DJP

Diary entry: Sun Nov 14 2021

Room 1

• Read starting letter, hint about a picture of the two together
  • I think it was three, the inventor, his wife, and their daughter, who was the person who fled the scene.
• Frame opens to clue, push the perch, drops the first banner
  • The clue was something like push (down on?) Ada's perch or something, which turned out to be the parrot perch. There was a picture of the fish perch on the wall which also listed other definitions of the word perch.
• perch drops paper, combine pieces for clue about special fireplace brick that activates a black light under the missing drawers
  • Perch dropped the bottom third of the poster with blues' musicians on it, I think as well as a note that the order of the musicians birthdays as well as their nicknames was important.
  • The four papers were found in the four items that were in the initial clues file that we were given. One in a bag, one in a shoe, one in a wig, and I don't remember the fourth. We had all four pieces and (should have had) all four drawers before finding the perch though. The four papers revealed that the fireplace had the secret button that would turn on the black light.
  • This initial clues file also hinted at a secondary challenge puzzle to find the invention or the plans for it. We never found any clues towards it.
• missing drawers contain symbols visible under black light that match up to symbols on the sides with lines for how far into the shelves the drawers should go
• missing pieces of poster of jazz musician comes from second banner (?)
  • (as mentioned earlier, this came from perch)
• drawers contain nicknames, place in shelf in order of the birthdays of the corresponding musician
• Room 2 opens

Room 2

• find missing chess pieces
  • four missing chess pieces. Black king, white king, white knight, white bishop. hidden in various spot around the small gardeny room.
• wind up teddy bear, plays You Are My Sunshine
• press picture for You Are My Sunshine, and the mirror box on the wall becomes transparent, depicting a scene
  • I don't really remember how we knew to press You Are My Sunshine, but there was some note that mentioned a child's favourite song.
• combination found
  • This part is fuzzy too
• use combination in luggage in room 1
• luggage contains letter and ???
  • Luggage contained a chess book. Book was open to a page where there was an article about one of the people involved in the story. It detailed his disastrous chess match, which also tied into the story, and listed the positions of the four pieces just before he was checkmated by his opponent. It ended on a "and then <the winning person> did..." before the rest of the article was torn off and missing.
• letter indicates a set of demands for show, including turn off chessman fan
• there is a fan in the room, turn it off to reveal chess moves
  • The model of the fan was actually Chessman as well. The blades of the fan had four chess notation turns, with one move by each player.
• replicate chess moves on board
  • This flipped open another banner in the main room, which gave an oddly-shaped panel and a circular part shaped like a rotary phone dial, that could be spun. This panel fit in the base of the mirror box, and I guess spinning the dial then opened the new room or something.
  • Oh wait, we had to insert the black king into the round hole in the panel and then rotate it while the panel was in place.
• Room 3 opens

Room 3

• find vials with letters on them, many are unwanted
  • R was upside down
• Note on typewriter, gives clue that name will be spelled out
• clue on back of letter, to ring bells found throughout all rooms a given number of time based on various clues and details
  • 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1 was the pattern. In more or less but not 100% order, clues involved were like:
    • Number of lions overseeing the chess game (2)
    • Number of people that had died in this room (2)
    • Number of kings on the chess board (2)
    • ??? (1)
    • ??? (2)
    • Number of days to the couple (murdered husband, runaway wife)'s anniversary (2)
    • Number of children that the family had (2)
    • Age of youngest child (can't remember if daughter or son) (1)
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star plays in bells. Third banner drops, giving a diagram with rotation symbols.
  • The banner itself also was a picture of the murderer with the bottom third part (containing his name) ripped off.
• Diagram corresponds to picture on the wall with various constellations
• One of the constellations matches buttons on the final door, rotating the buttons in the right way opens the door.
  • I believe the constellation in question was Lyra. Five stars, four in a square and the fifth one sticking out as an extension of one of the square sides.
• inside the door are a bunch of symbols
  • These symbols were written on the bottom third of the murderer banner just above.
• hold down button bricks for "twinkle twinkle" and "little star" at the same time to reveal a scene in the periscope
• periscope scene gives a cipher translation for the symbols on the door
• placing the matching letter vials in order in the vialbox solves the final puzzle
  • God what was his name..? 6 letter word, something like Alcide or something.
  • Exit door opens, revealing escape route

We escaped with 4 minutes left. Hostess said the secondary puzzle would have taken another 15. She explained the story to us -- Alcide or whatever his name was was a gambler of ill repute and had lost lots of money or something. He and the victim (3 letter nickname, I forget what) were both part of the same jazz scene and the victim mentioned his new invention, a perpetual motion machine. Murderer wanted the item or plans to sell for gambling, victim obviously said no, and got offed for it. Wife saw it using periscope from her workshop. Dying husband told them to run because he believed that her and the childrens' lives were in danger too. Or something like that.

Tigey Investigations solved the day and got a group photo for it! Escape rate was 38%.