Difference between revisions of "Staff Instructions"

Revision as of 11:41, 14 February 2012

TECH NOTE: The tables in this page are dynamically-generated from the individual event pages. If something weird shows up here it's probably because there was something screwy in the event pages. Feel free to edit these tables but if you don't understand what's going on, ask Wei-Hwa.

Act 1

1 1.01 Introductory Lecture 1

Doctor When gives intro speech, steps inside time machine, which malfunctions and he never exits.

Puzzles At This Site: None in this segment

Where To Get Materials:

Set should be installed the previous night
Chairs should be onsite
Everything else from GC HQ

Site Set Up:

Place portable tachyon detector near entrance of time machine

Actors:

PROFESSOR CATHERINE CHRONOS: Kristina Kenney
DOCTOR WESLEY WHEN: Dan Kurtz
TIRESIAS THE JANITOR: Sean Gugler
Miscellaneous lab assistants

Script (see Google Doc):

Note that two lab assistants will be required to open the curtains to reveal the time machine. Do this when Doctor When first says "time machine."

Site Close Down:

No close-down, scene automatically continues to 1.02 Core Dump

See script (Google Doc) for details.

N/A

2 1.02 Core Dump 1

Each team is given a corrupted "Toggle Burner" core dump board + core dump printout to decode in order to figure out what's wrong with the time machine.

Prof. Chronos will give live speech to all teams at once and then hand out boards. Note that she will ask teams to leave Institute to solve, and only to return once they have a solution.

Actors:

PROFESSOR CATHERINE CHRONOS: Kristina Kenney

Other Roles: Lab Assistants.

What To Wear: lab coats with Trenchwood Institute name badges.

What Your Character Knows: Only that the time machine has malfunctioned (but not the cause of the malfunction), and that the Doctor is somehow lost in time, and it's very urgent to rescue him.

Puzzles At This Site: Only Core Dump 1

Where To Get Materials:

Cores should be hidden in the machine the night before
Wifi sign should have been put up the night before
Core dump printout & Institute contact sheets from GC HQ

Setup Instructions:

Make sure cores and wifi sign are all in place

Handout Script:

See Google doc for Prof. Chronos's lines.
Note that teams will be asked to leave the Institute and solve outside, only to re-enter when they have a solution.

Hints:

Start approaching teams without prompting to offer hints around 10:15
See below for suggested hints

Answers:

NOTE: At 11:20, we will need to any teams that are still stuck here will need to be skipped past the next puzzle. Please contact a core GC member to discuss how to deal with this situation.

When a team has a solution it will re-enter the Institute and approach Prof. Chronos. After they report the co-keypad is ruined, she says

Oh, of course! Doctor When was never very good at tachyon midi ether co-keypads.

Oh, no. If one of the co-keypads malfunctioned that means that poor Wesley, I mean Doctor When, is now lost in time, bouncing randomly from era to era! Who knows what dangers he's facing?!

Well luckily I am the world's expert on their theory.

Prof. Chronos opens a panel in the machine to reveal the smoking ruins of one of the co-keypads.

Gadzooks! One of the co-keypads is shot. It appears to be pad number... 34. We'll have to design a new one. Would you please do that?

I'm an expert on their theoretical underpinnings, but to design new ones we'll need some practical help.

Normally I'd ask Wesley...Doctor When. But he's...not here at this time! [sniff!]

But, wait...there's another nearby expert who just may be able to help you. Please go to Prof. Dorian Clair's laboratory in San Francisco. Tell him that you need to design a replacement for midi-ether co-keypad #34.

Email me a picture of your design when you're done. If you have any trouble with your design call 650-395-TIME and one of the lab assistants may be able to help.

Hand them an Act 1 Contact Information Sheet [1] to lead them into Midi Ether Co-Keypad Ring A.

The team's status should be updated on online tracking system. This can be done at the Institute if a GC member has access; otherwise call GC HQ and have them do it.

Site Close Down:

As soon as the last team leaves, site may be converted to Peach Frontier Laboratories
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

The core dump is actually a physical circuit board with little rings attached to resemble an old computer memory core module. The rings are thumb-sized, much larger than real cores, so that letters printed on them are legible to the unaided eye.

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

For teams stuck on the first step, point to the unbolded letters on the main label and ask if that's significant.

For teams stuck on the last step, ask if they've noticed the bold and non-bolded letters yet.

For teams stuck on last step, mention that sometimes when one is faced with a perplexing problem they should try to get a "new perspective" on it.

CO-KEYPAD IS RUINED

0) The grid comes with a bunch of rings. Initially the top letter of the ring is just the earliest letter on the ring in alphabetical order, which indicates that there is no information in the initial state:

1) Each ring has one letter printed in a slightly different typeface than the others. They constitute a hint that may be discovered at any time, spelling out the phrase:

CHECK EDGES LAST

2) The title "TOGGLE BURNER" is printed on the puzzle, with the "T" and "B" less bolded than the other letters. This is a small hint to spoonerize the title to "Boggle Turner", a hint that the rings should be turned so that the letter grid, if played as a 4x4 Boggle board, would yield all the words on the accompanying printout.

The correctly-solved grid is:

which reads, top-to-bottom first then left-to-right:

CHANGE TO BACK SIDE

3) This instruction means that every ring should be spun 180 degrees to reveal the letters on the back. Doing so yields this grid:

which reads in reverse boustrophedonic order,

FLIP THE DIAGONALS

4) Flipping the 8 diagonal rings back to how they were reveals a final message, but to discover it one must use the "CHECK EDGES LAST" hint by reading around the sides:

The message starts at the upper-right ring and reads counter-clockwise, but (fortunately) all letters are right-side-up for this message:

COKEYPAD IS RUINED

n/a; answers will be given to onsite staff. See Staff Instructions.

3 1.03 Tachyon Midi Ether Co-Keypad 1

Team designs new co-keypad #34 based on specifications from Prof. Dorian Clair to replace damaged one.

Your Role: You're a lab assistant to Professor Dorian Clair, noted expert on temporal mechanics.

What To Wear:

Lab coat
Name badge with Dorian Clair Laboratories insert

What Your Character Knows:

You've been working on the design of tachyon midi ether co-keypads with Prof. Chronos.
You have design kits, but you have never actually made a working co-keypad.
There are millions of possible configurations so you won't be able to help the team until they actually give you the proper number (34).
You do not know about Doctor When or the Grand Unveiling. And as far as you know, Prof. Chronos is still in New England.

Puzzles At This Site: Only Co-Keypad 1

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Site Setup:

Greet Mr. Clair.
Call or e-mail GC so we know you are ready to receive teams.
Have your props ready.

Handout Script:

Discreetly keep count of how many teams have picked up their puzzle (or just count how many puzzles you have to start...you're done when you've handed out the right number!).

To handout puzzle, say words to the effect of,

PLAYERS:

Prof. Clair, we need your help! Doctor When has become lost in time because one of the tachyon midi ether co-keypads in his time machine failed.

PROF. DORIAN CLAIR/LAB ASSISTANT:

I'm sorry, who sent you here again?

PLAYERS:

Professor Catherine Chronos.

PROF. DORIAN CLAIR/LAB ASSISTANT:

Professor Chronos? Here?! I thought she was in New England. But that's terrible! Of course I'll help. Unfortunately I've never created a complete tachyon midi ether co-keypad; the materials are way too finicky. But I do have a design kit that should help. [Hands players the kit.] And here are a few blank sheets with instructions. Unfortunately, this won't do you much good unless you have a Connection Requirements Analysis Printout. There are millions of configurations and I'll need to know the keypad number to get you the right piece of CRAP. You wouldn't happen to have the number of the co-keypad that was broken, would you?

PLAYERS:

Number 34.

PROF. DORIAN CLAIR/LAB ASSISTANT

Ah yes, I should have guessed. Prof. Chronos always knew that one was going to be fragile. Let me pull out Connection Requirements Analysis Printout #34. With that and the kit, you should be able to figure out a good design to photograph and send to Professor Chronos.

Get printout and hand it to team.

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the puzzle, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to each email a picture of their solution to the Institute. If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

Site Close Down:

Thank the host (Dorian Clair Clock Repair). They're nice people.
Call GC to tell us you're shutting down.
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

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

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

(if prompted: username: tester, password: streetsetter)

http://trenchwood.com/keypad/answers/34.html

As soon as a team's answer is confirmed as correct ([2]), use Boomerang to program the email below to be sent about 15 minutes later.

Immediately after sending this email proceed to 1.04 Choose Your Own Adventure#How To Give To Teams.

Subject: OPTIONAL Project: More Co-keypad Design

Research Project Title: More Co-keypad Design
Objective: Design replacements for multiple broken tachyon midi ether co-keypads
Location: N/A

Notes:

Thanks so much for sending us a working design for co-keypad #34.

Unfortunately, as we opened up the machine to install your design, we noticed some damage on other tachyon midi ether co-keypads. Our best guess is that while #34 was out of commission its load spilled over onto the remaining ones which caused some 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 one broken co-keypad 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 redesign some more co-keypads (since you were so good at re-designing #34).

HOWEVER, don't let co-keypad design slow you down from your primary task, which right now is to uncover the password to Doctor When's Brain-O-Matic 9000 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://trenchwood.com/keypad/

Just as a start, we've assigned two broken co-keypads to you. Hopefully everything will make sense. Just let us know if you need help. If you need more blank co-keypad grids, we'll try to get some to the next lab assistant you see.

If you want to check our overall status, please visit the GROSS dashboard at:

http://trenchwood.com/keypad/dashboard.php

Again, this task is OPTIONAL -- don't let it distract you from your main task. But we do have dozens of broken co-keypads already and the time machine won't be fully functional until enough of them are fixed, so please help us when you can.

4 1.04 Choose Your Own Adventure

A "Choose your own adventure" book "The Dextrus of Tempus" written by Wesley while he was in high school contains his password in a hidden code.

Your Role: Wesley's aging father.

What To Wear: Anything (out of your closet) befitting a dottering old man.

What Your Character Knows: He loves his son and is proud of him...but has no real idea of the true heights of Wesley's brilliance and achievement. He does not know anything about the Grand Unveiling nor that Wesley is lost in time.

Puzzles At This Site: Only "Choose Your Own Adventure"

Where To Get Materials:

Puzzles should be picked up from GC HQ
Other props should already be stored on site

Setup Instructions:

Call GC when you arrive (so we know you are setting up)
Set up props
Make the bed
Call GC when you are ready for teams

Handout Script:

Discreetly keep a running count of the number of teams who have picked up.

Say words to the effect of,

PLAYERS:

Pardon us. We were sent by Doctor When's laboratory. He misplaced some information and they thought perhaps it was here.

MR. WHEN:

Wesley? He just visited the other day. He was such a good boy...a bit sensitive, but a good boy. So clever, always fixing the toaster and such. I'm not sure what he does now. I think he's a clock repairman. I'm not sure what you'll find here. We kept everything the way it was when he was a child. Maybe there's something. Feel free to look around.

Let the players look around and enjoy the set dressing. But do not let them spend too much time here nor start analyzing it. If they don't find the book, bring it to their attention. Once their attention is on it, say words to the effect of:

Now this brings back memories: when Wesley was in high school he wrote an adventure story for some class he had! He was so proud of it that he went and got it professionally bound and everything. I think he tried giving it to his classmates but nobody wanted it. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was all jumbled and didn't make any sense. Here, have a copy. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I'm afraid I'm getting a bit tired. You probably have everything you need now. Perhaps you can get a bite to eat while you read the book. There are lots of restaurants around the corner. Goodbye!

Hand them a book and usher them out of the room.

