2.07 Art History

Order

2.05

Status

::PROTO::

Location Status

Initial contact made

GC Point of Contact

Erik

Location Notes

Kaffeehaus in San Mateo; Allen made initial contact; Erik followed up in person (Val was busy) and an email (haven't heard back).

Type

Mandatory Puzzle

Plot Setup

Prof. Chronos has bounced through time; the machine is mostly fixed but the View-O-Scope is still broken, so they can't communicate with her directly to learn where she wants to go. However, the time machine has sensed significant temporal disturbances in the vicinity of the International Museum of Pretentious Art. Doctor When will tell the players that she probably tried to find some alternate way to communicate her request...but in a way that was likely to withstand the passage of time. And she'd want to be very subtle so as to not alter the timeline.

Props

Books of famous paintings altered to include Chronos (American Gothic, Mona Lisa, etc.)

Plot Point to Convey

Chronos wants to go back to... the same date & place as When did in Act I, but slightly later.

Short Description

Prof. Chronos has managed to insert herself into famous works of art to "tell" the teams where she wants them to send her next.

Detailed Description

Prof. Chronos has, while bouncing through time, managed to insert herself into famous works of art, in order to convey a message to the teams (without risking "screwing up the time sequence" by trying to create an overt message). Examples include her face on the Mona Lisa, her standing in American Gothic, and so on. Solving the puzzle reveals the time to which she wants to be sent.

How To Give To Teams

If coming straight from Mix Tape, then lab assistant says words over the phone to the effect of,

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!

But even if she did leave us a message while bouncing through time, it would probably be nearly impossible to find. She would have to make it so incredibly subtle that no one else throughout history would notice it--otherwise the timeline would be polluted. All I can say is good luck. Email the lab when you're done.

In either case, send the following canned email

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL

Research Project Title: San Mateo International Museum Of Pretentious Art

Objective: Explore the museum to see if somehow Prof. Chronos has left a message to the present while she was bouncing around the past

Location: San Mateo International Museum Of Pretentious Art (www.imopa.info), address

Upon Completion: Email picture of your design to lab@peachfrontier.com

Parking:  ?

Bathrooms At Location:  ?

Food At Location:  ?

Puzzle Answer

May 31, 1986, 2:15 PM.

Puzzle Solution

The paintings all have changed titles, each of which has the homophone of a number embedded in it. Ordering by years and using the number homophone to index into the title yields the message FOURTHWORDS.

Step 1

Title	Year	Number homophone	Number	Indexed letter
The Forbearance of Caterina	1513	For	4	F
Woman with a Parasol to Shade Her	1875	to	2	O
Day at Le Moulin - Parisians Attending	1876	ten	10	U
Tensions Erupting	1893	Ten	10	R
The Courtesans Luxuriate	1907	ate	8	T
The Tutor of Love	1908	Tu	2	H
Nude Woman Descending (Amplify Verticality)	1912	fy Ve	5	W
Hard Work: American Basics	1930	sics	6	O
American Fortitude (Cathie the Carpenter)	1943	For	4	R
Dream in a Wonderland	1944	Won	1	D
Nine Katys	1962	Nine	9	S

Each clip on the audio tour matches to a painting. The pairs are:

Step 2

1st two words of clip	Painting
Composition, balance	The Forbearance of Caterina
I am	Woman with a Parasol to Shade Her
Lovely details	Day at Le Moulin - Parisians Attending
This brilliant	Tensions Erupting
The young	The Courtesans Luxuriate
Look closely	The Tutor of Love
This modernist	Nude Woman Descending (Amplify Verticality)
Simple, plain	Hard Work: American Basics
Female laborers	American Fortitude (Cathie the Carpenter)
Realistic landscapes	Dream in a Wonderland
From chins	Nine Katys

The fourth words of each audio clip, still ordered by painting year, read "ORDER BY HIDDEN PAINTER NAMES FIND NUMBERS IN THEIR NATIVE TONGUES".

Each audio clip contains two embedded words - the painter's name plus an additional letter, and a number in the painter's native language. Putting them in alphabetical order by painter's last name, the transcribed clips (highlighting the embedded pieces) are

Dali: (extra letter D, number CINCO)

Realistic landscapes and native animals are not a hallmark of this surrealist masterpiece, which has little logiC IN COmmon with reality, comprising flying tigers, a woman sleeping on some sort of tiDAL DIvide, and an opened pomegranate among its disparate elements.

Da Vinci: (extra letter A, number TRE)

Composition, balance, and order - plus one of the most famous smiles in Western art – define this painting, which first comes across as having portrayeD A VAIN CItizen of the nobility. However, the arT REvisited instead reveals a woman of humbler serenity.

