The final confrontation, an allusion to Sherlock’s story at Reichenbach Falls. Friday, June 26th, first day of summer holidays.

Part 1. The abandoned nuclear bunker (aka, the Diefenbunker), 3pm
I had wanted to arrange for a sleepover at the Diefenbunker, with the whole mystery ending there. It would have been a nice conclusion, as well as a great tie-in to Skynet and the history of the Terminator movies. But they don’t do sleepovers. So this was just a way station on the final day of the mystery.  The plot of Terminator 3 includes John Connor being tricked into going into an old retired government bunker, while nuclear war is waged outside.

I let the kids tell me where we were going that day and when.  And so in two cars we made our way out to Carp, and then down into the tunnel (which they had seen as the first clue in the mystery).

After the tour (nuclear war not having begun), but before leaving the bunker, I had arranged someone to hand a box over to the kids. It contained the final set of two puzzles, which the kids divvied up.  They had already pieced together the location that they would be travelling to next, and while en route, they worked on the puzzles .   The location we were going to next had a door lock and an electronic security system that needed deactivating.  The puzzles, if solved, would give them both secret numbers.

I lacked imagination at this point, and so gave the girls a Sudoku to solve, some of the numbers being specially marked for use in the electronic security system deactivation. And for the boys, I shifted the earlier maze puzzle to here.  The kids were solving the puzzles as we drove home. It was great hearing the boys (who were in the car with me) reason through what to do with a bright red marker, the maze, and the page of numbers.

This, when solved, gave them the door entrance code to the building.

Part 2. The Skynet server farm and Moriarty (aka, a local recreation centre), 6pm
Breaking into the building, the kids discovered a single box sitting on the floor in the middle of a large empty room.  The box contained a “this is the end” note in Sherlock style and a DVD movie.  I was also contemplating having a sleepover there, but I wasn’t sure it would actually work, so instead I had my laptop, a digital projector, and a big screen with the movie going, and we ordered pizza.  Most of the kids ended up having a sleepover at my place.  I originally wanted the final geocode to lead to a rented cabin out on some lake in the woods, having the kids really get excited about a long weekend trip out to some mysterious place, but I never found something good enough, and not too expensive, for eight kids and several adults.

Denouement

Not sure what the kids were expecting, and I think this was possibly a little bit of a letdown, but I wasn’t sure how else to finish things off. I made them Irregulars and honorary members of the Simon 4, my old mystery gang from the late 70s … yeah, it didn’t mean much to them.  It was, however, nice to come full circle for me!

The mystery wasn’t really a resounding success.  I think I strung it out too long and perhaps made it too complicated.  Maybe a little more insight into the story would have helped them.  I had trouble gauging the difficulty of most of the clues.  Some that I thought would take a few minutes took weeks.  And others that I expected to take days, were solved in minutes.

I now resign myself to solving my own little mysteries …