3.13 Lunch puzzle

Status

::FINAL-READY::

Location

Name And Address: "Paine Memorial High School" -- actually Highlands Rec. Center, 1851 Lexington Ave. San Mateo, CA 94402.

The puzzle will be outside, on the basketball court.

GC PoC: Erik & Melissa

Parking: Outside, parking lot (no teams park there)

Type

Optional Puzzle

Plot Setup

None required

Props

80+ cookies
Pretzels
Lunch for teams
Ms. PacMan machine
Sign
Stand for sign
dry erase markers

Plot Point to Convey

None

Short Description

Doris the Lunch Lady will give a special prize to anyone who figures out what the Mystery Meat really is.

Open Time Period

Sunday, 12:15 - 3pm

Staff Instructions

Your Role: You are Doris, the crusty lunch lady.

What Your Character Knows:

Due to the disguise field that the time machine projects around the players, they appear to you to be students. You know nothing of Trenchwood Institute or time travel.
With all the budget cuts, you can't be too picky about what to put in mystery meat.

Setup Instructions:

Make sure a table is on the blacktop.
Get the Lunch Menu whiteboard and lean it BEHIND the table (out of sight).
Make sure there is a box of Ms. Pac-Man cookies out of sight under the table.
Make sure there are several garbage bags in which players can throw away their garbage.
La Boulangerie will deliver lunch boxes to you.

Handout Instructions: You hand out lunch (the actual lunch boxes from La Boulangerie). The puzzle (which is optional) is on the lunch menu whiteboard.

Teams that have finished mandatory puzzles will have a gold star and an American flag sticker on their badges. For them ONLY, say

"I'll betcha can't solve old Doris' puzzle!" (Cackle.) "Here, take a look at today's menu. Figure out what the Mystery Meat is, and you win a prize!"

Have them come around to the back of the table, where they can see the menu.

(Teams that have NOT finished TRASH and Yearbook 2 should be doing those puzzles instead of this puzzle - they can come back to the Lunch puzzle once they're done with their mission.)

The whiteboard says “Figure out what the Mystery Meat actually is, and Doris might give you a prize!" If teams ask about the mystery meat, say:

That’s for me to know and you to figure out, bucko!”

Answers: The answer to puzzle is ROADKILL. If teams come to you and say “the mystery meat is roadkill!”, you should respond:

So ya solved my frickin’ puzzle. Whaddya want, a cookie?” (Pause.) “Okay, here - have a cookie.

Hand each team member a Ms. Pac-Man cookie.

If players ask “what’s next” after they finish lunch, you can say something like “How should I know? Go ask someone else - like that janitor Tiresias. He seems to know everything around here. I think I saw him at the gym.”

Site Close Down:

Clean up.
Return materials to GC HQ

Other Instructions:

Stay in character.
Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.
During this portion of the Game you're pretending you're in 1986. So don't let the players see you use any modern technology (such as cell phones and laptop computers).

Detailed Description

When they get to lunch on Sunday, there's a whiteboard with the school lunch menu, written in several colors and covering all weekdays, weekends, a special, and beverage. It also says that Doris will give a prize to anyone who figures out what the Mystery Meat really is.

Puzzle Answer

ROADKILL

Puzzle Solution

Each item on the menu includes one of the "fruits" in Ms. Pac-Man. Those fruits are, in order of appearance in the game:

1. Cherries

2. Strawberry

3. Peach

4. Pretzel (yes, this counts as a "fruit")

5. Apple

6. Pear

7. Banana

The titles (Monday, Tuesday, Weekends, Liquids, etc.) are written in the colors of the rainbow. Taking the menu items in ROYGBIV order and indexing the "fruit number" into the title gives the answer: ROADKILL.

Lunch items
Menu item	Menu title	Color	Fruit index	Letter
Sloppy Joes... (pretzel)	Thursday	Red	4	R
Mac & cheese... (strawberry)	Monday	Orange	2	O
Tacos & beans... (pear)	Tuesday	Yellow	6	A
Cheese pizza... (banana)	Wednesday	Green	7	D
Assorted sandwiches... (pretzel)	Weekends	Blue	4	K
Fish sticks... (peach)	Friday	Indigo	3	I
Mystery Meat... (apple)	PMHS Lunch Special	Violet	5	L
Cherry Coke... (cherries)	Liquids	Violet	1	L

Budget

Credits

Erik Stuart

Manager

Erik

Hints

Ask teams what they have done, probing details if necessary (often this will get a team unstuck by themselves).

-The scrawled "Forgot to pac your lunch, Missy?" suggests a Ms. Pac-Man theme.

-Each item contains one Ms. Pac-Man "fruit". There is a Ms. Pac-Man game at the high school, which players can go play in order to figure out the orders of the fruit appearing.

- The word "Liquids" (instead of Beverages or Drinks), the colored titles, and the all-caps titles all suggest that the title words are important data.

- Combining the fruits as index with the titles, and ordering with the canonical ROYGBIV color order, gives an easy answer.

Response to Correct Answer

n/a; answers given in person; see Staff Instructions

To Do

Playtest version 2.

Other Notes

The ROM image is mspacmnf. It's a hacked ROM where Ms Pac-Man runs really fast!