1.10 Locate the Letter

Order

1.08

Location

Any (if via video) or some local place identifiable in one of the movie clips from the Calibration puzzle (see two options below).

Type

Mandatory Puzzle

Plot Setup

With the players' help, Doctor When has been sent to the right time & place: his high school right before the science fair. Neither Prof. Chronus nor the players know why he chose this time and place.

Props

The "vital instructions" will turn out to be an ancient newspaper clipping--page 1 of the the school paper from the day after the science fair (timeline 1). The headline is "Wesley When Makes Splash At Sciene Fair." The picture shows Wesley covered in slime and all the kids, including Buffy, laughing at him (Catherine looks sympathetic in the background). A hand-written note on it says, "At precisely 3:02 PM step two feet to the right and you'll win the girl of your dreams! If you don't, THIS will happen to you!"

Additionally we'll need two videos: The first will show the present-day Doctor When waiting in the empty school hallway, the recovered letter materializing in front of him, and then him slipping it into the young Doctor When's locker.

The second will show the second timeline of the Science Fair Incident (although we may never have to film the first timeline). In it, we see the young When standing in front of his science fair exhibit, reading the newspaper clipping (and Catherine noticing him doing so), intently looking at his watch, suddenly taking a measured step to the right, the stream of slime shooting towards his former position (and thus missing him). [It might be fun if there was a way we could choreograph it so that as he steps out of slime's way he accidentally knocks over Buffy. She's mad at first, but then realizes that he saved her from slime, and thus is grateful...paving the way for their improbable romance.]

Plot Point to Convey

When the players retrieve the "vital instructions" they should somehow be able to read them. Perhaps the envelop is torn or someone else framed the article.

Detailed Description

TBD. As mentioned in the notes to the previous puzzle, the time machine's video might have indicated that there was a "loss of mass" and spit out some garbled data that gives the time/place where the letter was lost. Instead, the solution might tell players to look closely at the Calibration movie and find the exact spot where the letter gets lost (which is a scene from a movie in SF - maybe Vertigo?)

Puzzle Solution

The time & location of the letter - or a reference to look at the Calibration movie, if we use that option above.

Other Notes

Do the players get the physical letter or merely find the time/place where it was lost? It might be more dramatic to postpone the actual finding of the _physical_ letter until Act III. If that's the case, then we _might_ make the time/place answer a little less transparent - e.g., the place is described by abstract coordinates, but in Act III they discover that the place is actually a Bay Area location. ALSO: this puzzle could be a series of puzzles that's shorter for teams that are behind; there's a puzzle for each "bounce" the letter takes through time.