Alan Wake 2: How to solve the car puzzle Cult Stash combination lock code

Alan Wake 2 is full of difficult riddles that require some creative thinking to solve, but one stands out as a particularly evil riddle. There is a Cult Stash in Bright Falls that requires algebra—yes, algebra—to solve.

For many Alan Wake 2 players, this riddle probably asked for more extra time than they could allot. As such, we’ll walk you through unlocking the car puzzle Cult Stash, with or without the mathematics requirement.

Car puzzle Cult Stash location in Alan Wake 2

This Cult Stash is accessible when Saga is on her way to the Valhalla Nursery Home after clearing up the Coffee World business in Watery. The Stash itself is in a somewhat indistinct location, but now that you’ve accessed the Cult Hideout in the Kalevala Workshop, you should be seeing icons for Cult Stashes on your map.

This Cult Stash is marked by the icon that lines up with the “F” in “Bright Falls” at the top of the map by drawing a line straight down.

As you approach the area marked by the Cult Stash Icon on your map, you should have no trouble locating the stash itself. It is in the back of an old red pickup truck in the middle of the woods that really sticks out like a sore thumb.

What is the correct code for the car puzzle Cult Stash in Alan Wake 2?

If you don’t want to do the math yourself, I can respect that. The three-digit code that opens the car puzzle Cult Stash in Alan Wake 2 is 177. Inputting these numbers in this order will unlock the stash. You don’t even have to show your work.

Now, the code is 177 because that is the amount of cars in the hypothetical factory. “But wait, how do you know that?” I’m glad you asked—very glad.

There is no secret workaround or clues that you can find and use to your advantage, just good old-fashioned math. In fact, it looks almost exactly like something you would find on an Algebra test in high school, as it doesn’t just give you the formula to solve—it gives you some wordplay from which you must deduce your own formula, and then solve it.

So grab your calculators, a notebook, and your thinking caps, because it’s math time! You now know that the correct combination is 177, but let’s take a look at why the combination is 177.

How to solve the car puzzle Cult Stash equation in Alan Wake 2

To solve the car puzzle Cult Stash equation in Alan Wake 2, you’re going to need to know a chunk of math. You’ll hopefully be a little adept with some problem-solving as you find the answer to this conundrum.

Full disclosure, this section is going to be an absolute math lesson. If that’s a memory you’d rather leave in the past, well then this section may not be for you. For you brave few, let’s get into it. We want to start by gleaning all of the information we can from the given text.

So, right off the bat, we know two things:

From here, we just want to rework this to include more specific information and start shaping it into an actual equation. For the first factoid, we get:

Now, for the second bit, we know that cars have four wheels and bicycles have two wheels, so we know that:

(The number of cars x four) + (the number of bicycles x two) = 754

Now, to finalize our transition from a word problem to an equation, we are going to replace the number of cars with the variable X and the number of bicycles with the variable Y. If you aren’t a math person, just know that these variables are arbitrary—the only purpose of using them is to concisely write information. Here are both equations rewritten with X for cars and Y for bicycles:

X + Y = 200 4X + 2Y = 754

Now that we have this, we can begin solving for X, which represents the number of cars. The way to learn the value of any variable in an equation is to isolate it, which means that we want to get X alone on one side of an equals sign. If we take the first equation (X + Y = 200), we can subtract X from both sides to get:

Y = 200 – X

This is the same thing as saying, “The number of bicycles equals 200 minus the number of cars.” Now that we can express the Y in terms of X (the number of bicycles in terms of the number of cars), we can use that new equation to make X (the number of cars) the only variable in our second equation, which means that X can be isolated and solved.

4X + 2Y = 754	Equation two.
4X + 2(200 – X) = 754	Replaced Y (number of bicycles) with 200 – X (number of bicycles expressed in terms of the number of cars).
4X + 400 – 2X = 754	Used the Distributive Property to simplify the equation (multiplied the number next to the parenthesis by both numbers within the parenthesis).
2X + 400 = 754	Simplified by combining Like Terms (terms that share the same variable, in this case, X).
2X = 354	Subtracted 400 from both sides to begin isolating X.
X = 177	Divided both sides by two to finish isolating X.
Number of cars = 177	Replaced X with the information it served as a placeholder for.

And that’s it! We now have our answer—there are 177 cars in the factory, so the code is 177. I doubt many of you actually stuck around for the mathematical breakdown, but to those who did—good for you. Hopefully, this will help prepare you for the next Algebraic riddle in Alan Wake 2. No, that isn’t a joke. There’s another.

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