Stage 1:
To The Start!

Welcome to the world famous Kopparberg to Arjeplog Broom Race! Over the next 7 or so hours (race time) competitors will face nearly 500 miles of fast frantic fun as they negotiate their way to the finish line picking up as many time bonuses as they can along the way. In the muggle world, Kopparberg is famous for its cider production, but the name Kopparberg refers to a much older industry. The name of the town translates as "Copper Mountain" and in the 1700s copper produced here was a major contributor to the wealth of Sweden. In recent years, the population of Kopparberg has been steadily declining, with the current count at approximately 4,300 - notably it is the younger generations who have been moving away from the town as they head to universities and look for work, although records note that many people who are born in Kopparberg and leave at a young age do come back to the town in later life.

The relatively low muggle population makes this historic town an ideal starting place for the Broom Race, although for added security, the actual starting location changes each year. There are fifteen starting points that are used for the race, each within a kilometre or so from the centre of the town, and competitors are notified of the correct start place a week before the race starts.

Start Challenge: Find the starting location of this year's race by solving this "Battleship" puzzle.

Put the enemy "ships" shown at the bottom into the grid so that no two ships are touching - not even diagonally (corner to corner), but note that ships can touch the sides of the grid. The numbers in blue to the right and bottom of the grid show how many ship segments are in that particular row or column. Two ship segments have been added to start you off, these may be for ships of any size (they are not necessarily the 1 segment ships) - it is up to you to work them out and add the rest of the fleet.

As shown below the grid, there are two ships with 1 segment, two ships with 2 segments, five ships with 3 segments and one ship with 4 segments. One segment is equal to one square in the grid, and large ships cannot be broken up into smaller segments!

Once you have placed all of the ships into the grid, there will be one "safe" spot remaining, which is the only space of 3 squares wide by 3 squares high with no enemy ships in it. The "starburst" shown below the grid will fit here, and as in all the treasure maps, "X" marks the spot, so write down the coordinates of the square which has the "X" of the starburst in it, and this will tell you where on the map the start line is.

To make it to the correct starting place, tell me the location of the 10 enemy ships and the "X" of your "starburst" in the grid. (Example: 4 segment ship = A1-A4, 2 segment ship B1-C1, Starburst I7 (these are not necessarily correct answers!)). Use the coordinates of the starburst to tell me the name of the start line by using the map on the "stages" page here.

You can find a printer friendly version of this puzzle here.

Bonus Challenge: Now that you've found out which start point the race will be using this year, you need to find out when it is being held! Crack the codes below to reveal fifteen messages, one of which is the start time and date for the race. To give a couple of clues, the messages follow a theme (excepting the race start info) and are in alphabetical order.

You can find a printer friendly version of this puzzle here.

To make it to the start on time, send me the 15 messages to by September 30th with the subject "ab123 - Broom Race Stage 1" (where ab123 is your student ID)