3.05 Yearbook (Jiffy Pop) Solve

Status

::FINAL::

Location

See 3.00 Registration Redux

GC Point of Contact

Erik & Melissa

Location Notes

Doctor When's laboratory

Type

Mandatory Puzzle

Plot Setup

• Players have just fixed Prof. Chronus's time machine and are returning to Peach Frontier Laboratories to see her re-materialize.
• But upon returning to the lab they found it is once again Trenchwood Institute and they realized they are right back at the beginning of the Act I timeline
• The Doctor's time machine demonstration has once again gone awry.
• The visitors have instantly solved three key technical problems for fixing the time machine: unscrambling the core dump, designing a new co-keypad #34, and hacking the password to the supercomputer

Props

16 or 17 physical puzzle baggies, one for each team.

Plot Point to Convey

The players are caught in a time loop -- of their own creation! To fix it they need to do something different than in Act 1. They need to take matters into their own hands, instead of merely waiting for Doctor When to return. They enlist Prof. Chronus help to carry out their mission.

Short Description

A puzzle that is a [Bootstrap Paradox]: The teams solve it, and then later have a hand in its creation.

Open Time Period

Sunday, approximately 9:23 AM - 10:13 AM

Staff Instructions

Handout Instructions: See script. Prof. Chronos asks the visitors how they solve everything so quickly. Together they figure out that they're in an infinite time loop.

This reminds the Professor of a strange message about infinite loops that appeared in her high school yearbook.

Hints: See below.

Answers: After a team gives the correct answer jump straight to the "Hand Out Instructions" of 3.07 Calibration Redux

Other Instructions:

• Stay in character.
• Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.

Detailed Description

The basic concept behind this puzzle is that it needs to be a [Bootstrap paradox]: we call it the "Jiffy Pop" because the slogan for that brand of popcorn was "as fun to make as it is to eat." The team has to first solve the puzzle, and then later on in the Game realize that they need to help create it, sending it to the point in time when they received it. Hence, the puzzle has two stages -- "Stage A": Solving the puzzle, and "Stage B": Creating the puzzle. Ideally there is a lot of time (real-life-time, not story-time) between "Stage A" and "Stage B" for best dramatic effect.

Specifically, Catherine is reminded of an oddity she saw in the 1986 yearbook. It was a poem written on peculiar shapes. Thinking it might be a jigsaw, she and Wesley cut it up, but got nowhere with it. She offers it to the players to solve, and it yields an imperative message from the past to interfere with Wesley's letter.

Puzzle Answer

The "answer" is a series of messages, reading:

1) Woe! You're trapped in endless loops unable to unite them forever in final bliss 2) To transform their future lives journey back in time and modify the writing on the newspaper 3) Words not used will help show what to do

... with the "words not used" giving the message "Substitute right with its reflection".

Players should therefore realize that they need to go back in time and change the word "right" to "left" on the newspaper that Doctor When put in his younger self's locker.

Puzzle Solution

Each piece has one or more times on it - 12:00, 2:05, 4:10, and so on.

There are two keys to assembling the pieces correctly. Note that words always read right-side-up.

1) Pieces with the same minute reading form a rough circle, with their hour components arranged like a clockface - 12:XX at the top, 2:XX in the upper right, 4:XX in the lower right, 6:XX at the bottom, 8:XX in the lower left, and 10:XX in the upper left.

2) Groups of pieces go in order of their minute readings - :00, :05, :10, and so on up to :55 - from left to right, then top to bottom (just like a normal English printed page).

The resulting shape forms an hourglass pattern, with yellow "sand" trickling through the neck. (Note that a down shape above an up shape forms an hourglass as well.)

Having formed the correct pattern, you use the number pairs (x,y) on the pieces to find the three messages. Each message is associated with one color.

"Read" the pieces of a given color from left to right and top to bottom, finding the word indicated by the coordinate in the Cartesian grid shown on the hourglass.

The RED pieces give the message Woe! You're trapped in endless loops unable to unite them forever in final bliss. The YELLOW number pairs give the message To transform their future lives journey back in time and modify the writing on the newspaper. The BLUE pieces give the message Words not used will help show what to do

The only words that are not found in the above steps (i.e., the "words not used") are, in order from left to right, Substitute Right With Its Reflection.

