The low hum of chatter echoes through the main hall as guests piled in. Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream cuts through the small talk and a grim silence falls over the hall. Rocket appears in the doorway leading to the kitchen, her eyes wide and the color absent from her face.
"He's dead."
The guests scramble into the kitchen pushing and shoving as each person tries to get a glimpse. Trapezeo is dead on the kitchen floor.
The host meanders around the body peering curiously at his clenched fist. She uncurled his fingers and freed a crumpled bloody piece of paper.
Beneath the scribbled lines is an indistinguishable signature.
The clues in this were specifically the four colored dashed lines and the word signature. The word signature was to get you to look at my signature, where I hide clue #2. Additionally, the color of each dash was important (will explain below).
Clue #2
The numbers can unlock the answers, but you'll need to use my brain to find the key.
The clues in this were the numbers and the phrase 'my brain'. The numbers are the key to the graphic cipher (will explain shortly) and the phrase 'my brain' references my blog post where I discuss having my first brain surgery. This is where you'd find the next clue (the graphic cipher key).
Clue #3
You stumble upon a book in the wash room. As you open the cover, a strange piece of card stock falls out. It seems to have a very distinct size. You wonder briefly if it would fit over something...
The graphic cipher key needed to be used in conjunction with the newspaper article (it's divided into two pieces here and here). This is why I linked a free photo editor. You were to place the cipher key over each half of the newspaper article - it would reveal a word. The numbers coincide with the letter you had to pick out of each word (e.g. 4 would be the fourth letter of the first word shown, etc). These four clues together would spell out the weapon - dessert spoon.
Spoiler
Newspaper article clues
You hurriedly scramble into the Purple Party Room and sink into a purple couch. It's been quite an evening. Just as you lean back, you hear the crinkling of paper.
You meander into the art studio and find a bloody hand print on the wall. You quickly look around the room, rifling through papers on the table, before checking the trash bin. There is a small bloody smudge on the bin and a wrinkled news article. But it doesn't appear to be complete.
Clue #6 thru 11
The combined children's book looks like this. The colors of the animals coincide with the dashes in the first clue. You were supposed to identify each animal and use the first letter of the animal to discover the name of the murderer. As such, the important animals were narwhal (blue dash), yak (yellow dash), macaw (red dash) and hamster (green dash). The children's book was spread out in several places: herehereherehere and here.
Spoiler
As you peek under a chaise in the Red Room of Pain you notice a bloody children's book. You open it, flipping through the pages, finding one with only the upper left corner remaining. You wonder where the rest of the page could be. You should probably go check somewhere people read.
You walk through the main hall, but something seems to be stuck to your shoe. It appears to be part of a page from a book. You wonder where the rest of the book is..
Clue #12
The guests regroup in the main hall and the host, Coops, announces that she discovered a little black leather book with blood on it. The cover of the book has an imprint that reads please playfair. But the book's contents are indecipherable. Each present page has two letters on it. However, the book is missing a few pages. Boy, the murderer must love ripping pages out. It's clear there were 13 pages because on the last page there is the 12 in the bottom corner and there are frayed edges of a page after the 12th page.
Present pages read (sub-script indicates the page number):
YL2
MU3
IR5
RC10
BL11
CL12
It seems the back of the book is stained. Someone must have spilled water on the 13th page and the ink ran through staining the back cover. Or maybe someone was chopping onions and they cried. The back cover shows the corner of a box.
What could this mean? You might want to start looking for those pages...
The important details of this clue includes a portion of a Playfair cipher key (the 13th page) as well as pages of enciphered letters. The entire black book contained enciphered letters and the cipher key:
The numbers on the enciphered letters were irrelevant. Those were just to illustrate the order of the letters to you. Each set of letters = 2 other letters. When decoded, the message reads "Trapezeo died in the library". You can read about the Playfair cipher here. The cipher pages (in no particular order) were located herehereherehereherehere and here.
Spoiler
You meander into the staff lounge and suddenly realize you're hungry. Luckily, there is an open bag of chips on a table. You sit down and stuff a handful in your mouth, before noticing a couple of pages of the little black book under some cake and chip crumbs. You wipe away the crumbs and the pages read:
MI6GP9
You have discovered one of the pages of the little black book.
It reads:
GN4
On the back of the page, there is a shittily drawn eyeball. What could that mean?
It's a picture of an eye. Hang on, it looks like someone traced the contents of a page onto the picture...
You stumble upon a piece of the 13th page. You can tell because it matches the box stained on the inside of the back cover.
As you leave the room, you notice a crumpled memo...something something retired..something.
It's part of the last page of the book.
You've discovered two pages stuck together by a piece of gum. Eww...
The pages read:
EU7
QM8
I didn't expect this round to go so fast. Also, since it was the first round ever, if you guys could leave some feedback about the overall thing that would be super helpful. I am going to be adjusting the rules and guidelines for the game a bit for future games to be more fair and engaging. The feedback you leave will be used for changes. Thank you everyone who participated. I will give out awards and such!
Yeah my bad guys lol. I really thought my clues were longer. That said, this was a really good test run overall, because I can work out the kinks. I will be shortening the guessing timer to 12 hours (so 2 guesses a day instead) and I will be creating guidelines to require players to PM the host at least once every 24 hours with the portions of clues they've solved. Players will get points for each portion of clues solved, though timing (e.g. first player to complete everything) will still matter to an extent, just less so. This will hopefully help fix the issues with players not having a chance to solve because they were offline. And finally, I will be adding in a note to future hosts to create longer puzzles and for them to release parts of the entire mystery every 24 hours, so it gets dragged out a bit longer. I really appreciate all the feedback and patience. This was a really fun first round.
Yeah my bad guys lol. I really thought my clues were longer. That said, this was a really good test run overall, because I can work out the kinks. I will be shortening the guessing timer to 12 hours (so 2 guesses a day instead) and I will be creating guidelines to require players to PM the host at least once every 24 hours with the portions of clues they've solved. Players will get points for each portion of clues solved, though timing (e.g. first player to complete everything) will still matter to an extent, just less so. This will hopefully help fix the issues with players not having a chance to solve because they were offline. And finally, I will be adding in a note to future hosts to create longer puzzles and for them to release parts of the entire mystery every 24 hours, so it gets dragged out a bit longer. I really appreciate all the feedback and patience. This was a really fun first round.
Thanks for doing this it was a fun competition! Also congrats @Swar for dominating the competition
I got several random clues while at work but I definitely look forward to next round and hopefully we'll be given more time with it (preferably a weekend day for us lame full time workers). Overall, it was fun to read through the answers to the clues. Makes me feel dumb.
I got library from the clues and found 2 of them but could not find the 3rd or work out the other clue I found. You should see the things i was searching for on google awesome comp thanks had great fun.
Thank you everyone who participated. I will give out awards and such!
