When the puzzle is first unlocked, we see a text box to submit guesses to the guessing game and a heading telling us we are on “Stage 1”. Farther down the page, we see photoshopped images and enumerations. Submitting phrases that describe the images and have lengths that fit the enumerations such as Benadryl Cabbagepatch into the textbox returns “This reminds me of a certain person…” which suggests that we’re looking for a person who is related to all of these images.

Googling a set of these clues leads us to the meme about misremembering the name Benedict Cumberbatch. The meme is all about words or phrases that sound like distorted versions of the name "Benedict Cumberbatch", yet are recognizable through similar phonetic sounds and stressing of the syllables. See this article for an in-depth analysis.

Typing his name into the guessing game returns “That's right! Here is a photo of my friend.” and gives us a new image and enumeration in addition to unlocking the rest of the stages. Each stage hints at another famous name through words with similar sounds and emphasis patterns, and will give us a photo of a friend when we make a correct guess in the answer box.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Using the images we’ve gained from solving each stage, we can play a new guessing game to get our answer, SLIM SHADY.

Author's Notes

Herman: This puzzle had an incredibly serendipitous story behind it. All of us were getting gelato together one fine summer day and one of us ordered a flavor from the store called BUTTERCUP GINGER SNAP. As we got our delicious dessert and walked around the area, one of us mentioned how similar the flavor was to Benedict Cumberbatch's name. And lo and behold, as we turned the corner we actually bumped into the man himself! We were too shocked to ask for his autograph, but afterwards I mentioned that we had to write a puzzle around this meme and Ivan came to us a couple days later with a PowerPoint prototype.

Ivan: This puzzle had an incredibly serendipitous story behind it. All of us were gathering together for board games one fine summer day and we each decided to write down the name of a board game to play. As we pulled out the lucky candidate from the basket, we saw it was written in very bad handwriting and impossible to decipher. When we finally parsed the BALDERDASH CHICKEN SCRATCH, one of mentioned how similar it was to Benedict Cumberbatch's name. And lo and behold, as the TV turned on we saw his face in a giant television advertisement! I mentioned that we had to write a puzzle around this meme and Joanna came to us a couple days later with a PowerPoint prototype.

Joanna: This puzzle had an incredibly serendipitous story behind it. All of us were gathering together for Huntinality one fine summer day and we were discussing our favorite Mystery Hunt puzzles. I mentioned mine were BACK TO SCHOOL / CIRCUITBOARD. One of us mentioned how similar it was to Benedict Cumberbatch's name. And lo and behold, as we opened the Big Bash Siblings we saw his face there right next to Bloo! I mentioned that we had to write a puzzle around this meme and Margaret came to us a couple days later with a PowerPoint prototype.

Margaret: These stories were written by FULL OF SHIT CHARLATANS.