2.05 Mix Tape Puzzle
Contents
- 1 Status
- 2 Location
- 3 Type
- 4 Plot Setup
- 5 Props
- 6 How To Give To Teams
- 7 Plot Point to Convey
- 8 Short Description
- 9 Open Time Period
- 10 Staff Instructions
- 11 Detailed Description
- 12 Puzzle Answer
- 13 Puzzle Solution
- 14 Budget
- 15 Credits
- 16 Manager
- 17 Hints
- 18 Response to Correct Answer
- 19 To Do
- 20 Other Notes
Status
::FINAL-READY::
Location
Name and Address: Vinyl Solutions Records, 151 W. 25th Ave., San Mateo
Parking: Free street
Bathroom: No
Food: No
GC PoC: Sean (415) 475-8463, lab@peachfrontier.com
Type
Mandatory Puzzle
Plot Setup
- All evidence of Trenchwood Institute and its timeline has mysteriously disappeared.
- Peach Frontier Laboratories has taken its place
- Iconoclast scientist Prof. Chronos has attempted to demonstrate her time machine before an audience of VIPs.
- But it malfunctioned due to faulty key components--four "quantum chronomentometers."
- The malfunction is causing the Professor to bounce around randomly in time from era to era, facing untold dangers!
- The players have submitted designs for replacement chronomentometers--a key step towards fixing the time machine
- Doctor When needs password access to Prof. Chronos's computer in order to make more progress; he suspects a clue could be in an old mix tape she made for him back in high school
Props
- 16 or 17 copies of Mix Tape (cassette tapes with inserts)
- 3 cassette players (for use by teams that lack them)
- Tiresias costume
How To Give To Teams
Teams have already watched Act II, Scene 1 as a result of solving Chronomentometer 1. This directs them to travel to location.
GC should use Boomerang to send two follow-up emails, each approximately 5 minutes after sending the Chronomentometer 1 email (Make sure you set the return email address to lab@peachfrontier.com.)
TWO SUPPLEMENTAL EMAILS
Subject: Research Project: Mix Tape
Research Project Title: Mix Tape
Objective: Scrutinize a custom mix tape given by Prof. Chronos to Doctor When back in high school to see if it has clues to the password of Prof. Chronos's da Vinci Datamaster supercomputer
Location: Vinyl Solution Records, 151 West 25th Avenue San Mateo
Upon Completion: Call Doctor When on speakerphone
Parking: Free street
Personnel Required: As many as possible
Bathrooms At Location: No
Snacks At Location: No
Research Project Title: More Chronomentometer Repair
Objective: Design replacements for multiple broken chronomentometers
Thanks so much for re-designing those four chronomentometers.
Unfortunately, as we opened up the machine to install your design, we noticed some damage on other tachyon chronomentometers. Our best guess is that while those four were out of commission, their load spilled over onto the remaining ones which caused more of them to fail. Of course, that caused more load on the other ones. And, to keep a long story short, we have a lot more than four broken chronomentometers right now.
We recruited many of the other brilliant attendees you met at the Grand Unveiling to work on them. But if you have some spare cycles we'd greatly appreciate it if you could also fix some more chronomentometers.
HOWEVER, don't let chronomentometer design slow you down from your primary task, which right now is to uncover the password to Prof. Chronos's DaVinci Datamaster supercomputer.
Since we are trying to coordinate many different groups and we don't want people to be duplicating efforts, we installed an off-the-shelf system to manage these efforts, called the Gross Repair Operations Supervision System (or GROSS for short).
You can read the User's Guide for GROSS here:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1mxwkUv39kFjhb1OPKXHYf5NHJYoYseK8OYjwOgVvwKQ
When you think you understand it, please log into GROSS here:
http://peachfrontier.com/cmm/gross.html
Just as a start, we've assigned four low-valued broken chronomentometers to you. Hopefully everything will make sense. Just let us know if you need help.
If you want to check our overall status, please visit the GROSS dashboard at:
http://peachfrontier.com/cmm/dashboard.php
Again, this task is OPTIONAL -- don't let it distract you from your main task. But we do have dozens of broken chronomentometers already and the time machine won't be fully functional until enough of them are fixed, so please help us when you can.
Plot Point to Convey
- Doctor When needs Chronos' password to her supercomputer in order to complete repairs.
