2009: Slippery When Wet

Meet Indy, Madison, Tomas, Cassie, and Joe. This quintet of thieves (treasure hunters, please) are in town, convinced there’s a priceless antique hidden away with the estate of Professor Alvin Singer. One problem– Singer killed himself 50 years ago, one week after Margaret Rose Linde, the pregnant student with whom he was reportedly having an affair, fell to her death from the Peters observatory.

Through a back door in an otherwise secure intranet, you can observe the team’s planning, read their conversations, even see private messages some members don’t want others to read. Tracking the team’s doings in town, you unlock the secret documents they’ve uncovered. Secrets are being kept. Tempers are starting to flare. A package the team doesn’t think is theirs winds up in your hands and leads you to a forgotten copy of a diary – Margaret’s diary.

But Indy and Madison have also located the diary and other documents from Singer – and aren’t telling the others. Suspicious, the other three form their own alliance. You piggyback on Cassie’s private SMS system. Saturday night, Indy and Madison make their move. Tomas, Joe, and Cassie give chase. And you chase them.

Around town, back through the computer files, Singer’s papers tell a tale 50 years forgotten. If you can riddle it out in time, a priceless relic– and a series of secrets kept for decades– might be your reward.

Oh, and did we mention that all the while ObieGame itself looked like it was canceled by administration?

Winners:

1st Place ($75) – The Oberachievers
2nd Place ($25 each, eight-way tie) –
Baby on a Cliff
The BBC 8.5
Gay and Horny in the Library
Interrobang
Lime Power!
Marvin Christlove
The Red Herrings
Zombie Wolves

Materials:

  • Screenshots of the thieves’ message board (1, 2)
  • The package, delivered to observant teams’ houses or OCMRs.
  • The package delivery company can still be reached at 206-337-4249.

Fun Facts:

Hidden messages scattered throughout the game included ‘she fell’, ‘accident’, and ‘not singer’.

The following post on a message board….

guys, I’m setting up a separate communication strand for the three of us. Email coffeefiends@thebottledspider.com with a blank message with this in the subject line: (10digitmobilenumber,wireless provider) This will dump straight to a bit of code I worked up and make it easy for us to pass things back and forth. Register whatever mobile you want. ~~ Cassie

… resulted in thirteen teams correctly signing up for the last stage of the game, and three teams literally emailing ’10digitmobilenumber,wireless provider’, much to our amusement.