100708 Puzzle Inventory Refinement

Part 1 Of Notes

Hello team!

We had a productive team meeting last night. We reviewed the puzzle inventory so far and agreed that we're now ready to begin some puzzle development. Yay!

I'll send out a more detailed notes from last night later. But the two key things you need to know of as a result of yesterday's meeting are:

1. The next meeting will be on July 29th. This is a push back of one week, so please update your calendars!

2. Everyone's homework for the next meeting is to select one puzzle in the current inventory and create a prototype for it. (The inventory is contained in the wiki--let me know if you're having trouble accessing it. I've listed some highlights below.)

Let's get puzzling!

Allen

PS: I know it has been difficult for our several team members spread around the world to contribute. But now that we are beginning puzzle creation, I hope that you will take a fresh look at the puzzle inventory and try to start writing.

PUZZLE INVENTORY HIGHLIGHTS

• "Core Dump 1" The "error log" of the malfunctioning time machine somehow decodes to "POOPED PEP RING" (or something similar).

• "Pep Ring" The time machine needs new "tachyon aether pep rings." The teams have to figure out how to build them...and maybe even construct them. This could involve going to a fun location, such as Sunnyvale's Weird Stuff Warehouse. Solution = the actual pep rings (or maybe just the instructions on how to make them). Wei-Hwa has a possible idea for this one at the moment, but if you have a great concept, go ahead and try yours, too.

• "Password Puzzle (Doctor When)" Need to figure out the password to Doctor When's super computer. Teams visit his childhood bedroom to look for clues--perhaps he encoded it within a Rubik's cube or some other classifc80s trivia item. Solution = BuffyRocks (or

similar)

• "Calibration" The time machine is finally working again...but needs to be calibrated. We have a record of where Doctor When has bounced around in time so far (which is a string of famous movie clips with the Doctor inserted into The Land Before Time, 2001, Ben Hur, Terminator, etc.). If the team can somehow predict where he'll go next, we can calibrate the machine. Solution = BEGINNINGOFTIME - though we're also considering having him go directly to the high school science fair, in which case the solution would be a time & date from 1986 or so (see the next puzzle concept).

• "Send Me Back (Doctor When)" We can see the Doctor on the time machine's video window into the past. He wants to be sent to a specific time/space coordinate before he returns to the present. Unfortunately his message is garbled. (Or maybe audio isn't working so he has to pantomime his message.) Solution = "Atherton High School May 16, 1986 10 AM" or something similar.

• "Retrieve The Letter" While the Doctor was bouncing around time a vital document dropped out of his pocket. This is the letter he planned to slip into the locker of his younger self. The team needs to figure out where it is and retrieve it. (The video from the Calibration puzzle may have clues about at which point he lost the document. The puzzle may be figuring out where it is now, or figuring out how to get past the security that's guarding it in the present day.) Most likely solution is _either_ a date OR something that can point to a date - e.g., if the letter got lost during a specific movie clip, the solution might be the movie name (assuming that the players can then research that movie and find the specific date & place).

• "Core Dump 2" Similar to "Core Dump 1," but this time the solution is "MENTOMETER" or something similar. And this time instead of it being a paper core-dump print out, it may be reading the positions of a bunch of pineapple cores or apple cores or something similarly wacky.

• "Mentometer Repair" The teams have to somehow repair the time machine's mentometer, similar to the Pep Ring puzzle above.

• "Password Puzzle (Prof. Chronus)" Need to figure out the password to Prof. Chronus's super computer. This time the teams go to
• her* childhood bedroom. She's encoded it in a mix tape of 80s hits. Solution = IHEARTWESLEY. [Erik has claimed dibs on this one.]

• "Send Me Back (Prof. Chronus)" Prof. Chronus wants to be sent to a particular time and place before returning to the present. She can't communicate directly with the players since she's lost in time. So she makes "subtle" changes to great works of art (such as being the new model for Whistler's Mother, in American Gothic, etc.). PCs must comb through an art history book and decode the alterations she's made. Solution = "Atherton High School May 16, 1986 11 AM" or something similar.

• "Locker Combo" Prof. Chronus needs to get inside young Wesley's school locker, but she doesn't have the combination. Players must decode information from the principal's office to find it for her - in particular, the principal has a list of master combos from 2010 all the way back to 1987 or so, but frustratingly not the year they need - so they need to backsolve the pattern to figure out what the master combo was in the right year. Solution = "12 34 56" or something similar. [Sean has claimed dibs on this one.]

• "Jiffy Pop Puzzle--Solve" After the Doctor activated the time machine it clearly malfunctioned. Instead of him returning, a bunch of gadgets did--one for each team. Fiddling with the gadgets reveals "To break infinite time loop change letter. Don't tell Chronus or When" or similar. (We may end up using this Jiffy Pop to point the players to several other puzzles in Act III, so the message may be complex. ... but if you have an idea as to how the Jiffy Pop puzzle might work, by all means, start thinking about it - this is a hard one to create and a key one for the game.)

• "Jiffy Pop Puzzle--Rebuild" Players realize that the Doctor can never return until they close a causality loop. They must reset the Jiffy Pop Puzzle to the same state they received it in and send it to themselves.

There are other places to insert puzzles - natural ones include extra steps in fixing the pep ring/mentometer, and possibly the Retrieve the Letter puzzle (the letter could have taken multiple bounces through time. The above ones seem like the key, plot-driving puzzles, though.)