or leveraging knowledge you’ve already got. Escape rooms, videogames, even understanding oblique references in books (looking at you, Discworld) – there are many ways to do this and they’re all immensely fun to pull off.

But the ones that stick in my memory are the ones from when I was about 10: when Doctor Who was revived, and some brilliant people at the BBC decided to litter the Internet with tie-in websites crammed with little secrets.

There were a lot of these, and looking at the TARDIS Wiki I definitely don’t remember them all, but the ones I do recall have always stuck with me. In the days when just searching for something online wasn’t so ubiquitous and you had to actually figure stuff out for yourself, being rewarded for being a big nerd and remembering throwaway lines of dialogue was so very fulfilling. Because that’s what you needed to find these hidden things – not just to find the sites, but use information from the TV episodes to unlock the secrets within.

Take the UNIT website – a great impression of a fictional government website. So realistic, in fact, that it was the reason the United Nations sent the BBC a cease-and-desist order and forced them to change the organisation’s name from ‘United Nations Intelligence Taskforce’ to ‘Unified Intelligence Taskforce’ in case people got confused. Seriously.

The site had some nice in-universe information about a perfectly ordinary branch of the British military. But what about that ‘Secure Login’ button, though? If only you were listening to the Doctor during World War Three and knew what the password was…

(Actually, that password – BUFFALO – only let you do as Mickey did in the episode and fire a little Flash ballistic missile. Getting to the juicy stuff required the password BADWOLF, which was more oblique but another obvious one to try for a young viewer at the time.)

And suddenly the screen goes red, new pages unlock, and there are dozens of secret press releases, updating mission reports for every new modern Earth-based story – including all the little details that the episode skips, like the casualty reports or the cover-up efforts. In short, all the little juicy details that good worldbuilding demands, even if they never make it to the screen or page.

The Geocomtex site gave you background for the episode Dalek – and while I can’t find evidence of this I could have sworn it was where you accessed the magnificent Flash game that was ‘The Last Dalek’. (Which I can’t find a fully working archived version of online, but the Flashpoint project has it in full.) The Torchwood website gave so many teasers for this mysterious organisation ahead of the Big Reveal of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. This was absolutely addictive for a young fan of the show, especially in the pre-streaming days when we actually had to wait an entire week for more episodes to air.

The one I remember best, though was the Cybus Industries website – the evil corporation responsible for building the parallel universe Cybermen perfectly harmless tech company with their cool new headphones and futuristic (for 2006) outlook. The archived version alas lacks the old images, but when 10-year-old me found it, it looked like this:

Ah yes, the headphones of the future.

Fictional product pages, interviews with the CEO – loads of little bits of expanded worldbuilding for the two Cyberman episodes, written just for the joy of viewers. But there was more – much more. Apparently – and because I was only 10, I missed this bit – there was a whole ARG, starting on the aforementioned ‘Defending the Earth’ site, where one was sent to ‘infiltrate’ Cybus, finding codes to unlock secret features on the site that were revealed when the actual episodes aired. I skipped this bit – but because I paid far too much attention, I remembered the appropriate codes when they were revealed on-screen, and so when prompted to enter BINARY9 on the ‘Staff Intranet’, the Airships game was revealed in all its glory.

I hacked the Intranet! I broke into the evil corp and now I’m saving the world! Yes, I’m doing it in a 2D Flash game that’s freely available to everyone, but I found the thing! This wasn’t just worldbuilding, it was interactive worldbuilding, rewarding me and all my nerd friends for paying attention to the programme we loved.

I still love solving puzzles. I still love finding the little hidden things. I love writing them myself, too – and I do it a lot, even if it’s just sly references that I know only a couple of people will understand. But when a puzzle isn’t obviously a puzzle, when it’s hidden in plain sight, and when you realise that you already know the answer thanks to just doing what you already love… it’s just a wonderful feeling.

Do more of this, BBC. Kids around the world will love you for it.