Hints: Teams have been instructed to call GC; it would be out of character for Mr. When to give hints (besides, they're unlikely to be solving at the actual location)

Answers: Teams have been instructed to email their answer to the Institute (and they'll probably be long gone from the site before they solve). If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

Site Close Down:

Take down and box up all the props.
Thank the host
Call GC
What to do with props?
- Game 1--store on site
- Game 2--Return box of props to GC

Other Instructions:

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

Young Wesley wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure Book in high school about a year before the "incident". Inside there is a series of codes that eventually lead to the answer "BUFFY ROCKS". In his naivete he actually believed that Buffy would be willing to go through all the different codes and decode the message. Perhaps Buffy really was that smart, but she sure wasn't interested!

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

Password = "BUFFYROCKS!"

The story has only 3 outcomes: conclusion 1, conclusion 2, or a "try again" page that sends you back to the beginning.

The "try again page" (page 2) actually describes the sequence of layers you will encounter in the course of solving this puzzle. They are called out below as GUIDING SPIRIT quotes.

GUIDING SPIRIT #1:  "You shouldn't be here. This is not the right path for you. You must start on the right path."

Starting from page 1, follow all right-hand choices at bottom of each page. All of them lead to a right-hand (odd-numbered) page, to further reinforce the right-ness, and it ends up at a conclusion (p31) instead of the "try again" page. Initial letters on this path spell a message:

1 23 7 19 13 21 17 9 25 29 5 27 11 3 15 31
PAGE NUMBERS INDEX

For reference, the story on this path flows as follows:

straight to castle
accept princess quest to slay dragon
encounter troll bridge
detour to blacksmith
proceed to wizard
detour to grouchy
fight dragon
return and stay with princess

GUIDING SPIRIT #2:  "The being of light extends its index finger"

Following the same path, and indexing the text on each page by its page number, yields this sequence of letters:

PARAGRAPH LENGTHS

GUIDING SPIRIT #3:  "... the route you have chosen ... look at it with remorse."

On that same path, each page now represents a letter of morse code. Short paragraphs (4 lines) are dots, long paragraphs (12 lines) are dashes. The new message obtained reads:

L AND R ALTERNATING

GUIDING SPIRIT #4:  "There is an alternate path.  It does not start out right, but it ends well as well."

Find a new path starting from page 1, this time choosing the left option (does not start out right), then the right, and alternating thereafter.

A new, but still consistent, storyline is obtained on this path. It happens to use all even pages, which is an artifact of construction and not relevant to the solution. Like the other path, it ends with a happy conclusion (p32) ("it ends well as well").

 1 22  28 4  18 24  12 30  26 10  8 20  16 14  6 32

The new story flow is:

farmer gossip
minotaur
gypsies, stay the night
giant's castle
hide in sheep
find harp, treasure
slay sleeping dragon
rescue princess
chased by giant
bring her to your time

The Guiding Spirit indicates, with an extended index finger, to index using page numbers again.

The indexed letters of the new path spell a new message:

PATHS AS SEMAPHORE

GUIDING SPIRIT #5:  "Are there any flags ...?"

The two choices at the bottom of each page on this path represent two cardinal directions. They may be of the form North + West, or Up + Left. Sometimes they're explicit in the choice text, sometimes the direction is given in the page body and only indirectly referred to in the choice text. In one case, some deduction is required to remember which direction was traveled FROM to arrive at this page, and the reverse of that direction matches the "go back" choice.

Matching the two directions to semaphore flag signal code yields this message:

XS BECOME BIG DOTS

GUIDING SPIRIT #6:  "you do not see. You must learn to see the correct spots ... completely blinding you."

There are very few instances of the letter "X" (capital or lowercase) on the pages of this path. They are to be interpreted as Braille, in the frame of the whole page. This yields one more message:

PRIME PAGE ENDINGS

GUIDING SPIRIT #7:

There is no guiding spirit hint for the final step. Starting from the beginning of the book, look at the last letter on all page numbers that are prime. This is your final message:

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31
BUFFY ROCKS!

Team phones Institute. Answer is verified by lab assistant (p. 10 of script)

LAB ASSISTANT: Hello. Trenchwood Institute. How may I direct your call?

VISITOR: We're the ____ team. We've cracked the password to the Brain-O-Matic 9000 supercomputer.

LAB ASSISTANT: Excellent! What is it?

VISITOR: It's _____.

Use the following lines for an 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?

VISITOR: Sure thing!

The call ends.

Use the following lines for a correct answer:

LAB ASSISTANT: We haven't tried that one yet...let me patch you though to Prof. Chronos. But first...are you on speakerphone?

VISITOR: Absolutely.

LAB ASSISTANT: Excellent. I'll connect you.

PROF. CHRONOS: Hello! I hope you have good news--we really need to access his supercomputer!

VISITOR: The password is "BUFFYROCKS!"

PROF. CHRONOS: Buffy? He can't still be thinking about that stuck-up, conniving, boy-stealing bimbo of a cheerleader from high school, who right now is probably a waitress at an all-night diner in Reno? Buffy? I...

Keyboard sounds in the background as Prof. Chronos types in the password.

PROF. CHRONOS: I can't believe it. I just typed it in and it works!

VISITOR: What can we do now?

PROF. CHRONOS: Oh, yes, there's so much more we need your help with. But I have to rush off to an urgent calculation. I hope you don't mind if I hand you off to one of the lab assistants for your next research assignment.

Lab assistant sends fast teams to Wormhole and other teams directly to Calibration.

5 1.06 Calibration

Teams have to predict next time Doctor When will bounce to based on DVD containing short clips of where he's been so far.

Your Role: You are a Long Now Foundation lab assistant. (We are pretending that Long Now is another time-oriented research laboratory.)

What To Wear:

Lab coat
Long Now Foundation name tag insert (should be hidden within your lanyard already)

What Your Character Knows:

Trenchwood Institute is a secretive, but qualified research facility
Nothing about the Grand Unveiling nor the mishap
You've never heard of co-keypads or chronomentometers (those are the secret inventions of Prof. Chronos and Doctor When)

Puzzles At This Site:

Calibration--mandatory
TBD--optional

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Site Setup:

Greet front desk person.
Call GC.

Handout Instructions:

Discreetly keep count of how many teams have picked up the mandatory puzzle...so you know when to close down!
The initial interaction should go something like:

LAB ASSISTANT:

Welcome to the Long Now Foundation. Your colleagues at Trenchwood called ahead and asked us to give you this Computer Remote Access Program to the time machine's View-O-Scope log. Here are two copies in case you want to run it on two computers. The disks are exactly the same. Just run the program on this disk and enter access code 991858. It should autorun on PCs, but you'll have to open index.html on Macs.

Also, Trenchwood said you may want these...something called "co-keypad grids". I've never heard of them before, but you can have 'em if you want 'em.

Make sure they write down the access code. Then hand out two disks and offer them 15 extra co-keypad grids; they may choose to not all take them.

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the hints below, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to call in their answer to Calibration to the Institute. If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

Site Close Down:

Thank host
Call GC to confirm you're leaving.
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

Stay in character.
Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.
There are lots of seats outside...and a few seats inside (check out the back room). Only allow the players to use the inside seats if it's not bothering the real Long Now staff and visitors. Use your judgment.

Players receive a CD containing the View-O-Scope video recording of the different times that Doctor When has bounced to. Each of these is a short clip from a famous movie scene (Dr. Strangelove, Titanic, and Gone With the Wind are a few examples), with Doctor When inserted in a (hopefully) funny way. The players' goal is to figure out where Doctor When bounced to at the end, so that they can "calibrate" the time machine appropriately and "lock on" to him. Additional details that are relevant at other points: 1) Doctor When loses the envelope during the Vertigo scene at Fort Point - they'll need this information later to get to the Retrieve the Letter event; and 2) in Act III, players will use the sequence again (which will end partway through) to figure out his next location quickly.

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

Teams are most likely going to call GC for hints, but it would be good if the on-site staffer was also able to help.

General hints:

- Any data associated with the movie – title, release date, names of actors or directors, etc. –is irrelevant to the puzzle. Recall that the introductory message said that these are actual events, despite their similarity to famous movie scenes.

- Anything Doctor When does is also irrelevant.

- The only thing the clips themselves are used for is to set the order. After that, the timestamp carries all the information.

- The "mass loss detected" message after Vertigo is not relevant to this puzzle.

- The semaphore letters are not exact, but it should be generally clear what letter they represent if teams look at an actual clock with hands set correctly.

- There’s a lot of data here – lots of numbers in the timestamp, the times depicted, and a lot of irrelevant information. If teams are having trouble, steer them toward ordering the clips as a first step.

Q: We can’t figure out what movie X is.

A: “Movie? What movie? These are real events –where the Doctor is in trouble, no less! Don’t think about any movies – that can’t possibly be right.”

Q: The timestamps are all screwed up! (E.g., months are wrong, or daytime scenes have a night timestamp.)

A: “Yep, it looks like a bunch of that data got corrupted. The years, though, seem right – or at least possibly right, given that the View-O-Scope can only show two digits.”

Q: We don’t know anything about the years when some of these scenes took place!

A: “Well – we can figure out _something_, can’t we? No, we don’t know exactly when the Doctor was running from dinosaurs – but it wasn’t the present day, and it wasn’t 5 billion years ago. Our margin of error may be wide, but we do have a range.”

Q: What the hell do we do? There’s so much data!

A: “Hmm… there has to be some reason for the Doctor bouncing to various times. If only we could figure out the right order in which to sift through all this data. With the scenes themselves - not the timestamps, since those seem to be at least partially corrupted – how could we order them?”

NEXTGATEWAYTHEBIGBANG

0. The movie clips are in alphabetical order by movie, so their original order is irrelevant.

1. Order the movie clips chronologically by the time depicted:

Movie	Original Order	Year
Land of the Lost	8	-65000000
2001: A Space Odyssey	19	-3000000
10000 BC	16	-10000
The Ten Commandments	15	-1300
Spartacus	14	-71
Ben-Hur	3	29
Monty Python's Life of Brian	9	34
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	10	932
The Adventures of Robin Hood	1	1300
Amadeus	2	1787
History of the World, Part I	7	1789
Gone With The Wind	6	1861
The Wizard of Oz	21	1900
Titanic	18	1912
Raiders of the Lost Ark	12	1936
The Sound of Music	13	1938
Casablanca	4	1941
Vertigo	20	1958
Dr. Strangelove	5	1960
Terminator 2: Judgment Day	17	2029
Planet of the Apes	11	3978

2. Transform the dates in the timestamp to letters, setting A=1, B=2, etc.

Movie	Date	Message 1
Land of the Lost	19	S
2001: A Space Odyssey	5	E
10000 BC	20	T
The Ten Commandments	3	C
Spartacus	12	L
Ben-Hur	15	O
Life of Brian	3	C
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	11	K
The Adventures of Robin Hood	13	M
Amadeus	15	O
History of the World, Part I	14	N
Gone With The Wind	20	T
The Wizard of Oz	8	H
Titanic	16	P
Raiders of the Lost Ark	15	O
The Sound of Music	9	I
Casablanca	14	N
Vertigo	20	T
Dr. Strangelove	19	S
Terminator 2: Judgment Day	21	U
Planet of the Apes	16	P

3. The message, SETCLOCKMONTHPOINTSUP, tells the players to set clock hands according to the hour and minute of the timestamp, and then to rotate the clock so that the hour equal to the month of the timestamp is pointing up. The clock hands form semaphore letters.

