Tag Archives: Boys’ clues

Round 6 – The end

November 1, 2015MysteryBoys' clues, Girls' cluesFranco

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 …

Round 5 – everyone

November 1, 2015MysteryBoys' clues, Girls' cluesFranco

Having found the book safe at the library, and having realized that one of the boys had the key to the safe (received as the very first clue two months before), the two streams of the mystery finally came together. The kids unlocked the safe to discover:

A flashdrive
The remaining jigsaw pieces (with the writing that identifies some of the final locations)
And this note:

Excellent.  You might still become one of the Irregulars yet.  By now you have discovered something unique in Skynet, a sentient computer.  But there are those that would see it used for evil purposes.  Take M. -- He is the Napoleon of crime.  He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city.  M. sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.  We must interrupt his plans. On the flash drive, I have acquired a clip of M. speaking.  We must get one step ahead of him, and find the location of the Skynet servers.  Follow up on this clue. I believe we are getting close.
-s.h.

simon4.ca/sky/close.html

Half of that is a direct lift from a speech given by Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem.

The sound clip of M.’s voice was from the new Sherlock TV series adaptation.

It still wasn’t clear to them who M. was, even with the clip. But I also included a clip of music, which my daughter recognized as the theme music to the show.

With that, the Sherlock Holmes ties to the mystery became clear to everyone, as well as who s.h. was, what the reference to the “irregulars” meant, and that M was Moriarty. On the flashdrive was also this picture of the “Skynet” computer server farm, which was to be the location of the final confrontation with Moriarty, and where they would foil his plan.

I was in seventh heaven with all these details and the overall story arc. Not sure what sense it made to the kids, but at this point they were really into it and were driving forward toward the final clues.

The ‘close’ website was a different problem. None, of course, knew the pop culture reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a favourite movie of mine. But most of the kids had been in piano and music lessons long enough that they figured it out somewhat easily by ear, leading to the final clue, giving some structure to the June 26th agenda.

Round 4 – the boys

November 1, 2015MysteryBoys' cluesFranco

I had originally planned a series of clues that would tie in old spy movie tropes. None of these ideas panned out. One of the boys had received a loonie and a 1969 quarter – I was going to have him approach someone (somewhere) and require a spy pass phrase to get the next clue (“the chair is against the wall”, to which the reply must be “john has a long mustache”, at which point he would slide the 1969 quarter across the counter and the person would say “1969 was a good year” and he must respond “I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t born yet” and then receive the clue).

“The chair is against the wall. John has a long mustache” are, I believe, actual WWII radio code phrases delivered to personnel in occupied zones. I first came across them in the movies “Red Dawn” and “The Longest Day”.

By the time the mystery was underway, I thought it was all a little too silly and too much to ask of the boys, so I dropped the idea. Other ideas that I left on the cutting-room floor:

– I was going to have the boys uncover a series of clues that led them to a payphone in town, where they would receive a call – unfortunately modern payphones block incoming calls;
– they would get an mp3 file with DTMF sounds (Dual Tone Multiple Frequencies), which they would need to play over a phone receiver and have it dial out automatically to another number without them knowing the number;
– I was going to incorporate something about numbers stations (here and here), but didn’t figure out how I would do this;
– I also tried incorporating some invisible writing, using lemon juice and paper and heat to reveal the message, but in my tests a hot light bulb didn’t work and I accidently set the paper on fire over the stove just as the message appeared. I had a vision of setting someone’s house on fire, so I dropped this one.
– I thought about creating an acrostic code, but I felt like I had too many codes as it was, so this was also dropped;
– Finally, I had thought about having some messages in other languages, forcing the kids to look for a translator, but I never got around to this.

As for the actual next round of clues, another series of letters went out to the boys’ homes.

“Gather your friends. The curtain is raised. We are approaching the final problem.” Another allusion to Sherlock.
“Your friend has a locked container. To find the combination of the lock, gather all of your friends and go to …” a corner store in our neighbourhood, where I had arranged to have a pack of hockey cards left for the boys to purchase – the pack had been opened and the next clue sealed back inside.
“… the solution to unlocking the combination lock. Use a bright red marker, and do not make a mistake. We are on the heels of M. Take care, and gather all your friends …”

On one door step, I left a locked container with a combination lock. This one failed spectacularly. I chose 007 for the combination lock, thinking I could tie in James Bond, and hadn’t considered (!) that the boy would go through every combination in order. Took 5 seconds, whereas I had intended the clues to bring the boys together to solve for the combination. The combination number was to be solved with a maze puzzle I devised, and I ended up shifting it to the end of the mystery because they never bothered to solve the combination using the clues.

And finally, one boy received this note:

By now you should have discovered that we need to visit two locations on June 26th. The first is still uncertain to me. But I have learned its general whereabouts by a map triangulation.  
- s.h.

1. Craig Side Road & Donald B Munro Dr.
2. Carp Road & Holland Hill Road
3. Charlie’s Lane & Snelgrove Dr.

Not the actual concept of triangulation, but still … those street corners bring us to the largest landmark in the area – Diefenbunker.

This would eventually tie in nicely to the girls’ clues, once the streams came together, especially with the original jigsaw puzzle photo of the tunnel leading down to the bunker.

The “securely” locked container, once opened, contained a scrambled Rubik’s cube, on which were numbers and letters and times.

I designed this puzzle specifically for a boy that I knew could solve the cube quickly. The instruction was to solve it and read only the middle row around the cube. I was thrilled with this idea, but it turned out a little harder than anticipated because I overlooked the fact (hadn’t even thought it was possible) that the central square on each face of a Rubik’s cube can be in multiple orientations when solved, so the message was supposed to be oriented upwards for reading, but several squares were turned or upside down in the particular cube solution the boy found. Regardless, the eventual message was a geocode and time:

45°16’56.9″N 75°45’47.1″W 6:00pm

… which was the second location that they would need to visit on June 26th, and also previously hinted at in the jigsaw puzzle the girls had received.