- She gave him this mix tape long ago and hinted that she had hidden her most important secrets in it - which could very well be her password.
- Chronos loved When in high school
- Adult When wishes he knew back then...he might have made different choices.
Short Description
Teams get a mix tape with 18 songs, each with the word "time" in the title, plus an insert with (out-of-order) artists and years and a poem from Catherine.
Open Time Period
Sunday, 1:13 AM till all teams (16 for Game 1, 17 for Game 2) pick up puzzle (estimated 3:23 AM)
Staff Instructions
Your Role: Tiresias, this time as the record store's janitor.
What To Wear: Tiresias costume
What Your Character Knows: Tiresias knows everything (but reveals only what supplicants need to know)
Puzzles At This Site: Mix Tape
Where To Get Materials: GC HQ
Setup Instructions:
- Place mix tape in dumpster as you see fit
- Call GC when you are ready for teams
Handout Instructions:
Discreetly keep track of how many teams have picked up so you know when to close down the site.
As each team arrives the interaction should go something like:
TIRESIAS: Hey there. Y'all look in a hurry. But the store's closed.
VISITOR 1: Darn it. We just have to find this old cassette mix tape that was just sold to the store.
TIRESIAS: Was that from some crazy lady who looked like she was auditioning for "The Real Housewives of San Mateo"?
VISITOR 1: That's the one!
TIRESIAS: You may be in luck. The boss looked deeper in the box and realized he couldn't sell most of those 80s relics. So he tossed 'em. Why don't you check that trash pile over there?
As each team removes a mix tape from the dumpster, discreetly hide a replacement tape.
Hints: Teams have been instructed to call GC; if you familiarize yourself with the attached hints feel free to assist
Answers: Teams have been instructed to call Doctor When with their answer. If they try to give you their answer, remind them to follow their instructions.
Site Close Down:
- Clean up.
- Call GC HQ
Other Instructions:
- Stay in character.
- Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.
Detailed Description
Teams receive a mixtape created by Catherine Chronos when she was in high school and given to Wesley shortly before they graduated. They're told that Catherine had said it contained one of her biggest secrets, and Dr. When thinks that's probably the password to her computer. Enclosed with the mixtape is a poem that Catherine had written to young Wesley. All of the songs turn out to be time-related, and the puzzle solution implies that Catherine had a crush on Wesley.
Puzzle Answer
I-HEART-WESLEY
Puzzle Solution
- “Name all the tunes”. The solver should notice that the song titles fit the blanks on the page, one blank per word, although the provided artists and years mostly don't match.
- “Use what they share” – every song has the word “time” in the title. The solver needs to get the aha that the position of the word "time" needs to be used as a letter-index into the provided artist.
| Order on Tape | Song | Listed Artist | Listed Year | "Time" Index | Index Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Minute Of Your Time | Rocky Horror Picture Show, The | 1975 | 5 | Y |
| 2 | Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is | Tyrone Davis | 1970 | 6 | E |
| 3 | Hot Fun In The Summertime | “Andy” Andrew Williams | 1963 | 5 | A |
| 4 | As Time Goes By | Armstrong, Louis | 1964 | 2 | R |
| 5 | Turn Back The Hands Of Time | Floyd, Pink | 1973 | 6 | P |
| 6 | Time After Time | Lauper, Cyndi | 1964 | 1,3 | LU |
| 7 | Old Time Rock And Roll | B. Seger | 1979 | 2 | S |
| 8 | The Times They Are A-Changin’ | Captain & Tennile | 1979 | 2 | A |
| 9 | It’s Been A Long, Long Time | Dylan, Robert | 1964 | 6 | R |
| 10 | The Time Warp | Stone, Sly & The Family | 1969 | 2 | T |
| 11 | It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year | Rolling Stones, The | 1964 | 5 | I |
| 12 | Feels Like The First Time | James "Jimmy" Durante | 1965 | 5 | S |
| 13 | Do That To Me One More Time | Stewart, Al | 1978 | 7 | T |
| 14 | Time | Simon, Carly | 1974 | 1 | S |
| 15 | All Time High | Theme from Octopussy | 1983 | 2 | H |
| 16 | Haven’t Got Time For The Pain | Chicago | 1970 | 3 | I |
| 17 | Time Passages | Foreigner | 1977 | 1 | F |
| 18 | Time Is On My Side | Tom Jones | 1968 | 1 | T |
This gets "my code's formula" : YEAR PLUS ARTIST SHIFT. (Note that, for “Time After Time”, you index twice.)