Movie	Month	Hour	Minute	Semaphore	Message 2
Land of the Lost	02	21	32	SW,SE	N
2001: A Space Odyssey	04	02	28	NW,NE	U
10000 BC	03	10	30	SW,E	M
The Ten Commandments	06	03	00	W,S	B
Spartacus	12	01	30	S,NE	E
Ben-Hur	03	06	00	W,E	R
Life of Brian	09	18	08	W,SE	S
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	05	03	32	NW,NE	U
The Adventures of Robin Hood	04	06	58	SW,E	M
Amadeus	01	08	20	SW,E	M
History of the World, Part I	10	08	34	W,NW	O
Gone With The Wind	11	04	54	N,S	D
The Wizard of Oz	06	16	30	NW,N	T
Titanic	02	03	24	E,NE	W
Raiders of the Lost Ark	11	17	01	S,NE	E
The Sound of Music	10	02	28	SW,SE	N
Casablanca	03	13	14	NW,N	T
Vertigo	03	18	07	NW,E	Y
Dr. Strangelove	07	15	56	W,SE	S
Terminator 2: Judgment Day	06	13	23	NW,SW	I
Planet of the Apes	01	14	28	NE,SE	X

4. The second message, NUMBERSUMMODTWENTYSIX, tells the players to add all of the numbers (not digits) in the timestamp, take mod(26) of those numbers, and transform them into letters, to letters, setting A=1, B=2, etc.

Movie	Year	Date	Month	Hour	Minute	Sum	Answer
Land of the Lost	96	19	02	21	32	14	N
2001: A Space Odyssey	44	5	04	02	28	5	E
10000 BC	13	20	03	10	30	24	X
The Ten Commandments	08	3	06	03	00	20	T
Spartacus	30	12	12	01	30	7	G
Ben-Hur	29	15	03	06	00	1	A
Life of Brian	34	3	09	18	08	20	T
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	32	11	05	03	32	5	E
The Adventures of Robin Hood	72	13	04	06	58	23	W
Amadeus	87	15	01	08	20	1	A
History of the World, Part I	89	14	10	08	34	25	Y
Gone With The Wind	61	20	11	04	54	20	T
The Wizard of Oz	00	8	06	16	30	8	H
Titanic	12	16	02	03	24	5	E
Raiders of the Lost Ark	36	15	11	17	01	2	B
The Sound of Music	38	9	10	02	28	9	I
Casablanca	41	14	03	13	14	7	G
Vertigo	58	20	03	18	07	2	B
Dr. Strangelove	60	19	07	15	56	1	A
Terminator 2: Judgment Day	29	21	06	13	23	14	N
Planet of the Apes	78	16	01	14	28	7	G

Responses are delivered by Lab Assistant over the phone.

Great!  We'll get to work recalibrating the time machine.

6 1.08 Send Me Back

Garbled silent video message from Doctor When instructing where to send him.

Handout Instructions: Say words to the effect of,

Welcome! From this location you can tune in to live feed from the Temporal View-O-Scope. Just use the program that the Long Now mechanics gave you and enter access code 645639. Come back and see me when you're done with the live feed.

Teams will watch this video and then come back to you.

Before 6:30 PM, tell them:

I saw the remote feed, too. We have to help Doctor When fix the timeline! You need to decode his final message. Please use code 222076 on your View-O-Scope Computer Remote Access Program. After you have figured out where he wants us to go, call Prof. Chronos on your speakerphone.

After 6:30 PM, instead tell them:

I saw the remote feed, too. We have to help Doctor When fix the timeline! You need to decode his final message. Please use code 621922 on your View-O-Scope Computer Remote Access Program. After you have figured out where he wants us to go, call Prof. Chronos on your speakerphone.

Discreetly keep count of the number of teams with whom you have had a second interaction...so that you know when you can close down the site!

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the hint information below, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to call in their answers. If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

The video is presented through a Javascript app that allows players to rearrange the pieces and play back the sequence. Once the video is reconstructed, Doctor When's pantomime must be interpreted into a message.

Interactive App (code 222076)

The thumbnails can be, and should be, dragged into a new sequence.

The labels are for players to make notes in. They stay with the thumbnails when dragged.

Click on any thumbnail to playback video starting there.

Don't know how to begin solving? Find the clip that ends with a bright flare in bottom left; that's the final one.

Find thumbnails that follow one another by looking at the final frame of each clip; it will exactly match the thumbnail of the clip that should come next.

Interpreting the correct sequence (app solve, or code 621922)

Doctor When always looks at the camera while holding a meaningful pose. Also, the static abates momentarily during these poses. Other moments of video should be considered transitional and not part of the message.

Each pose represents one letter. Or number.

M looks kind of like A, but his hands make a point for M and he claps his forearms for A.

SEND ME TO PAINE MEMORIAL MAY 31 1986 2:00

Video is in 22 segments, each about 7 seconds long. Playback starts at segment 1, then proceeds smoothly to segment 2, and so on. Initial sequence is scrambled, and players must rearrange segments until they are in the right order.

The correct sequence is as follows:

12 02 10 00 14 06 15 01 19 21 11 05 20 03 16 07 18 09 08 13 17 04

The team calls in to the Institute.

First a lab assistant should ask the team for their answer.

If it's wrong, say words to the effect of, "That doesn't make any sense. You should recheck your analysis."
If it's correct, say words to the effect of, "That's fascinating. I'm sure Prof. Chronos will want to hear this. Please turn on your speakerphone and I'll transfer you over to her."

PROF. CHRONOS:

Hello again. Are you on a speakerphone...can your whole group hear?

PLAYERS:

Yes, we are. The Doctor wants us to "SEND ME TO PAINE MEMORIAL MAY 31 1986 2:00," whatever "Paine Memorial" is.

(NOTE: they may say "200", since there is no colon in the puzzle message.)

PROF. CHRONOS:

"Paine Memorial" was the name of our high school. I just can't imagine what he would want back there. I guess it has something to do with fixing the timeline. But what an odd date--that was the date of our science fair. He must need something from 2:00pm that day.
I'll set the time machine to opening a portal for him just before we lost contact and then send him back to school! Let me hand you over to a lab assistant while I work on that.

7 1.10 Locate the Letter

Players must study the video of the Doctor's journey through time to figure out where he lost the envelope.

N/A

Careful study of the video log from the View-O-Scope reveals that Doctor When had the envelope in all scenes up until Vertigo, during which he lost it. The View-O-Scope message log will also display "mass loss detected."

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

Review the View-O-Scope log
Carefully observe which scenes Doctor When has the envelope and which ones he doesn't.

Ft. Point in San Francisco around 1958.

Simply review the footage from the Calibration puzzle, paying attention to the envelope. Observe that the footage where it is lost was shot at Ft. Point.

Over the phone lab assistant says words to the effect of,

Yes! We've noticed some tachyon disturbances near Ft. Point. I wonder how far in the past he lost the envelope... let's hope that by some miracle it's still there.

Immediately continue the conversation with the opening of 1.11 Fetch the Letter.

8 1.11 Fetch the Letter

Retrieve the envelope from where it's been waiting for 50 years.

ALL SITE STAFF should know where each other's location is! Archeologists need to be able to direct players to Crazy Tracy, and potentially vice versa. Make sure you scout this information upon arrival, calling in to GC if necessary.

Interaction Instructions:

All staff, if non-players approach out of curiosity, explain out-of-character:

Hi! This is part of a scavenger hunt event. Our players have to interact with us to get what they need, before they move on to their next location.

Crazy Tracy

Your Role: a crazy dumpster diver, peddling your crap as priceless treasures.

Greet players:

Welcome to Crazy Tracy's Show-Me Shop! I've got something for everyone, you need it, I got it.

Let them freely examine the wares. However, your prices are exorbitant. 5 billion dollars; 278 gazillion dollars; make up any giant numbers. Require foreign currency; whatever will block them from actually trying to pay you. You're Crazy Tracy! You make up your own rules. You don't even have to be consistent or make sense. You just have to make sure each team only takes one item, and that they have a coupon for it, which they get from the Archeologist.

If they don't seem to know what they're doing, or don't realize the archeology people are elsewhere, prod them:

Are you looking for something specific? [get them to describe the envelope] Oh, an old envelope? I have nothing like that, maybe the archeology folks know something about it. They're over there.

Point them towards the Archeologist.

Players who visit the Archeologist first will likely present their coupon without prodding.

Oh, I see you have a coupon for one free item! Ok, here's how it works. You can choose any item you want, but you have to grab it with this. [hand them the grabber] And you have to do it behind your back. That's right, turn around, and reach behind you. Yes, your friends can help you, but they can only talk, no touching!

If they ask which one they "should" take, rebuff them. You have no idea! (It's the Archeologist's job to give hints about the "right" item.)

When they get the item they want,

Nicely done! That's a beautiful treasure, I hope you like it. If you need to exchange it, just come on back, I'll be here for hours.

They may keep it, they needn't bring it back when they're done with this puzzle site.

If they come back to exchange something, take the old item but make them play the grabber game to get a replacement.

Archeologist

Your Role: (unrelated to Trenchwood) Caretaker of a makeshift depot of artifacts, for the convenience of some local experts who have been invited to conduct independent research on them.

Greet players:

Hi, folks! Can I see your invitations, please? [puzzled looks from players] You did get invitations, right? ... I'm sorry, this is a private research station. If you don't have your invitation, you'll have to prove your eligibility to me some other way.

Let them improvise for a bit, and ad lib reasons why you're not convinced. After a short time, let them off the hook with a hint:

No, I'm sorry, I really need some physical proof that you are who you say you are. We archeologists are used to dealing with artifacts, they provide the best evidence -- no, your IDs are no good, HQ didn't give me a guest list. I should really bug them about that. Anyway, sorry you came all this way for nothing. Actually, I've got a coupon I can give you for Crazy Tracy's Show-Me Shop, over there [*see below]; at least you could take home some souvenir from your visit to the big city. Bye, now!

Give them the coupon, and give them specific directions how to reach Crazy Tracy's. The location may be determined last-minute based on weather, so be sure to scout that information when you arrive.

Teams should return to show you a souvenir item they got from Crazy Tracy's (See Crazy Tracy's section for the details of what transpires there). These souvenirs match specific roles (the color of their badge), as follows:

Scientist	blue	award certificate, safety goggles, pocket protector, nerd glasses, rubber gloves, flask, electric meter
Government	red	red tape, agent badge, sunglasses, binder, handcuffs
Journalist	yellow	fedora, memo pad, light bulb canister, photography magazine, microphone
Investor	green	golf club, prospectus, piggy bank, Wall Street Journal, day planner, tobacco container

If a team brings a mismatched item:

Hmm, I don't know. That looks more like something a [APPROPRIATE ROLE] would have. Aren't you a [TEAM ROLE]?

This activity is partly intended to close the gap between lead teams and trailing teams. Hence, stall the early teams by making up reasons for rejecting their first two items. Middle teams only get one rejection, and late teams are accepted on their first try. (You may exercise judgement, especially to avoid annoying teams who really aren't enjoying this.)

Feel free to ad lib the rejections, but be sure to hint at what might be more acceptible. Here are some examples:

That certificate is clearly fake! I'll need something more sincere than that.

Red tape? Really? That's just a metaphor, you know. Don't you have anything more authentic?

Come on, I know nobody uses giant mics like that anymore. Surely you're up on the latest fashions.

Seriously? Some old prospectus? Maybe if you had something more current, I'd be convinced.

When you're ready to grant them access,

Ah, an [OBJECT]! Clearly you are real [ROLES]. Come on in; sorry for doubting you! Let me tell you a bit about what we're doing here. For the last few decades, the Jones Archeological Institute has been working on a big project called the "Civic Refuse Archeological Project." We catalog and organize different sorts of refuse found at dig sites from all over the country. This station was set up for visitors such as yourself to select an artifact to take home for independent study. So, is there a particular artifact you'd be interested in?