Duchamp: (extra letter T, number UN)

This modernist classic numbers among the most influential of the twentieth century. The painter, never one to have his conDUCT HAMPered by convention or an impromptU Naturalist style, decomposes static elements of the human form and dynamic elements of its motion in this masterpiece.

Klimt: (extra letter E, number EINS)

Look closely to find and examinE IN Small detail the rich textures of this piece – particularly the gold leaf's sparKLE. I'M Thrilled every time I study this painting.

Monet: (extra letter A, number NEUF)

I am exhilarated by this painting every time I see it, with the colors and shadows on the grass, the clouds shimmering almost like some airborNE UFO, and the overall panorama one takes in.

Munch: (extra letter N, number ATTE)

This brilliant Norwegian painter asks if we will condeMN UNCHivalrous passions or recoil from the greAT TError expressed in this moving work.

Picasso: (extra letter D, number SEIS)

The young prostitutes' names are lost to history, but their provocative figures live on – from one's mask-like face to another's ePIC ASS. DOubters were shocked by the aggressive portrayal of the women, which – of courSE – IS the point.

Renoir: (extra letter T, number UN)

Lovely details are hidden throughout this work – yoU Need, almost literally, a magnifying glass to examine the tiny hats, clothes, and lighting in the backdrop of this pictuRE. NOT IRonically, it is renowned for its masterful brush strokes and richness of form.

Rockwell: (extra letter I, number FOUR)

Female laborers have their diligence memorialized in this classic painting. In the war effort, Cathie the Carpenter represented a pillar of strength – a real ROCK. I, WELL, I have nothing but admiration for the women who worked tirelessly for the preservation oF OUR freedoms.

Warhol: (extra letter M, number ONE)

From chins to tongues to eyes to hair, the bright colors ON Every face in this popular painting resemble those you might expect to find on a WARM HOLiday in the tropics.

Wood: (extra letter E, number FIVE)

Simple, plain folk in modest surroundings – that's the America shown in this painting, from the spartan clothes to the peaked rooF. I'VE long been tempted to think of the subjects' ceaseless toil as leading to WOE; ODdly, though, for these hardy farmers it's the opposite.

The extra letters spell DATEANDTIME, and the numbers translate to 5-3-1-1-9-8-6-1-4-1-5, giving a date & time of May 31, 1986, 2:15 PM.

Credits

Justin Graham, with additional input from Erik Stuart

Manager

Erik

Hints

- Step 1 (finding the number homophones in the altered painting titles) is hinted at by the phrase on the museum sign that says "it is a delight to hear the words about these marvelous works of art spoken aloud."

- Players don't need to know the painters of each painting from memory (though it will help with the embedded-names step).

- If they're very unfamiliar with the names of painters, they may have trouble recognizing some of the embedded words (Munch, Klimt, Duchamp are some of the tougher ones). A team that has transcribed the audio text and still can't find the embedded name can ask the museum docent for help identifying the painter for each painting.

- Some teams might think the Monet painting is by Manet, leading to a wrong letter.

- Teams may not know the numbers in all of the relevant languages, especially Norwegian. They should still be able to complete the puzzle by getting DATEANDTIME, getting most of the numbers, and realizing that it's pointing them toward the same date that Doctor When asked to go to in Act 1. Given this context, the trickiest number may be UN in the Renoir painting.

- Teams may start looking for number homophones embedded in the audio clips, just like they did in step 1. They might try something like "adding together the number homophones" - e.g., counting the "to's" in the Warhol clip. However, not all audio clips have an appropriate number homophone, so this isn't the right idea. In fact, there's a parallelism between step 1 (reading the written titles aloud to find an embedded homophone) and the later step (writing the spoken words down to find embedded text).

- There may be other numbers embedded in the text of the clips, but not in the correct language.

- For reference, the painters' languages are: Warhol, Wood, Rockwell - English; Monet, Renoir, Duchamp - French; Da Vinci - Italian; Picasso, Dali - Spanish (Dali may be Catalan, but the embedded number is either CINC or CINCO, so it's still the number 5); Klimt - German; Munch - Norwegian.

Response to Correct Answer

A lab assistant emails them,

Dear colleagues,

Doctor When thought your analysis of the art museum was a real breakthrough. By luck we happened to have a lab camera running when he received the information.

Please enter access code XXXX into your View-O-Scope Computer Remote Access Program and you can view the recording.

Frank Farnok,

Lab Assistant

Other Notes

Some of the art might show her with her crowbar, and some without - TBD.