- “I’ve shifted the artists, you’ll note – absolutely”. Keeping the same ARTIST order ("leave them as listed..."), find the correct song for the listed artist and add the (absolute value of the) number of rows between the listed artist and the actual song recorded by that artist.
- Example for the above step: in the first row, the artist listed is "Rocky Horror Picture Show, The". The actual song from that artist is The Time Warp, in row 10. That's a shift of 9 rows, so you take the listed year, 1975, and add the absolute value (9) of the shift, to get 1984.
- “’What will this give me?’ you ask? Keys for you!” (Note the hint for ASCII in “ask-keys”.) Take the last two digits of the “year + shift” column and read them as ASCII.
| Order on Tape | Listed Song | Listed Artist | Correct Song | Listed Year | Shift | F+ABS(G) | ASCII(G - 1900) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Minute Of Your Time | Rocky Horror Picture Show, The | The Time Warp | 1975 | 9 | 1984 | T |
| 2 | Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is | Tyrone Davis | Turn Back The Hands Of Time | 1970 | 3 | 1973 | I |
| 3 | Hot Fun In The Summertime | “Andy” Andrew Williams | It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year | 1963 | 8 | 1971 | G |
| 4 | As Time Goes By | Armstrong, Louis | It's Been A Long, Long Time | 1964 | 5 | 1969 | E |
| 5 | Turn Back The Hands Of Time | Floyd, Pink | Time | 1973 | 9 | 1982 | R |
| 6 | Time After Time | Lauper, Cyndi | Lauper, Cyndi | 1984 | 0 | 1984 | T |
| 7 | Old Time Rock And Roll | B. Seger | Old Time Rock And Roll | 1979 | 0 | 1979 | O |
| 8 | The Times They Are A-Changin' | Captain & Tennile | Do That To Me One More Time | 1979 | 5 | 1984 | T |
| 9 | It's Been A Long, Long Time | Dylan, Robert | The Times They Are A-Changin' | 1964 | -1 | 1965 | A |
| 10 | The Time Warp | Stone, Sly & The Family | Hot Fun In The Summertime | 1969 | -7 | 1976 | L |
| 11 | It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year | Rolling Stones, The | Time Is On My Side | 1964 | 7 | 1971 | G |
| 12 | Feels Like The First Time | James "Jimmy" Durante | As Time Goes By | 1965 | -8 | 1973 | I |
| 13 | Do That To Me One More Time | Stewart, Al | Time Passages | 1978 | 4 | 1982 | R |
| 14 | Time | Simon, Carly | Haven't Got Time For The Pain | 1974 | 2 | 1976 | L |
| 15 | All Time High | Theme from Octopussy | All Time High | 1983 | 0 | 1983 | S |
| 16 | Haven't Got Time For The Pain | Chicago | Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is | 1970 | -14 | 1984 | T |
| 17 | Time Passages | Foreigner | Feels Like The First Time | 1977 | -5 | 1982 | R |
| 18 | Time Is On My Side | Tom Jones | A Minute Of Your Time | 1968 | -17 | 1985 | U |
The text says "TIGERTOTALGIRLSTRU".
- “Keys for you! To four “timeless” chart-toppers since ‘82. Four clues and four songs– now here’s the last part: Just start what I finish, or end what I start.” There are four “words” from the previous step – TIGER, TOTAL,GIRLS, TRU. Each is the first or last word of a “chart-topper” – a Billboard #1 single in the US – between 1982 and the date of the poem (5/20/86). The songs are:
- TIGER: “Eye of the Tiger”
- TOTAL: “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
- GIRLS: “West End Girls”
- TRU: “Truly”
- “Just start what I finish, or end what I start.” If the clue was the first word (or syllable for TRULY) of the title of the “chart-topper”, take the last word (or syllable for TRULY) of the title, and vice-versa. This gives the words EYE-HEART-WEST-LY.
- “You’ve syllables four – now say them out loud!” Saying these words out loud gives “I heart Wesley”. Either “I heart Wesley” or “I love Wesley” is acceptable as an answer.
Budget
Tapes and inserts, plus some tape players for teams that don't bring them. Estimate: $100.