The team should mention something about trying to retrieve an envelope that was lost here in the 1950s (1958, to be exact).

Hmm, we did have a dig here in 1958, I think. The site overseer would have put his findings in a tagged envelope ... see, each envelope has a different two-letter sort tag that uniquely identifies which dig site it was from. Let's take a look...

Show them the tub of envelopes. Pull out two copies of "1958 log" and two copies of "memorandum". Make a show of visually scanning the log.

Hmm, I don't see the cities recorded in the log. Maybe this memo will help you figure out which tag was used for this site back then. Come on back when you know which envelope you want.

If they ask to look inside the envelopes, explain it's not allowed:

Company policy says we're not allowed to open the envelopes here, and I can only give you one of them. So I'm afraid you are going to figure out exactly which envelope you need.

The team should now go to work on the puzzle from the "1958 log" and the "memorandum".

You are responsible for dispensing hints. Please familiarize yourself with the solution section later in this document. Role play it like you're just figuring it out on the spot.

Stuck, huh? Well, show me what you've got so far, maybe I can help. [they do] Hmm. Well, maybe you should try [HINT].

When they request a tag, ask them how they figured it out. If they can't justify their answer, stall them:

I'd hate to give you the wrong envelope. You'd better be absolutely sure you know which one is from here.

If they insist on just taking a chance, give it to them but caution them:

Okay, I really hope this is the one you want. It'd be a real shame if it was something useless, like old paper towels or something. I've heard the site seers back then were kind of jokesters, sometimes.

The wrong envelopes will indeed have paper towels in them.

If they come again with a wrong tag:

Look, we're very busy here and can't just go through all the bins based on your silly hunches. You need to be absolutely sure of the correct sort tag.

The correct tag is "LA". Eventually they will be absolutely sure.

Great job! Here's your envelope. I hope your studies reveal something useful, for the benefit of mankind. That's what archeology is all about, right? Now we need to get back to work, so take care!

The team is supposed to bring it with them to the next puzzle location, where they will deliver it to the lab assistant there.

When they leave, restock the bin with another "LA" envelope, and two more copies each of the "1958 log" and "memorandum".

Site Close Down:

Break down and pack up set
Call GC
Return materials to GC
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

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

The letter has been salvaged by "Jones Archeology Institute, IN" along with other artifacts from dig sites all over the country in a massive project spanning years. They are being held at a temporarily-erected station for observation and analysis by visiting archaeologists. Players must gain admittance past the station guard, and then interpret the cataloguing scheme to locate the letter.

The site overseers were using fake names to put on the official log, and the administrative assistant eventually figured out how they came up with the names and left a memorandum with hints. When players understand the naming system, they'll know which envelope has the two-letter sort tag that came from the dig here at San Francisco.

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

Players must request the envelope labeled "LA".

The station guard informs players they cannot gain admittance without proof of their legitimacy. He takes pity on their "wasted" visit and gives them a coupon for a nearby junk peddler. There, they must obtain something that suits their role (scientist, journalist, etc). They guard may reject them until they produce an item he is satisfied with, giving them hints on why they failed.

The re-organization log contains a list of two-letter tag names and Site Seer names that are fake (which players can infer from the Memorandum).

Here's the list of names and tags:

Let 1	Let 2	Name
D	T	Tana Tal
E	E	Rachel Tot
G	M	Tina Onason
I	U	Ken Rowy
L	A	Cat Hiwi
N	I	T. F. Lin
N	S	Morti Abel
O	A	Glen Alesso
O	E	Lily Kattesca
O	O	K. T. T. Collier
R	Y	Wilma Euke
S	T	Carson F. Cains
T	F	Nick Saytas
T	S	Frank Gords
U	L	Ken Soap
W	C	Cal Ao

Note that the sheet is already sorted by the tags. A hint on the last paragraph of the Memorandum suggests that players should SORT by something else, however. The natural thing is to sort by surname:

Let 1	Let 2	Name
N	S	Morti Abel
O	A	Glen Alesso
W	C	Cal Ao
S	T	Carson F. Cains
O	O	K. T. T. Collier
R	Y	Wilma Euke
T	S	Frank Gords
L	A	Cat Hiwi
O	E	Lily Kattesca
N	I	T. F. Lin
G	M	Tina Onason
I	U	Ken Rowy
T	F	Nick Saytas
U	L	Ken Soap
D	T	Tana Tal
E	E	Rachel Tot

The first letters of the tag names now spell out the message NOW SORT LONGITUDE. This implies that there is some geographical data hidden in this list. Players will now need an aha about the Archeologists' system -- that their fake names are actually anagrams of cities and towns in the USA. (This is vaguely hinted by "Site Seer" = "Sightseer", and by the memo's author having "decided to play along"; she named herself "Diana Spinoli" which anagrams to "Indianapolis".) Each city has a longitude, and then the list can be sorted by longitude from east to west:

Let 1	Let 2	Name	City	State	Lat	Long
I	U	Ken Rowy	NewYork	New York	40.664167	-73.93861
N	S	Morti Abel	Baltimore	Maryland	39.283333	-76.61667
E	E	Rachel Tot	Charlotte	North Carolina	35.226944	-80.84333
W	C	Cal Ao	Ocala	Florida	29.187778	-82.13056
N	I	T. F. Lin	Flint	Michigan	43.01	-83.69
D	T	Tana Tal	Atlanta	Georgia	33.755	-84.39
R	Y	Wilma Euke	Milwaukee	Wisconsin	43.05	-87.95
O	O	K. T. T. Collier	LittleRock	Arkansas	34.736111	-92.33111
T	F	Nick Saytas	KansasCity	Missouri	39.1	-94.58
T	S	Frank Gords	GrandForks	North Dakota	47.925278	-97.0325
L	A	Cat Hiwi	Wichita	Kansas	37.688889	-97.33611
G	M	Tina Onason	SanAntonio	Texas	29.416667	-98.5
O	E	Lily Kattesca	SaltLakeCity	Utah	40.75	-111.8833
U	L	Ken Soap	Spokane	Washington	47.658889	-117.425
O	A	Glen Alesso	LosAngeles	California	34.05	-118.25
S	T	Carson F. Cains	SanFrancisco	California	37.7793	-122.4192

Now the second letter provides extra information about the Archeologists' system: USE CITY OF SAME LAT. It turns out that every city in this list can be paired with another city of the same (or really close) latitude in the list:

Let 1	Let 2	Name	City	State	Lat	Long	Pair
N	S	Morti Abel	Baltimore	Maryland	39.283333	-76.61667	1
T	F	Nick Saytas	KansasCity	Missouri	39.1	-94.58	1
T	S	Frank Gords	GrandForks	North Dakota	47.925278	-97.0325	2
U	L	Ken Soap	Spokane	Washington	47.658889	-117.425	2
N	I	T. F. Lin	Flint	Michigan	43.01	-83.69	3
R	Y	Wilma Euke	Milwaukee	Wisconsin	43.05	-87.95	3
I	U	Ken Rowy	NewYork	New York	40.664167	-73.93861	4
O	E	Lily Kattesca	SaltLakeCity	Utah	40.75	-111.8833	4
L	A	Cat Hiwi	Wichita	Kansas	37.688889	-97.33611	5
S	T	Carson F. Cains	SanFrancisco	California	37.7793	-122.4192	5
E	E	Rachel Tot	Charlotte	North Carolina	35.226944	-80.84333	6
O	O	K. T. T. Collier	LittleRock	Arkansas	34.736111	-92.33111	6
D	T	Tana Tal	Atlanta	Georgia	33.755	-84.39	7
O	A	Glen Alesso	LosAngeles	California	34.05	-118.25	7
W	C	Cal Ao	Ocala	Florida	29.187778	-82.13056	8
G	M	Tina Onason	SanAntonio	Texas	29.416667	-98.5	8

With that information, they should be able to infer that the Fort Point dig site must be the one with the overseer "name" of Cat Hiwi, as Wichita has the same latitude as San Francisco. So they should ask for the envelope with sorting tag LA.

When team calls in congratulate them with words to the effect of,

You didn't just locate the envelope...you retrieved it?! That's fantastic. We need you to get it to one of our lab assistants out in the field so that they can rush it back to the Institute. From here we can use the time machine to send it to the Doctor in 1986.

Then continue the phone conversation with the lead in to the next puzzle (probably an optional or Consolidator 1).

9 1.12 Consolidation 1

Final fix before Doctor can be returned to the present.

Your Role: Trenchwood Institute lab assistants

What To Wear:

Lab coat
Trenchwood Institute name badge

What Your Character Knows: Everything in Plot Setup except the content of the envelope

Puzzles At This Site:

All four role puzzles...but each team will get at most one
Additional co-keypads

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Setup Instructions:

Set up screen, projector, and sound
Initialize display of G.R.O.S.S. progress
Call GC when you are ready for teams

Handout Instructions:

Initial Greeting Upon Arrival

Lab assistant says words to the effect of

Welcome, welcome. You have the envelope? Fantastic. We'll have a courier rush it to the Institute so that they can use the time machine to send it to the Doctor in 1986.

The visitors hand off the envelope.

What Puzzle To Give Teams Next

'Before 8 PM'

Give them a role puzzle, starting with the one for their role. Continue with the onsite handout staff instructions for that puzzle (attached).

Be sure to discreetly check off the appropriate cell in the online "Team Vs. Role Puzzle Grid."

'After They've Completed Role Puzzle But Before 8:30'

Conversation should go something like:

LAB ASSISTANT:

Thanks! That was such a weird problem--I don't know what we would have done if we didn't happen to have [science, journalism, finance, government] experts like you around!

I think that the only thing we have left before we can get the time machine restarted is these darned co-keypads. But we're making good progress. You can see the overall progress on the screen. At the rate we're going, I think we'll have enough of them fixed by 8:45 PM to finally rescue Doctor When, especially if you help.

No pressure, though, you've already done so much for us. So, feel free to grab some food if you haven't already done so, or grab another piece of CRAP from the online G.R.O.S.S. system and design some more co-keypads, or just chat with the other attendees here. If you do design a new co-keypad, just see a lab assistant with a workstation so they can check in your design. Whatever you do, make sure you're here at 8:45 when we restart the time machine and send that envelope to Doctor When.

Answer:

See: 1.03.05_Co-Keypad_Optional_Driving_Puzzles#Response_to_Correct_Answer

At 8:45 PM

By now hopefully all the teams have arrived and at least finished their role puzzle. The lab assistants act out the skit on the attached script excerpt.

Then they show videos of Act I Scenes 3 & 4 on the big screen. Then lab assistant announces:

Hooray, you've rescued Doctor When! Now it's time to return to the lab for debriefing.

Lab assistant's phone seems to get a message.

Hold it...there's a bit of residual tachyonic radiation at the lab...probably wouldn't cause sterility.

Well, those darn government regulators might object. Why don't you just let it die down a bit. We'll resume the presentation at 10...so wait to check in till at least 9:45 PM. If you haven't eaten yet Perhaps you could get yourself some dinner between now and then. Here is a good place, but there are also many other restaurants around. But definitely don't go back before 9:45 PM. We really, really, do not want to get into any trouble with government regulators; I’ve heard that filling out their forms is impossible!

Site Close Down:

Pack up
Call GC
Save the Team Vs. Role Puzzle grid for use during Consolidator 2
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

Stay in character.
Except...if a team says "time out," then break character.

Co-Keypad puzzles must be collectively solved by the teams. They work together in mild competition until all teams have arrived.