Original files (these are being revamped): File:Yearbook.doc File:Yearbook.pdf

Manager

Eric L

Hints

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

- The pieces look like they fit together. (In fact, they do! This is a jigsaw puzzle.)

- The clock times look important. Try seeing how they might go together.

- The words have a consistent orientation (either up or down relative to the triangle), but the clock times are often slanted. However, 12:XX and 6:xx are never slanted. Does this mean anything?

- On a normal clockface, 12:00 and 6:00 aren't slanted either. Maybe the times mirror a clock somehow.

- Pick a minute reading (e.g., 12:15, 2:15, 4:15, etc.) and try to "assemble the clock", going in a circle.

- Some of your pieces will have other clock times. Assemble those too, and keep going until you're done.

- (Does the pattern look like anything? Maybe an hourglass?)

- The words don't make any sense read straight across. Maybe those number pairs mean something.

- Number pairs have different orientations. All the pairs with one orientation go together.

- The number pairs (x,y) have x from 1-7 and y from 1-8. The puzzle has up to 7 "columns" and 8 "rows".

- Reading number pairs in order (left to right, then top to bottom), take the Xth word in the Yth row.

- Note that X refers to the Xth "word". If a row only has three words in it, then (1,3) selects the 1st word in the row, even though that row is in the same "column" as the 3rd word in the top or bottom row.

- Common other ways to try to use the pairs to get messages: 1) trying to make a loop from one word to another (e.g., if the pair is (1,5), go to word (1,5), then find the number pair on that word, etc.) and 2) trying to reorient the coordinate system to match the orientation of the number pair. Good ideas, but not correct.

- The "unused words" are clearly those that haven't already been "used" by the messages.

- Once they get the correct messages, it's just a matter of making sure the players know what to do - go back in time and change the word "right" to "left" on Doctor When's envelope.

- If players think the messages seem slightly cryptic - remember that these messages had to be hidden in a yearbook entry. Something like GO BACK IN TIME AND CHANGE RIGHT TO LEFT ON DOCTOR WHEN'S ENVELOPE would have been far too obvious! (Though how the message got there in the first place is a mystery...)

Response to Correct Answer

n/a; teams answer in person

Other Notes

Players must retain the puzzle pieces to reuse at the end of the Game.

Early discussion

(preserved for reference; no longer relevant)

Other than the Jiffy Pop concept, we seem to have disagreements as to what form this puzzle should take. Part of the difficulty is that nobody has a specific idea for a prototype. There are currently three models being considered: the "Trick-Opening Box", the "Music Box", and the "Coded Time Capsule Message".

Right now the core team is mildly preferring the "Music Box" scenario, mostly as a compromise between coolness and feasibility. If someone can come up with an idea that actually can lead to a feasible puzzle, though, the other models would be fine, too.

"Trick-Opening Box"

The puzzle takes the form of a device. When the team first receives the puzzle, the message is hidden inside the device and "Stage A" is to get that message out of the device. For example, the device might be a trick-opening box, where you have to slide panels and tilt the box in certain ways before a secret drawer unlocks. The device has the property that even when one knows the method to opening it, one does not know how it is constructed or what the internal mechanisms of the puzzle are. Hence, when the team gets to Stage B, they now need to figure out how the device was constructed and construct it based on what they knew about the device.

"Music Box"

This puzzle is a mechanical device that emits a message. For example, a music box might emit a melody, or this device might emit a sequence of blinking lights, or a text message, or something else. The message is in code in some way, meaning that "Stage A" is a more traditional Game puzzle where the team just has to decode that message. In "Stage B", the team needs to assemble the device, which may include hunting for the parts, etc. This is different from the "Trick-Opening Box" scenario in that the way the device is assembled is not particularly hidden in "Stage A", it's just that it doesn't seem relevant to the teams, since they're focusing on solving the code.

"Coded Time Capsule Message"

Unlike the other two models, this puzzle does not take physical form. Instead, there is some sort of code "hidden in plain sight" on the time machine, where it is not obvious there is a code until the teams have certain knowledge. This code is visible to all the teams in Act I and Act III, but it is not visible in Act II. The "certain knowledge" is given to the teams in Act II. Hence, the idea is that an observant team might notice something odd in Act I, in Act II realize that they know how to decipher the code now but now don't have access to it, and in Act III they will be able to decode it ("Stage A"). When teams travel back in time to 1986, they insert the code onto an early prototype, ensuring that the code will be visible for their past selves to see in Act I.