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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 19, 2017 11:07:07 GMT -5
The hairdresser pamphlet curio was a requirement to solve the puzzle. The message hidden in the spoiler-tagged image in my post above was another nudge in the right direction... if you found that message first, but you didn't quite get the significance of the horses' names , you still might not discover the answer. From my notes on the smash n grab/horoscope meta from v3: A reference to a horoscope can be found in each issue. In each of these selected horoscopes, there is at least one directional word.
Issue 1: CANCER (Spot the Differences) - DOWN
Issue 2: GEMINI (Word Search) - LEFT
Issue 3: LEO (Crossfire) - UP, DOWN
Issue 4: CAPRICORN (Word Search) - RIGHT
The set of four directions maps onto the video game controller in the Smash n’ Grab puzzle in issue 4. The pattern DOWN, LEFT, UP, DOWN, RIGHT can be translated as TOMATO, CHEESE, MUSHROOM, TOMATO, FISH.
There is a long string of letters across the tops of pages 6 and 7. If you line up the shopkeeper’s trade token from issue 3 with the cheese at the beginning of the string, and then record the letters you hit in the TOMATO, MUSHROOM, CHEESE, TOMATO, FISH sequence, you spell IFDBINGOODCOMPANY. You'll notice one of those horoscopes has two directional words in it. That's because it was a victim of editing without the "DO NOT TOUCH THIS TEXT!" procedure we developed later on. Words would be moved around or changed because they looked better to the Editor (whose job it was, of course, to move around or change words!) but it led to some minor breakages here and there. LEO necessitated a late-stage save, where having two directional words required an edit to the shop token puzzle . |
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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 19, 2017 11:11:06 GMT -5
(By the way, was anyone else filled with nostalgia at the sight of the coin being rolled along the paper in the Wilson Wolfe Affair?)
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Post by centaurofattn on Dec 19, 2017 11:19:14 GMT -5
When my students say they hate group work because someone always messes it up or changes something, I remind them that group project unfortunately never go away. And they rarely get better.
That smash n grab procedure is exactly how it went down, so glad to hear we didn't miss anything there. Was "THIS FIRST" a red herring in the line of text? And was this supposed to be the scytale mentioned in one of the Patel entries? (More answers, more questions muahaha)
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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 19, 2017 12:44:24 GMT -5
Remind me again where THIS FIRST appeared? Sounds familiar, but could be pre-v2.4 (in which case i wasn't the designer, but merely the documentarian).
Likewise, show me the scytale suggestion in the Patel entry.
One of my favourite aspects of running (or participating in) an escape room was the post-event wrap-up, so this is a lot of fun.
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Post by centaurofattn on Dec 19, 2017 13:15:50 GMT -5
THIS FIRST is the start of the string of letters for the token smash n grab along the top. A few other words sort of pop out, but those are the most obvious.
From the article in 3.3, "Vaulted Ambition" by Sarah Patel: "If I strain to listen, I can make out the words "books," "coordinates," and "scytale" ..."
Also of interest with the interesting background story on the creation of the issue: "McCabe taps the lock with his finger and glances up at me. 'Let the right one in,' he says puzzlingly." The right one? What did McCabe hope the "right one" would be identified by?
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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 19, 2017 13:42:08 GMT -5
Righto! That was me.  The idea was that someone could look at those letters, begin reading "THIS FIRST" and think "Gosh, i am clever! i have discovered some letters. i am going to decode them by reading them with my eyeballs." But then... utter nonsense. McCabe mumbling "books" and "co-ordinates" was a Harvest Time clue. The scytale was, of course, the stacked issue titles that lead to the Harvest Time website. Somewhat more of an acrostic than a scytale, but close enough. "Let the right one in" was a little allusion to the vampire flick. Our villain was somewhat of a word vampire, chewing off fingers and essentially sapping the intelligence out of his victims (which is why they appeared to have Alzheimer's disease when he was finished with them... and why he was always one step ahead of you, solving the puzzles before you all did. His brain was full of other people's smarts). The entire gambit devised by Patel was to encode messages to our villain via McCabe, and convince him to bring (what he thought was) the cure back to them in the Vault, where she would presumably concoct a potion for him from the precisely-harvested raskovnik plant. But unfortunately, as we know, it didn't quite work out that way for Andrew or our villain. |
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Post by thegenii on Dec 23, 2017 20:19:03 GMT -5
A friend has asked me to forward a message about the 3.4 wordsearch meta-puzzle: I’m not sure everyone knew about the 3.4 word search meta, but we solved it over the summer. Think about the last lines of blurb at the top of the puzzle very carefully. First: Who do we know from 3.4 who used an ink pen like an animal? Then: The last time we had to make a decision to complete a puzzle, what was the solution? Since there has never been a meta-puzzle that was a dead end, we figured that there was a second vault and the first one was a decoy. MPC was oddly nonchalant about addressing a vault glitch that started two weeks before anyone had actually finished the padlocks, plus the vault message from Patel was just plain insulting, "Witness here the end of an era for a once-mysterious society, which now allows any rube with a secret decoder ring to waltz through its doors and access its most closely guarded secrets... you must, of course, establish your place in the puzzle-solving pecking order.” Rube? Decoder Ring? Pecking order? Huh? And the solution to the IFDB felt like we were being sent a big hint that the padlocks were a Fool’s Errand, maybe that’s why we were supposed to solve "This First…” so as to not waste any time. Where does the meta-puzzle lead? Our thinking is split among a few main possibilities: For the first time ever, a fairly difficult meta-puzzle is a dead end; or we were too late and what we needed had been removed; or we just ran out of steam before we found what we needed and the real vault is still out there waiting for someone to find it. |
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Post by verdantfruu on Dec 24, 2017 9:45:21 GMT -5
One of the things about working at the MPC that always delighted me was watching these pet theories grow and spiral as you folks dug fresh new rabbit holes in virgin soil (Cedarian, anyone?). Sometimes i would think "Gosh... i should have done that!"
i would love for there to have been a secret vault, but the truth is that the 3rd vault was already a steep challenge to develop. The bugs and errors were regrettable, for sure. Sarah's letter was insulting because Sarah is the villain! Volume 3 is a part of what i expected would be an ongoing story arc, and every good story arc hits a crisis point. Sarah's letter (and the events it describes) was our Han-Solo-in-carbonite moment.
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Post by thebardess on Dec 27, 2017 17:19:28 GMT -5
I'm late, but I'm in.
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Post by lucasscooter on Dec 28, 2017 1:05:49 GMT -5
Better late than never! |
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Post by mkarrett on Dec 28, 2017 23:05:19 GMT -5
I'm intrigued!
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The Dragon King
Assistant
I think I've got it...no wait...hhmmm
Posts: 70 
Blood Type: Exotic
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Post by The Dragon King on Dec 29, 2017 16:48:29 GMT -5
I’m late as well but completely in.
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Post by emilybyrdstarr on Jan 4, 2018 15:29:42 GMT -5
Me too, me too, me too (completely in)!
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B.M.
Adjunct
Posts: 3
Blood Type: FBI
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Post by B.M. on Jan 19, 2018 14:05:26 GMT -5
Mole #2 checking in
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 19, 2018 14:14:44 GMT -5
Well, this is the mole unveiling thread so to speak....so please introduce yourself. |
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