There are a maximum of 16 puzzles per team (256 puzzles in week 1, 272 puzzles in week 2) available. Initially, only 4 puzzles per team are "broken" (64 puzzles in week 1, 68puzzles in week 2). A GC member should be pacing the release of new "broken" puzzles so that teams are on track to have everything solved at the end of the consolidation.

GROSS is available at: http://trenchwood.com/keypad

The admin console is at: http://trenchwood.com/keypad/nimda.html

The display dashboard is at: http://trenchwood.com/keypad/dashboard.php

GROSS should display properly on smartphones and Internet-enabled tablets.

It'll be blindingly obvious once you log in and when you see the display dashboard that individual team information is anonymized and only role information is shared. At least, that's my hope.

More information at 1.03.05 Co-Keypad Optional Driving Puzzles.

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

The event is over when all co-keypads are designed. GC will regulate the pace by having imaginary "lab assistants" artificially solve some puzzles, timing it to end shortly after the last team arrives.

Answers to each co-keypad can be found at http://trenchwood.com/keypad/answers/ .

n/a--there's no call or email into the Institute

10 1.11.02a Balance Sheet Puzzle

An unusual financial balance sheet reveals instructions on how to raise money.

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Handout Instructions:

If a team is directed to this puzzle over the phone, then they will ask the onsite lab assistant for the puzzle by name. Give it to them (and don't forget to enter it in the "Teams Vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online document)

If you're assigning this puzzle to them in person, then say words to the effect of,

FOR INVESTOR TEAMS:

We're run into a problem that could really benefit from the special expertise of you and your colleagues:

CONTINUE FOR ALL TEAMS:

We seem to have run into a little bump in the road on our way to rescuing Doctor When. It's not a technical problem. Rather (and this is so embarrassing) it seems we've run out of money.

Would you please help? [Ask the lab assistant for the "Balance Sheet" research project.] When you're done see any lab assistant or call the Institute and speak with any lab assistant.

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL

Research Project Title: Balance Sheet

Objective: Help Institute keep operating long enough to rescue our leader by avoiding bankruptcy

Upon Completion: See the lab assistant onsite or call the lab and speak with any lab assistant

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Say words to the effect of

Why of course! All we have to do is use the time machine to make an investment in the distant past. And then by the miracle of compound interest we'll be swimming in money today! We'll get right on that.

Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid".

Site Close Down: See Consolidator 1 or 2

Trenchwood Institute (or Peach Frontier Laboratories) has run out of money. The game fairy (Chronos or When) asks the players to fix the errors in the lab's financial balance sheet, which doesn't seem to use the same rules as normal balance sheets. After fixing the errors, they can scrutinize the sheet to uncover hidden instructions on how to solve the lab's financial woes.

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

(waiting for Wei-Hwa to upload Word document)

How Confused Players Describe Which Puzzle They’re Working On

“Consolidated Balance Sheet For Department Of Defense”

Common Sticking Points

Sticking Point	Suggested Suggestion
Didn’t solve for two missing numbers first	“Have you found the two missing figures?”
Can’t figure out why totals add up to 0, i.e., that it’s mod 24.	“That is odd. What kind of strange arithmetic could possibly have both 72 and 24 equal to zero?”
Don’t make the intuitive leap to also think about the numbers as times.	“I wonder why he/she used an arithmetic that goes up to 24 and then starts back at zero?”

INVEST CENT IN PAST

Typical Solve Process

Figure out the two missing numbers (Yerevan = 15, Phuket = 10) by realizing that the summations are done mod 24.
Realize from the mod 24 and the “Department Of Defense” references that the numbers can also be interpreted as “military time.”
Look up the UTC time zone offsets for each location referenced.
Convert each foreign time to its equivalent simultaneous time in San Mateo, i.e., “if it’s 12:00 in Easter Island, what time is it here?” (assume all times are standard).
Index the resulting numbers into the alphabet

Puzzle Data

Assets	As printed	UTC	Delta	Local time	Letter
Current
Cash (Pacific Standard Trust)	9	-8	+0 = PST	9	I
Short-term investments, Managua Money Market Fund	16	-6	-2 = PST	14	N
Accounts receivable, Seoul Food Products	15	+9	+7 = PST	22	V
Inventory, Broome, AU janitorial supplies	21	+8	-16 = PST	5	E
Notes receivable, Libyan Aviation	5	+2	+14 = PST	19	S
Pre-paid rent, Latvian Laboratory	6	+2	+14 = PST	20	T
Total Current	0

Long-Term Assets
Equipment, Yerevan University	15	+4	-12 = PST	3	C
Building, Pago Pago tachyon storage facility	2	-11	+3 = PST	5	E
Long-Term Investments, Buenos Aires Bonds	19	-3	-5 = PST	14	N
Ulaanbaatar administrative yurts	12	+8	+8 = PST	20	T
Total Long-Term	0

Liabilities	As printed	UTC	Delta	Local time	Letter
Liabilities
Gravina Island Bridge Loan	8	-9	+1 = PST	9	I
Accounts Payable, Easter Island Head Office	16	-6	-2 = PST	14	N
Total Liabilities	0

Net worth
Contributed capital, Pyongyang People's Victory Fund	9	+9	+7 = PST	16	P
Reserved stock, Vanuatu Hedge Partners	20	+11	-19 = PST	1	A
Reserves, Phuket All-Services Bank	10	+7	+9 = PST	19	S
Retained earnings, Margilan Maritime Credit Union	9	+5	+11 = PST	20	T
Total Net Worth	0

See Staff Instructions

11 1.11.02b Income Statement

Followup to Balance Sheet; bizarre income statement reveals another message.

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Handout Instructions: If a team is directed to this puzzle over the phone, then they will ask the onsite lab assistant for the puzzle by name. Give it to them (and don't forget to enter it in the "Teams Vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online document)

If you're assigning this puzzle to them in person, then say words to the effect of,

Uh, oh... We seem to have encountered a bit more difficulty with our finances. Please see the lab assistant at your current location and ask for the Income Statement Research Project.

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL

Research Project Title: Income Statement

Objective: Help Institute keep operating long enough to rescue our leader by avoiding bankruptcy

Upon Completion: See the lab assistant onsite or call the lab and speak with any lab assistant

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Say words to the effect of,

Why of course! Using other people's money is the successful way to fund any venture! We'll get right on it.

Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid".

Site Close Down: See Consolidator 1 or 2

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

Intended Solve Process

Notice all the times are valid non-military times.
Solve for the one missing number (Rent = 3:02 AM) using standard clock arithmetic
Notice that the top section corresponds to AM (“Accumulated Monies”) and the bottom section corresponds to PM (“Paid Monies”). Some players may especially clued into this because “Accumulated Monies” and “Paid Monies” are not standard
Notice that there are exactly 12 words in each section. (“Timeline-Adjustments” and “Timeline-Restoration” each count as one word since they have hyphens.) This should suggest 12 hours.
Notice that the income statement is printed in a fixed-width font. This suggests that counting characters is important.
Now the puzzle becomes a simple look up: for example, “m:n AM” means look up the n-th character of the m-th word in the AM section.

Puzzle Data

Revenues (Accumulated Monies)
Sales	11:14 PM	O
Service	6:09 PM	T
Consulting	9:13 AM	H
Fees	1:02 AM	E
Interest	1:01 AM	R
Tachyonography	12:09 AM	-
Fortune Telling	9:12 AM	P
Timeline-Adjustments	1:02 AM	E
	3:02 PM	O


Expenses (Paid Monies)
COGS	9:12 AM	P
Particles	2:07 AM	L
Depreciation	12:17 AM	E
Butterflies	3:06 PM	S
Dinosaurs	11:09 PM	-
Insurance	2:05 AM	M
Rent	3:02 AM	O
Timeline-Restoration	1:05 AM	N
Utilities	1:02 AM	E
	9:05 AM	Y

Common Sticking Points

Sticking Point	Suggested Suggestion
Skipped figuring out the missing number
Can’t figure out how to calculate missing number	“The top section seems to add up just like times should.”
Can’t figure out what to do with the times.	“The hours go from up to 12. Is there 12 of anything else?” Or “It’s interesting that the largest number of minutes is 17.”

OTHER-PEOPLES-MONEY

Triple index the location names: section from am/pm, line from hour, letter from minute.

See Staff Instructions

12 1.11.01 Intense Secrets

A pulp science fiction story written by Doctor When is discovered in the past.

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Handout Instructions:

If a team is directed to this puzzle over the phone, then they will ask the onsite lab assistant for the puzzle by name. Give it to them (and don't forget to enter it in the "Teams Vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online document)

If you're assigning this puzzle to them in person, then say words to the effect of,

Act I

FOR JOURNALIST TEAMS:

We're run into a problem that could really benefit from the special expertise of you and your colleagues:

CONTINUE FOR ALL TEAMS:

During our research we noticed a strange anachronism: a story in a 1930s pulp science fiction magazine...written by a "Wesley When." Is it just a coincidence...some other Wesley When from the past? Or was it our very own Doctor When leaving us a helpful message (but doing so in a way that is so subtle it won't corrupt the timeline)?

Would you please analyze the story and then either see any onsite lab assistant or call the lab and speak to any lab assistant? [To start, just ask the lab assistant onsite for the Pulp Science Fiction Research Project.]

Act II

FOR JOURNALIST TEAMS:

We're run into a problem that could really benefit from the special expertise of you and your colleagues:

CONTINUE FOR ALL TEAMS:

During our research we noticed a strange anachronism: a story in a 1930s pulp science fiction magazine...written by a "C.L. Chronos." Is it just a coincidence...some other C.L. Chronos from the past? Or was it our very own Prof. Chronos leaving us a helpful message (but doing so in a way that is so subtle it won't corrupt the timeline)?

Would you please analyze the story and then either see any onsite lab assistant or call the lab and speak to any lab assistant? [To start, just ask the lab assistant onsite for the Pulp Science Fiction Research Project.]

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL--BOTH ACTS

Research Project Title: Pulp Science Fiction

Objective: Analyze 1950s pulp science fiction story to determine if it's a secret message

Upon Completion: See the lab assistant onsite or call the lab and speak with any lab assistant

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Say words to the effect of

Check the Fermi decouplers? Let's see... wow, good thing we checked them! They were about to blow, and no good can come of blown Fermi decouplers. Okay, it looks like the machine is running more smoothly now.

Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the online "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid".

Site Close Down: See Consolidator 1 or 2

After the accident, a scan of the historical record discovers a 1930s pulp science fiction story written by Doctor When or Professor Chronos (depending on whether the puzzle is delivered in Act I or II). Perhaps the Doctor/Professor hid a message in it!

This puzzle is intended to engage the skills that a team of journalists are likely to have.

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

- If the players are completely stuck, remind them that the last part of the About the Author section says that the author worked really hard on the title - maybe that contains a clue.

- If they're still stuck, note that the lab computer has done a grammar analysis and, strangely, there are no participles, gerunds, infinitives, or other verbal forms - just regular verbs.

- If they're looking at verb tenses but are trying to put them in groups of three (or something similar), remind them that the About the Author section says something about working carefully on each individual sentence. Maybe the verbs are grouped by sentence...

- It's possible that some teams may not know enough, or know too much, about verb tenses. All verbs in this story appear (are meant to be) either in past, present, or future TIME, and forms such as "will succeed" and contractions such as "I'll kill" are considered part of the same verb. Aspects are irrelevant - "he ran" and "he was running" both count as past verbs.

- It's also possible that there may some confusion about what constitutes a sentence, especially within quotes (or in the sentences describing the sign). The demarcations here are simple - a sentence ends whenever a period, exclamation point, or question mark appear.

- Since there are three tenses (times) - past, present, future - could that suggest a ternary code?

