MNOPQ 6 by Samantha
September 9th, 2009 8:27 AMAn awesome time where people in a team unify to work towards a common goal.
Over the weeks I had bought together four people in a group named "The Skeleton Keys", and together we finished Puzzle Quest 6!
When we first got together we all received a card from the professor. We were told we now worked for him, but several people thought there might be trechary afoot.
On the back of each card there was an occupation,and everyone in a team had a unique job. I was The Muscle. Every team had a Muscle, Brain, Looker, and Wild Card. Each type of person was seperated according to their jobs, so the muscles all left at the same time.
We were taken a few blocks away and were given a giant wooden casket, and were told to open it.
We turned it every which way looking for a switch or a latch, and finally someone said "Aw screw it, does anyone have a utility tool?"
Three people said they did, so we used the screwdriver attachments to begin unscrewing the box. No wonder we were the muscles.
We were lucky, and on our first try we got the compartment with a bag inside. In the bag were compasses, enough for one apeice. We unscrewed a few more segments to make sure we didn't miss anything, and found a hidden trap panel. Inside was a hammer, which we were supposed to use to then find the compasses.
Following our next clue we all met in a park, and joined the rest of our team, who each had to solve a different puzzle to get there. We eventually solved enough puzzles that led us to a book store.
We had to use a magnifying glass to read VERY tiny letters. It was dim in the store so our group went outside.
A funny thing happened then, you see it was very sunny that day, and when I was using the magnifying glass I had apparantly been using it at an odd angle.
I burned a hole in my paper! I wasn't even trying, and it just started smoking, and caught ablaze! Just about scared the wits right out of me. I shifted my position, and tried again, but I burned another hole in the clue. It was at this point where I decided to just go back into the sunless store.
More puzzles later we were told go go to a certain location to meet with a photographer the Professor had hired, to dig up some dirt. We had a heck of a time finding him, due to some unclarity of our map.
We did find him eventually though, and he showed us pictures that proved we were working to help prove the Professors innocence in a murder case.
He also gave us a sandwich to use to bribe a security guard, but The Wild Card in our group was savy, and talked our way past the guard without a sandwich.
We worked our way to our final destination, and we met up with a man being held as a suspect in the murder mystery. He has apparantly had a traumatizing experience as a child, because we had to use his childhood to get some information using childhood references.
He was an actor of course, along with the informant, and they were both very good at staying in character.
Eventually we discovered the suspect was terrified of scotch tape, due to a high school bully, and The Looker of our group found a long strip of tape and threatened the suspect with it until we got him to talk.
I would have gotten a picture of this, but i swear, I was trying so hard to not laugh at the sight of a grown man literally cowering in terror as a strip of tape was dangled over him. I just about popped a gasket. After all, he was a REALLY good actor. I realized later that I should have snapped a photo, but by then another team had come, and were interrogating him as well for their next clue.
There was one last room, where sixteen boxes were laid out, and we had to pick one box, but we only had 60 seconds, so I didn't get a picture.
In the end we proved that the chief of police was framing the Professor for a crime he didn't commit.
Our team, the Skeleton Keys didn't come in first place, but we all had a great time, and had an awesome Puzzle Quest.
Our prize
Our team got a button for every member. The whole point of the Quest wasn't about getting some big prize, and this was more than enough for me.
certification
I got my card from the Professor
my job
I'm the muscle of the group, and my boots are my weapon of choice. In each group there was: the muscle the brains the looker and the wild card
muscles indeed
we used three different multi utility tools to unscrew the screws. It was just a coincidence that we brought them along. It seemed preordained that the muscle type people were in the muscle group.
in the box
a trusty compass. This came in handy during many parts of the quest.
Red Ten PM
This puzzle slowed our team down. We were the second to last to figure out the next location. However we made up time in other puzzles.
magnification
The wild card in our team had won a magnifying glass the same time I was getting my compass.
sunny days
It scared the hell out of me when the paper smoked and caught on fire. It was so random.
Piece of cake
This puzzle was really easy for me to figure out. We caught up with most of the other groups at this point. The puzzle says: "The police captain blackmail was easily done for item aim COMPASS at pots" There were flower pots, and one of them had a clue wrapped around a big magnet, which made the compass go crazy when it was passed over it.
yeah teamwork
Each member contributed a part to figure this puzzle out. Our team was actually the fastest to figure this one out. It was a big boost for morale. The wild card figured out the order of the cities. The Looker figured out we were supposed to read the first letter of each city. The Brains figured out that we needed to look at the names of each landmass we passed through, and read their names. I tried reading them backwards and forwards and got ERINENE, and dot-dash. I thought it was nothing, until the brains noticed one of the swamps had that name. I lastly spotted that the designs in the swamp were actually morse code, and spelled out where out next location was.
Lost?
We circled an entire block before we found our informant in an alleyway. It doesn't say alleyway, it says a corner. We lost time and two groups got ahead of us.
Informant
He gave us a sandwich, to be used later on. We were the only group that didn't end up using our sandwich, and got 100 bonus points for it.
People tried to cheat off our answers
"The message follows; Decrypt the boxed letters on the sides of the machine. Whisper this codeword quietly to the friendly guard. To utilize the item you take it and join it to other items. I await your successful puzzling. -The professor" We had to back to the sandwich guard and get another clue. She had already given us two, but in the end we got three.
the codeword was ENIGMA
this was the item we received, a circular chart.
we already had another one
This one was so hard, like rediculously hard. There was nothing, nothing to connect them. Sure there were bits of words, but there was no pattern or path to follow.
puzzling
we spent nearly two hours trying to figure out the circle puzzle, but eventually we bought the answer for 500 points. It was a huge waste of time, and it was just to get a stinking tie from a locker, we never even USED the tie.
Numbers in the letter
We eventually were led to a room where a person was detained. Our group had to use our persona's and interrogate him to find out the final clue.
The suspect's information
He apparantly was delusional, and we had to use unsual means to get him to talk. It was the looker of our group who finally got him to talk.
The last room
All throughout the game we were given hints about what to do in the final room, and I used these pages to work out what to do. We only had a minute, and we had to make it count.
