Bricks (meta)

Owner:

Christine

Solution:

MORTAR

Partial Answers

Beware! Misfortune will haunt those who seek treasure within these catacombs! -> Keep going.

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

The team will be ushered into a room with a wall and actors. The actors will be attempting a sequence of actions on the wall (pressing buttons.) when they fail, several rocks (foam blocks) will fall.

The wall has 20 buttons on it. Each of the button is a symbol. There are 5 different symbols, but each symbol appears in its 4 cardinal orientations on the wall.
The teams will be asked to help figure out what buttons should be pressed, and asked to clean up these rocks.
 
The rocks that the teams carry away are a tangram puzzle. Each piece has a word and a caret/arrow on it. There are 11 pieces. 5 of the pieces are square and have symbols on them that match the symbols on the wall.

Walkthrough:

After teams are ushered out of the room with the wall, the only puzzle materials they have are the foam blocks. They will be shown to an area that has an outline that looks like a sideways house. Something like this.

The first conclusion that should be drawn is "These shapes fit into this bigger shape." It's a tangram.

The words on each puzzle piece can be assembled into the following message:

"Beware! Misfortune will haunt those who seek treasure within these catacombs!"

Typically teams will find a message and start trying to assemble the tangram with that in mind.

There are carets/arrows on each piece. Teams typically will try to assemble the tangram with pieces adjacent to each other, and arrows pointing down. This is quickly proven impossible with the size and orientation of the pieces.

The arrows on each piece point to the next word, and the orientation of the pieces varies. Some words are upside down or sideways.

Once the pieces are assembled into the correct shape—see photo—then teams should take note of the orientations of the symbols. The orientations should be noted as if the team is looking at the created shape in the way it was given to them. That is, "Beware!" In the top left of the shape, "these" upside down in the bottom left, etc.

In the majority of playtests, once teams have the phrase, they ask to be let back into the room containing the wall. They then look at the wall, and realize that orientation of the symbols will be important. This prompts them to actually assemble the tangram. If teams do not realize orientation of the symbols is what they were supposed to get out of the tangram, they could be prompted to go inspect the wall more closely, and this should help them realize that the symbols are on the wall in different orientations.

When they have the correct orientation of each symbol, they can press the buttons on the wall to finish the puzzle.

Buttons do not need to be pressed in any particular order.

Buttons should be held down until the 5 symbols are pressed simultaneously.

There are sound effects that help indicate that holding down buttons is important. This is also part of the initial demonstration when the puzzle is introduced.

Once the buttons are held down simultaneously, the console allowing them to charge their amulets is lit up. "The plotty thing happens".

Hinting:

Confirming data:
A phrase should be constructed from the words on the pieces. This phrase can be confirmed by GC. Note that this is also a partial solution in spiderdoge.
  "Beware! Misfortune will haunt those who seek treasure within these catacombs!"
 
Helping with tangram construction:
If teams are trying to construct a tangram without having a phrase first, GC should strongly hint that a phrase would help. There are multiple solutions to the tangram puzzle, and they need to find the right one.
 
If teams have found the phrase and are having trouble with the tangram construction:
    a first hint might be to prompt them to think about what the carets/arrows mean. Teams typically have figured out that you cannot solve the tangram with all of the words face up, so what does that imply.
    a second hint might be that "Beware!" should start in the top left of the area they're given to work in.
    a third hint might be that "catacombs!" will point off of the left edge of the area at the end of the sentence.

If teams have completed the tangram but do not know what to do next, they could be prompted to inspect the wall more closely. They should see that the symbols on the wall match the symbols on the tangram pieces, and the wall has different orientations of these symbols.

Data:

Put links to files on the Sharepoint and any other raw data.