- As an extra hint, the first letter after each appearance of the word "secret" spells TERNARY.

- VERY COMMONLY, teams may be looking at verb tenses and sentences correctly and be thinking about ternary, but be stuck on the idea of "past = 0, present = 1, ...". Remind them that a good ternary code not only uses three values (0, 1, 2), but also has three digits/places. Maybe the three tenses correspond to places/digits (9's place, 3's place, 1's place) instead of the numerals (0, 1, 2) in those places.

CHECK FERMI DECOUPLERS

- All verbs in the story have past, present, or future tense (time).

- For each sentence, count the number of verbs in past, present, and future tense (time), and form a three-digit ternary number, with the past verbs forming the 9's digit, the present verbs the 3's digit, and the future verbs the 1's digit.

- (Sentences end if and only if a period (not an ellipsis), question mark, or exclamation point appears.)

- Verb counts are as follows (format is past/present/future):

- Paragraph 1: (202,022,100,200,011)

- Paragraph 2: (110,012,202,202,012,200)

- Paragraph 3: (001,020,202,012,200)

- Paragraph 4: (010,120,111,111,001,201)

- This translates to THIRDLETTERAFTERCOMMAS.

- Reading the third letter after each comma (not counting spaces or punctuation) gives CHECKFERMIDECOUPLERS.

See "Staff Instructions"

13 1.07 Feynman Diagrams

Players have to decode modified Feynman particle interaction diagrams to design placement of mirrors in device.

Your Role: Lab Assistant.

Handout Instructions: Do something.

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to call in their answer to the Institute.

Site Close Down:

Clean up.
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

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

?

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

The puzzle consists of a set of numeric data points, and instructions on how to plot them on a diagram. The plots form visual letter shapes, spelling a message.

Over the phone the lab assistant says words to the effect of

Blah

14 1.11.03 Particle Zoo

Players need to classify a large number of "particles" (similar images).

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Handout Instructions:

If a team is directed to this puzzle over the phone, then they will ask the onsite lab assistant for the puzzle by name. Give it to them (and don't forget to enter it in the "Teams Vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online document)

If you're assigning this puzzle to them in person, then say words to the effect of,

FOR SCIENTIST TEAMS:

We're run into a problem that could really benefit from the special expertise of you and your colleagues:

CONTINUE FOR ALL TEAMS:

It seems that when the time machine malfunctioned, it ignited a proliferation of new elementary particles. We think that we need to include these new particles in our calculations as we continue to tune the tine machine, but we're not exactly how to approach the problem. Ask the lab assistant onsite for the Particle Zoo research project. Call the lab and speak with any lab assistant when you're done.

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL

Research Project Title: Particle Zoo

Objective: Find out how to deal with proliferation of particles caused by time machine malfunction

Upon Completion: See the lab assistant onsite or call the lab and speak with any lab assistant

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Say words to the effect of,

Of course! Chronozoic spacetime field theory is the perfect theoretical approach to figuring out how to tune the time machine to account for these new particles! In fact, it's easy - we can make the adjustments almost instantly.

There - we're done. Now we can send Doctor When to 1986 just like he requested. We've opened a portal for him and are sending him back to school!

Enter code 202751 in the View-O-Scope remote access program, and then we can see if it worked. I'll hang up now and watch as well. If you need to, you can call us at the lab after you watch the Doctor on the View-O-Scope.

Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the online "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid".

Site Close Down: See Consolidator 1 or 2

Players receive a printout with 23 columns of images, and need to classify those images into sets. Having done so, they figure out letters for each set, which they then must figure out how to order correctly in order to read the final message.

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

- There are clearly "groups" of symbols that belong together. A good first step is to identify what the groups are. (Note that exact names don't matter).

- There are 30 groups in total. (The toughest group to be precise about is probably the pizza logos/signs.)

- Note that if two or more images from one group appear in a single column, they always appear together.

- That's because the order is always consistent. In fact, after classifying the groups, the second key step is to figure out the order of the groups, from examining the orders of the symbols in each individual column. Columns with many symbols are good places to start.

- There are lots of symbols in some columns - 1, 5, 9, 15 are some examples. Does that suggest anything?

- The column numbers represent letters (for example, 1, 5, 9, 15 are a, e, i, o respectively).

- Each group appears six times, yielding six letters. How do we order the letters?

- Hmmm. Check the flavor text. What are these particles called?

- They're called zuons. And some of the letter combos might be suspicious - try the one containing a Q.

- D,I,Q,S,S,U anagrams to SQUIDS. Hey, that's an animal!

- "Zuons" - this is a "zoo" of particles. Each group anagrams to an animal word.

- Some of the anagrams are easy; others are pretty hard. In fact, you may never have heard of some of them before, and would need an anagram solver with a large dictionary to find. The toughest ones are probably OCELOT, NUTRIA, DUGONG, and YORKIE.

- What now? Well, you've got a lot of animal names - have you written them all down? In order?

- Write the animals in the order of the groups. Read down the first letters of each.

202751 CHRONOZOIC SPACETIME FIELD THEORY

1) Players receive pages with columns of images. These images belong to 30 "groups", such as peace signs, balls, and moons.

2) Players must figure out what the groups are, and the order of the groups. The order is consistent in every column, but each column only contains images from some of the groups.

3) The order of the groups is as follows. (Exact names don't matter.) The numbers in parentheses indicate the column(s) that disambiguates the order of that group and the next.

Lamp (5,15,20)
Star (18,20)
Peace sign (20)
Triangle (20)
Christmas ornament (18)
Dial or gauge (5,18,19)
No smoking sign (5,18)
Hole or window (9)
Globe or Earth (1,7,21)
Asterisk (21)
Ball (9)
Exclamation point (16)
Trivial Pursuit piece (1,3)
Red circle (1)
Black & yellow travel sign (5,12)
Face (12)
Ancient coin (1,9,13,16)
Screw (5,9,13)
Keyhole (5,18)
Clock (5,20)
Handicapped emblem (5,19)
Dog (18)
Bolt (4)
Moon (14,15,21)
Arrow (14,15)
Green circle (5,18)
Pizza logo (5,18)
Sun (5,15,18,20)
Shower holes; may be mistaken for phone speaker holes or something similar (9,15,18)
Blue & white food/drink sign

4) Next, write down the column numbers that each symbol group appears in. For instance, the lamp appears in columns 3, 5, 15, 15, 20, and 25. (This includes appearing twice in column 15.)

5) Column numbers become letters (1=A, 2=B, etc.) For instance, the letters for the lamp group are C, E, O, O, T, Y.

6) Each group's letters anagram to the name of an animal (e.g., the lamp group anagrams to COYOTE). The animals are:

Lamp        -        COYOTE
Star        -        HORNET
Peace sign  -        RABBIT
Triangle    -        OCELOT
Christmas ornament - NUTRIA
Dial or gauge -      OSPREY
No smoking sign -    ZEBRAS
Hole        -        ORIOLE
Globe or Earth -     IGUANA
Asterisk    -        COUGAR
Ball        -        SQUIDS
Exclamation point -  PIGEON
Triv. Purs. piece -  ALPACA
Red circle  -        CAIMAN
B & Y travel sign -  EAGLES
Face        -        TURTLE
Ancient coin -       IMPALA
Screw       -        MAGPIE
Keyhole     -        ERMINE
Clock       -        FERRET
Handicapped emblem - IBEXES
Dog         -        EGRETS
Bolt        -        LIZARD
Moon        -        DUGONG
Arrow       -        TOUCAN
Green circle -       HERONS
Pizza logo  -        EARWIG
Sun         -        OYSTER
Shower holes -       RHINOS
Blue & white sign -  YORKIE

7) The first letters of each animal, in order, give CHRONOZOIC SPACETIME FIELD THEORY, the answer.

Files for the Act 1 and Act 2 versions, respectively:

File:Proliferation of Particles.pdf File:Proliferation of Particles Act 2.doc

See Staff Instructions

15 1.05.3 Wormhole

Particle maze in mirror grid

Your Role: Smith Laboratories Lab Assistant

What To Wear:

Lab coat
Name badge with Smith Laboratories insert

What Your Character Knows:

Doctor When is an unusual...though competent physicist.
You know nothing of the Grand Unveiling...nor the malfunction of the time machine.

Puzzles At This Site: Only "Wormhole"

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Setup Instructions:

Greet Mr. Smith
Call GC when you are ready for teams

Handout Instructions: The dialog should go something like,

VISITOR: Hello! We were sent to get the Heisenberg compensator research project.

LAB ASSISTANT: Oh, the Heisenberg Compensator? I think the professor who knew about that is on sabbatical somewhere. In Antarctica. But I do remember seeing some notes on the Heisenberg Compensator malfunctioning... lemme look for it. Ah, here it is...

(reads, reads, flips over the page several times)

LAB ASSISTANT: Well, that's inconvenient. He seems to have written this for an audience that's much smarter than I am. Here you go, maybe you can figure it out.

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the hints below, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to email their answer to the Institute. If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

Site Close Down:

Clean up.
Thank Mr. Smith
Call GC to let us know you're leaving.
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

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

This is the version used for the playtest run: Media:WormholeMazeV5.pdf

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

Measure time from edge to edge of grid squares, not from center to center. It simplifies the math.

What's up with the "self-consistent temporal paradox"? It's referring to a bootstrap type of paradox, meaning: if a particle arrives from the future, flipping a mirror to state A, and it had already flipped that same mirror just before time traveling, which event was "first"? It *DOES NOT* mean that a mirror ever has ambiguous state, nor simultaneous opposing states. If that particle could only have reached the flip at time -10 by having flipped it to state A when it entered at time 0, that logically implies that it must have reached it AGAIN in between those times to flip it back to state B. This is a vital inference.

Try pretending the mirrors can always steer however you want at every mirror junction, and just look for any path at all that satisfies the "enter at 0, exit at -1" rule.

Notice that all travel from mirror to mirror accumulates in increments of +3ns. Even when a wormhole is used, the positive time accumulated from the mirror to the tunnel entrance and from the tunnel exit to the next mirror again add up to +3ns. Furthermore, from the entrance to the first mirror, and from the final mirror to the exit, is another +3ns. Therefore, total positive travel of the complete path must be a multiple of 3, and modulus arithmetic may be used to deduce how many times each tunnel might be traveled to make "enter at 0, exit at -1" possible.

Try making a "snapshot" sequence of the maze. What does it look like at time 0? at time 1? at time 2? at time -6? Graph paper will help.

Each moment in the correct sequence has a single configuration -- there are no "dual states" of simultaneous alternative possibilities.

Totally stuck? All mirrors are in the "/" position at time 0.

Once the complete travel path is known, notice that it visits certain time slices multiple times. Pay attention to its flight path for the time slices it visits exactly twice (poem hint, "the patterns flown through, when particles two")

In each time slice, look at the braille letters that are the same for both visits (poem hint, "that are the same")

TWO POINT SIX

. https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EzYta3ftAyzMAbCXEW608irz7d04fHtlHe7C8c615fY?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/r0OITTxzEvShuPKq4_qLcyrz7d04fHtlHe7C8c615fY?feat=directlink

Lab assistant over the phone will say words to the effect of,

Thanks, we'll try that. Hey, it works!

16 1.11.04 (REDACTED) Redaction Agency Puzzle

Optional role puzzle--government. Teams are told that there is a suspected mole at the lab.

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Handout Instructions:

If a team is directed to this puzzle over the phone, then they will ask the onsite lab assistant for the puzzle by name. Give it to them (and don't forget to enter it in the "Teams Vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online document)

If you're assigning this puzzle to them in person, then say words to the effect of,

FOR GOVERNMENT TEAMS:

We're run into a problem that could really benefit from the special expertise of you and your colleagues:

CONTINUE FOR ALL TEAMS:

One of our tech writers at the lab has suddenly disappeared. We suspect he might have actually been a secret agent working for some other organization. This handout will tell you everything you need to know.