Credits
Design: Erik Stuart
Manager
Erik
Hints
Ask teams what they have done, probing details if necessary (often this will get a team unstuck by themselves).
General hints:
- Any garbled audio is an authentic artifact of imperfect or damaged tape, and not an intended part of the puzzle.
- Catherine’s poem gives a “roadmap” of how to solve the puzzle. (She wanted Wesley to solve it, after all!)
- To identify the songs, teams can use their own knowledge or a service like Shazam, or can do an internet search for lyrics.
- The recordings on this tape are unaltered and complete commercially-released songs. There is no additional information hidden in their lengths or content.
- Many teams may be tempted to re-write the artist/year column to match the order of the titles (or vice-versa). This will not help until they reach the "SHIFT" step, at which point they need to leave the artists where they are and figure out how many rows away the right song for that artist is.
- Time After Time indexes into “Lauper, Cyndi” twice, producing an L and a U.
- It’s possible to skip the first hidden message and simply add the shifts to the song years and read it as ASCII. This is fine.
- It’s important that the “shift” that you add to the year be positive/absolute values (note the “absolutely” hint in the poem).
- The “ask? Keys…” hint may be missed by some teams, and, if so, the relevant step may be hard to get. Consider hinting to teams stuck here that Catherine might have put a clue as to the encoding mechanism in the poem, and that they should consider reading it out loud, slowly. If they still don’t get it, I advise pointing out the ask-keys hint.
- Going by instinct, teams may get the wrong “chart-topper” songs. Common wrong guesses might be “True Blue” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. However, the solutions are unique – there’s only one #1 single in the correct time period (1982 - 5/20/86) using each of the four clue words.
- Some teams may not see the poem as a roadmap – in particular, they may look for hints throughout the poem at any point in their solve process. This may lead to various wrong turns, such as seeing the “four timeless chart-toppers” reference as an instruction to pick the correct four songs from the mixtape – perhaps the ones that were #1 singles. Encourage them to use the poem “in order”.
Response to Correct Answer
Teams call in to the lab.
LAB ASSISTANT: Hello. Peach Frontier Laboratories.
VISITOR: We're the ____ team. We've cracked the password to the Da Vinci Datamaster supercomputer.
LAB ASSISTANT: Excellent! What is it?
VISITOR: It's _____.
Incorrect Answer
LAB ASSISTANT: Oh, that can't be right. We tried that one already. Would you keep working on it and call back later?
Correct Answer
LAB ASSISTANT: Oh, that's interesting. I think you'll need to talk to the Doctor directly. Are you on speakerphone?
VISITOR: Absolutely.
LAB ASSISTANT: Excellent. I'll connect you.
DOCTOR WHEN: Hello! I hope you have good news--we really need to access her supercomputer!
VISITOR: The password is "I-HEART-WESLEY"!
DOCTOR WHEN: [muttering to self] Great Scott! Why didn't she tell me back then? Things would have been so much...better.
I just typed it in and it works!
Now that I have access to the computer, I have to look up some files. So let me hand off to you one of the lab assistants who will give you your next research assignment.
The lab assistant responds differently based on which puzzle they're going to next.
Going to 2.06 Quantum Time Vibrations
Go to this wiki entry for the lab assistant's dialog and the supplemental email.
Going to 2.07 Art History
Lab assistant continues to say,
Our instruments have picked up inexplicable quantum time vibrations near the San Mateo International Museum of Pretentious Art.
Maybe you'll find a clue there...or even a message from Prof. Chronos! That would fit her because she loves art almost as much as science. And the place would be on her mind--she had just inspected it this morning in preparation for the reception! But I'm sure that whatever changes she made in history would have to be rather subtle so as not to cause too much opportunity for paradox. And speaking of paradoxes, we strongly recommend not looking things up on the Internet when you get to the museum -- the quantum time vibrations are getting stronger and it could cause severe damage to the time stream if you did so. We'll let you know more details in the next e-mail.
Please go there now. IMOPA is at 92 E 3rd Ave in San Mateo, CA. Then email the lab when you've completed your investigation.
The Supplemental Email is at 2.07 Art History
To Do
Done for play test.
For game:
- Obtain more 90-minute tapes.
- New master tape without volume distortion.
- Produce 35 copies (Sean).