SUPPLEMENTAL EMAIL

Research Project Title: Redaction Agency

Objective: Find out what information has been compromised and who the secret agent is working for

Upon Completion: See the lab assistant onsite or call the lab and speak with any lab assistant

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the attached hint document, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Say words to the effect of,

Ah, so Mr. Molson was a mole! (And not just the son of one!) I should have expected he was a Canadian--those Canadians are always stirring up trouble. Lucky for us those northern barbarians wouldn't know a working time machine if it blew up in their faces! Not that a time machine is likely to blow up. Well, you know what I mean.

Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the online Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid.

Site Close Down: See Consolidator 1 or 2

Optional role puzzle--government. Teams are told that there is a suspected mole at the lab and is given enough information to find the mole's secret message. Each team receives a (printed) e-mail message that says:

A small crisis has just come up at the lab that we think your group would be able to help with.
One of our tech writers, Antoine Molson, has suddenly disappeared. We have reason to suspect that he might have been a mole from some external group, possibly connected to some government agency that is trying to keep tabs on our groundbreaking work.
Mostly we base this suspicion on the fact that we couldn't ever understand the documents that he revised for us in preparation for publication to scientific journals (he just assured us that that's what professional scientific writing looks like).
We're sending you two copies of a sample of some recent writing he did for us, and some awfully suspicious stuff we found in his office shredder. If he's trying to send some secret messages to his superiors we bet it's in there somehow. See if you can find any secret messages and, ideally, deduce who he's working for.

They also receive three copies of a page of a scientific paper filled with technobabble:

Whereas, the redirection of the muons are of no consequence to the build, virtually reappearing in their preassigned loci near the neutron. The experiments are immensely and largely underlain by minimizing the stationary compressors that momentarily produce conducive energy to the semipermeable tanks.
Determining the sensitivities of the particles is not a complex issue. Interestingly, the oversensitiveness effects a painful task; as variegating vicissitudes can produce femtometers of defects, they must then be appropriately counterbalanced by a sustainable abridgement of joules to exploit topographical complexity.
Chiefly, the logistics of execution is also subject to exhibited vulnerabilities. To conjoin any indispensable extractions, many roentgens of particles must necessarily be prominently demodulated as extra fission, division, or multiplication would undoubtedly trump any resistances tightly sighted near some of the finickier obstacles. Generally, decontaminating the chronological effects needs corrected plausible tests at present.
It is deducible that as technological sophistications proportionately increase, initial estimates of variables often upset the careful amounts of substantiated yet precise correspondences that are paramount to the safer profits of this project. The unaccounted decay of neutrinos means that if a numerical pattern of substantial tangibility is superabundant, then redeploying nonphysical methods becomes vital so as not to implant any defects.
Problematically, a funny and curious sight can be seen when a fermion (that is, an individual top quark) is seen to combine with a buildup of close to eighty transformed neutrinos. Traditionally, perpetual composition of such deceptive groupings would, by analogous reasoning, override the neutrinos' necessarily natural default effects and imbue the boson with electrons and similar leptons. But here, as their energy is bound to that of at most eighty microteslas, the excess can bleed off and the certifiably perfect cloud of neutrinos is betaken by receptive muons. Our reckoning is that a gluon entity is automatically birthed, and we suspect that such morbidity is substantively different, yet artificial.

Finally, team also receives a bag of shredded paper.

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

This puzzle should be pretty straightforward -- none of our playtest teams needed hints. Possibilities:

If a team feels they shouldn't be reassembling the shredded strips, hint that they probably should.

The biggest sticking point might be where a team has no idea what the last step is.

Suggest to them to count the letters in each of the remaining words.
Ask them if most, if not all, of those counts all have something in common.
Ask them what a really simple extraction mechanism that only applies to odd words could be.

If a team is unwilling to search for "poutine", prod them to.

If you see a team with almost all of the message but don't realize they're done -- try to help them realize they're done.

The solver should find out that the mole has sent these messages to his headquarters, the (??)daction Agency:

"REQUESTING RETURN"
"MISSING MR. BIG"
"SUBJECT IS NUTS BUT HARMLESS"
"CLIMATE UNCOMFORTABLY HOT"
"ANIMAL FRIES POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR POUTINE"

From this, they should be able to infer that the mole works for the Canadian Redaction Agency, and that he has left the lab and has not given away any sensitive data to his headquarters.

There are five messages hidden in the document: "REQUESTING RETURN", "MISSING MR. BIG", "SUBJECT IS NUTS BUT HARMLESS", "CLIMATE UNCOMFORTABLY HOT", and "ANIMAL FRIES POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR POUTINE". The team should be able to give you these messages and interpret them -- meaning that the agent hasn't found any important data, and has fled the lab to his home country of Canada. (Mr. Big is a brand of candy bar, and poutine is a cheese and shredded potatoes dish.)

First, the team must assemble the shredded paper to get the first page of a document. Unfortunately the upper-left corner of the page is missing, so the team cannot figure out the entire contents of the paper (which would reveal what agency the spy is working for). Also, the team only has the first page, so they do not have the last step of decoding, which is extracting the data. Here is the text of the assembled paper, with (M) representing missing text:

March 2012

(M)daction Agency

(M)nalysis Redaction Annotation Procedure

(M)g!
(M)hly-secure document intended only for the eyes of any agents working for
(M)ian Redaction Agency. Pleease familiarize yourself with the procedures
(M)his document and then shred it as soon as possible to avoid giving away your

(M)rview
(M)ommunication among agents must be encoded, one message per paragraph, using
(M) the procedures outlined in this document. We cover ''decoding'' first.
(M)edacting Short Words
(M)y words that are shorter than five letters should be redacted.
(M). Redacting Greek
(M)ny words that contain a substring that is a spelling of a Greek letter should be
redacted.
4. Redacting Homophones
Any words that are a homophone of another English word should be redacted. It is not
necessary that both words be in the same document.
5. Redacting Letter Sounds
Any words that sound like a series of letters read out loud should be redacted.  The
homophones here can be a bit rough.
6. Redacting Consecutive I’s
Any word containing three or more I’s without any intervening vowels (this includes
Y’s) should be redacted.
7. Redacting Stress-changing Words
Any words that change their syllabic stress depending on the part of speech of the word
(such as noun vs. verb, or noun vs. adjective) should be redacted.
8. Extracting the Message
If you have done all the other steps correctly, this last step is actually very easy to
carry out.  You should notice that all the remaining words in the document will have a length
page 1 of 3

From this, the team should be able to figure out that they need to cross out the words from the document according to rules 2 through 7. They need an "aha" to infer that the remaining words all have an odd number of letters, and that the messages can be read by taking the center letter of each of those words. Here is a table of all the words, along with a note of what step it gets redacted, and if not redacted, which letter it produces:

r

whereas

KEEP

m

determining

KEEP

chiefly

[3]greek

it

[2]len < 5

a

problematically

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

is

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

e

redirection

KEEP

sensitivities

[6]i i i

s

logistics

KEEP

c

deducible

KEEP

n

funny

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

that

[2]len < 5

and

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

u

execution

KEEP

as

[2]len < 5

i

curious

KEEP

muons

[3]greek

i

particles

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

l

technological

KEEP

sight

[4]homo:cite

are

[2]len < 5

is

[2]len < 5

also

[2]len < 5

sophistications

[3]greek

can

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

not

[2]len < 5

subject

[7]stress

i

proportionately

KEEP

be

[2]len < 5

no

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

to

[2]len < 5

increase

[7]stress

seen

[2]len < 5

q

consequence

KEEP

complex

[7]stress

b

exhibited

KEEP

initial

[6]i i i

when

[2]len < 5

to

[2]len < 5

s

issue

KEEP

vulnerabilities

[6]i i i

m

estimates

KEEP

a

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

s

interestingly

KEEP

to

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

m

fermion

KEEP

build

[4]homo:billed

the

[2]len < 5

j

conjoin

KEEP

a

variables

KEEP

that

[2]len < 5

u

virtually

KEEP

i

oversensitiveness

KEEP

any

[2]len < 5

t

often

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

e

reappearing

KEEP

effects

[5]lett:FX

e

indispensable

KEEP

upset

[7]stress

an

[2]len < 5

in

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

c

extractions

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

individual

[6]i i i

their

[4]homo:there

n

painful

KEEP

many

[2]len < 5

e

careful

KEEP

top

[2]len < 5

s

preassigned

KEEP

task

[2]len < 5

t

roentgens

KEEP

u

amounts

KEEP

a

quark

KEEP

loci

[2]len < 5

as

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

is

[2]len < 5

near

[2]len < 5

g

variegating

KEEP

i

particles

KEEP

n

substantiated

KEEP

seen

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

vicissitudes

[6]i i i

must

[2]len < 5

yet

[2]len < 5

to

[2]len < 5

t

neutron

KEEP

can

[2]len < 5

s

necessarily

KEEP

c

precise

KEEP

combine

[7]stress

the

[2]len < 5

produce

[7]stress

be

[2]len < 5

o

correspondences

KEEP

with

[2]len < 5

i

experiments

KEEP

m

femtometers

KEEP

n

prominently

KEEP

that

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

are

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

u

demodulated

KEEP

are

[2]len < 5

l

buildup

KEEP

n

immensely

KEEP

defects

[7]stress

as

[2]len < 5

m

paramount

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

and

[2]len < 5

they

[2]len < 5

t

extra

KEEP

to

[2]len < 5

near

[2]len < 5

g

largely

KEEP

must

[2]len < 5

s

fission

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

to

[2]len < 5

r

underlain

KEEP

then

[2]len < 5

division

[6]i i i

f

safer

KEEP

eighty

[5]lett:AT

by

[2]len < 5

be

[2]len < 5

or

[2]len < 5

profits

[4]homo:prophets

f

transformed

KEEP

minimizing

[6]i i i

r

appropriately

KEEP

multiplication

[3]greek

of

[2]len < 5

r

neutrinos

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

b

counterbalanced

KEEP

would

[4]homo:wood

this

[2]len < 5

i

traditionally

KEEP

stationary

[4]homo:stationery

by

[2]len < 5

b

undoubtedly

KEEP

project

[7]stress

e

perpetual

KEEP

e

compressors

KEEP

a

[2]len < 5

u

trump

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

s

composition

KEEP

that

[2]len < 5

i

sustainable

KEEP

any

[2]len < 5

o

unaccounted

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

t

momentarily

KEEP

g

abridgement

KEEP

t

resistances

KEEP

decay

[5]lett:DK

such

[2]len < 5

produce

[7]stress

of

[2]len < 5

h

tightly

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

p

deceptive

KEEP

u

conducive

KEEP

joules

[4]homo:jewels

sighted

[4]homo:cited

r

neutrinos

KEEP

groupings

[3]greek

energy

[5]lett:NRG

to

[2]len < 5

near

[2]len < 5

means

[4]homo:miens

would

[4]homo:wood

to

[2]len < 5

exploit

[7]stress

some

[2]len < 5

that

[2]len < 5

by

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

topographical

[3]greek

of

[2]len < 5

if

[2]len < 5

o

analogous

KEEP

r

semipermeable

KEEP

complexity

[3]greek

the

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

o

reasoning

KEEP

n

tanks

KEEP

finickier

[6]i i i

numerical

[3]greek

override

[7]stress

a

obstacles

KEEP

t

pattern

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

r

generally

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

r

neutrinos

KEEP

m

decontaminating

KEEP

a

substantial

KEEP

s

necessarily

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

tangibility

[6]i i i

u

natural

KEEP

l

chronological

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

default

[7]stress

effects

[5]lett:FX

b

superabundant

KEEP

effects

[5]lett:FX

needs

[4]homo:kneads

then

[2]len < 5

and

[2]len < 5

e

corrected

KEEP

l

redeploying

KEEP

b

imbue

KEEP

s

plausible

KEEP

y

nonphysical

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

s

tests

KEEP

h

methods

KEEP

s

boson

KEEP

at

[2]len < 5

o

becomes

KEEP

with

[2]len < 5

present

[7]stress

t

vital

KEEP

t

electrons

KEEP

so

[2]len < 5

and

[2]len < 5

as

[2]len < 5

i

similar

KEEP

not

[2]len < 5

t

leptons

KEEP

to

[2]len < 5

but

[2]len < 5

implant

[7]stress

here

[2]len < 5

any

[2]len < 5

as

[2]len < 5

defects

[7]stress

their

[4]homo:there

energy

[5]lett:NRG

is

[2]len < 5

u

bound

KEEP

to

[2]len < 5

that

[2]len < 5

of

[2]len < 5

at

[2]len < 5

most

[2]len < 5

eighty

[5]lett:AT

t

microteslas

KEEP

the

[2]len < 5

excess

[5]lett:XS

can

[2]len < 5

e

bleed

KEEP

off

[2]len < 5

and

[2]len < 5

the

[2]len < 5

f

certifiably

KEEP

perfect

[7]stress

o

cloud

KEEP

of

[2]len < 5

r

neutrinos

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

betaken

[3]greek

by

[2]len < 5

p

receptive

KEEP

muons

[3]greek

our

[2]len < 5

o

reckoning

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

that

[2]len < 5

a

[2]len < 5

u

gluon

KEEP

entity

[5]lett:NTT

is

[2]len < 5

t

automatically

KEEP

birthed

[4]homo:berthed

and

[2]len < 5

we

[2]len < 5

suspect

[7]stress

that

[2]len < 5

such

[2]len < 5

i

morbidity

KEEP

is

[2]len < 5

n

substantively

KEEP

e

different

KEEP

yet

[2]len < 5

artificial

[6]i i i

Reading the letters for each paragraph (and adding spaces and punctuation) gives the hidden messages:

"REQUESTING RETURN"
"MISSING MR. BIG"
"SUBJECT IS NUTS BUT HARMLESS"
"CLIMATE UNCOMFORTABLY HOT"
"ANIMAL FRIES POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR POUTINE"

From this, they should be able to infer that the mole works for the Canadian Redaction Agency, and that he has left the lab and has not given away any sensitive data to his headquarters. Mr. Big is a Canadian candy bar, and poutine is a type of french fry and cheese snack.

See Staff Instructions

17 1.00 Registration

Visitors turn in their waivers and are given "security badges"

Your Role: You are a lab assistant at Trenchwood Institute, called away from your research tasks to be a registration clerk.

What To Wear: Lab coat and Trenchwood Institute name badge

What Your Character Knows: You don't know what Doctor When will be demonstrating. You've been so focused on your little part of the endeavor that you don't know the "big picture" (and Doctor When is very secretive).

Where To Get Materials:

Chairs and tables onsite
Everything else from GC HQ

Handout Instructions: The interaction should go something like:

LAB ASSISTANT:

Good morning. I see you're on our exclusive guest list. Have you completed your non-disclosure agreement and liability waiver?

VISITOR:

Yes, here it is.

The visitor hands the form to the lab assistant, who puts it in the waiver pile.

LAB ASSISTANT:

Then, here are your security badges. Also please each take a lanyard from that pile over there to insert your badge into. Make sure to have your badge on display at all times. Welcome to Trenchwood Institute. Prepare to be amazed! Please step over to one of our photographers so that they may record your participation in this historic event for all posterity.

Site Close Down:

Make sure all the signed waivers get to Erik Stuart eventually
Join the presentation inside 1.01 Introductory Lecture 1
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

Stay in character.
Except ... if a team says "time out," break character and help them.
Erik and Ellen and other core GC members will be setting up the presentation inside.

The players sign in, turn in their waivers and get their badges, and then enter the Institute.

N/A

18 1.09 Fabric of Time

The fabric of history has been subtly altered and must be restored.

Handout Instructions: Teams will ask for this optional puzzle by name.

Hints: Teams may call in for hints. But if you familiarize yourself with the hint information below, feel free to give hints.

Answers: Teams have been instructed to call in their answers. If they try to give their answer to you, remind them to follow their instructions.

A set of 14 flexible strips may be joined into a 7x7 grid by velcro. The border cells have people's names at endpoints of paths that meander through the grid. The interior cells have trivia statements, with a year for each.

19 1.07.05 Location: Letterman

Your Role: Trenchwood Institute Lab Assistant

What To Wear:

Lab coat
Trenchwood Institute name badge

What Your Character Knows: Everything in the Plot Setup section above.

Puzzles At This Site:

Send Me Back (Mandatory)
Fabric Of Time (Optional)
Find The Letter (Mandatory, but no interactions with you, so no instructions attached)

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Setup Instructions:

Call GC when you are ready for teams

Handout Instructions:

Each team interacts with you two or three time in this order:

Send Me Back Part 1: Initial greeting and giving View-O-Scope access code for Act I, Scene 1
Send Me Back Part 2: Giving View-O-Scope access code for puzzle component
Fabric Of Time (but only for rabbit teams that GC tells to ask you for it)

Note that the Locate The Letter requires no interaction with you.

See the attached instruction sheets for the first two puzzles for more instructions.

Site Close Down:

Call GC
Return your name badge(s) and lanyard to GC HQ at the end of your shift

Other Instructions:

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

20 1.11.00 Role Puzzles

Directions on how to keep track of which teams do which role puzzles.

(See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Puzzles At This Site: All five role puzzles...but most teams will only get one.

Where To Get Materials: GC HQ

Setup Instructions: (See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Handout Instructions:

Onsite Staff: Whenever you hand out a role puzzle to a team, enter a slash in the appropriate cell of the "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid" online Google Doc.

Hints: Teams have been instructed to call GC; if you familiarize yourself with the attached hints feel free to assist

Answers: Teams may give answers to either onsite staff or GC HQ. Whenever a team correctly answers a puzzle be sure to replace the slash with an "X" in the "Teams vs. Role Puzzles Grid".

The "Consolidation 1" event Staff Instructions will then tell you what activity to next assign the team.

Site Close Down: (See Consolidator 1 or 2)

Other Instructions: (See Consolidator 1 or 2)

n/a

21 1.03.05 Co-Keypad Optional Driving Puzzles

Originally we thought there was only one co-keypad broken, but now there's a lot more. Teams can fix them as they're travelling, if they wish.

N/A

There's a lot more broken keypads than we thought.

In reality, there are 488 puzzles, but we're not going to use all of them in the event. We're going to use a maximum of 16 puzzles per team, so that's 256 puzzles the first week and 272 puzzles the second week. Initially only 4 puzzles per team are going to be released (64 puzzles first weel, 68 puzzles the second).

The puzzles can be seen here: http://trenchwood.com/keypad/puzzles/

Their answers can be seen here: http://trenchwood.com/keypad/answers/

A team requests CRAP (Connection Requirements Analysis for Pads) through the GROSS system here:

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

None

Answers to each co-keypad can be found at http://trenchwood.com/keypad/answers/ .

Responding to Team's solutions

Note that since you are a beleaguered lab assistant trying to learn a new system, you have some leeway if you screw up the GROSS system, but try not to.

Make sure you understand the ADMIN CONSOLE: http://trenchwood.com/keypad/nimda.html

Upper-left: Where team requests show up
Upper-right: Where you can release new puzzles to the teams
Lower-left: status of each puzzle
Lower-center: Team names and passcodes
Lower-right: "Auto-solve" (cheat by having dummy teams solve puzzles)

When a team is ready to submit an answer via GROSS, they will send a request through the GROSS system, which will then prompt them to either e-mail a photograph of their design or a photograph of a solution page to lab@trenchwood.com.

This request will show up on the Admin console in the upper-left. You'll see the team name, the submission time, a TASC number that links to the correct answer, and two buttons "Correct" and "Wrong". When you get the e-mail, go to the console, check the answer carefully to see if the team is correct or wrong, and then click on the appropriate button. Also, REPLY TO THEIR EMAIL, telling them whether their answer was correct or wrong (since the GROSS system isn't very good at notifying them of that)

Once you have dealt with a request, it still shows up (so you can see past requests if you need to), unless you click on "Hide" to hide it away. By clicking on "show all", you can see hidden requests and reveal them again.

Managing the flow of Puzzles

The middle area shows some Timing Stats. It should be pretty self-explanatory. Use some common sense when interpreting the results.

If teams are solving puzzles too quickly, you can release new puzzles by clicking the "Release!" buttons in the upper-right.

If teams are solving puzzles too slowly, you can have "fake teams" solve puzzles by clicking on the grid in the lower-right. Try to choose fake teams that are behind in the color competition (see http://trenchwood.com/keypad/dashboard.php ) to keep the race close. Try to only solve puzzles that are in red or purple (those are the puzzles that haven't been claimed by teams) -- teams hate it when you solve a puzzle they were working on.

Act 2

Act 3

Unplaced

Dormant / Abandoned

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ----
 TECH NOTE: The tables in this page are dynamically-generated from the individual event pages.  If something weird shows up here it's probably because there was something screwy in the event pages.  Feel free to edit these tables but if you don't understand what's going on, ask Wei-Hwa.
-If you need to know the puzzle status codes, look at [[MediaWiki:Emoticons]] (we're using Emoticons software to generate them).
 ==Act 1==
@@ Line 9: / Line 7: @@
 <DPL>
   category=Act1
-  mode=none
+  mode=userformat
   include=#Short Description,#Staff Instructions, #Detailed Description,#Hints,#Puzzle Answer, #Puzzle Solution, #Response to Correct Answer
+ listseparators=\n,\n==%NR% %PAGE%==\n,\n<!-- PAGE BREAK -->\n,\n
 </DPL>

Difference between revisions of "Staff Instructions"

Revision as of 11:41, 14 February 2012

Contents

Act 1

1 1.01 Introductory Lecture 1

2 1.02 Core Dump 1

3 1.03 Tachyon Midi Ether Co-Keypad 1

4 1.04 Choose Your Own Adventure

5 1.06 Calibration

6 1.08 Send Me Back

Interactive App (code 222076)

Interpreting the correct sequence (app solve, or code 621922)

7 1.10 Locate the Letter

8 1.11 Fetch the Letter

Crazy Tracy

Archeologist

9 1.12 Consolidation 1

10 1.11.02a Balance Sheet Puzzle

How Confused Players Describe Which Puzzle They’re Working On

Common Sticking Points

Typical Solve Process

Puzzle Data

11 1.11.02b Income Statement

Intended Solve Process

Puzzle Data

Common Sticking Points

12 1.11.01 Intense Secrets

13 1.07 Feynman Diagrams

14 1.11.03 Particle Zoo

15 1.05.3 Wormhole

16 1.11.04 (REDACTED) Redaction Agency Puzzle

17 1.00 Registration

18 1.09 Fabric of Time

19 1.07.05 Location: Letterman

20 1.11.00 Role Puzzles

21 1.03.05 Co-Keypad Optional Driving Puzzles

Responding to Team's solutions

Managing the flow of Puzzles

Act 2

Act 3

Unplaced

Dormant / Abandoned

Navigation menu

Search