A long time ago (a couple of years, I guess) my son and some
of his friends started a Mystery Solver “club” at his school. It was really never clear to me what exactly
their organization’s charter was, but occasionally they would invent some crime
that needed to be solved during recess. Scribbling misspelled notes into a
notebook collecting clues like rocks, shells, and acorns seemed to be a big
part of this process. He saw my security badge from work and said he wished he
had one for his club. Since I don't own a laminator I couldn't make one for him
right away. About once a quarter he would
remember that he wanted an ID badge of some kind and we would talk about it for
a bit but nothing ever got done.
Sometime before Christmas I was in Office Max and I noticed
they had laminator-less badge making stuff – I guess I should have known that
stuff existed - and it reminded me of the Mystery Solver club. So that started
the ball rolling on the idea for my own mystery for the boy and three of his
friends to solve.
Their journey started out with an envelope with the words
TOP SECRET spray painted cartoonishly on the front. Each of the parents helped to
place the envelope somewhere where their child would find the mysterious package
the night before the event.
Inside the envelope was a pen, a small notebook, a book of
maps and photos, a wooden jigsaw puzzle piece with part of a code, a part of a
code translator, and a colored wooden piece with some notches cut into it. There
was also a letter:
The letter said:
Dear Candidate,
You and three of your
friends have been identified by our secret organization to complete a series of
tasks to see if you are suitable to join our ranks. You will all be judged by your cleverness and
ability to work together to solve the series of puzzles we have arranged
for you.
You and your team will
meet at 1:30 PM, Saturday, February 6th
at Location A in the enclosed Map Booklet.
You will learn the identity of the rest of your team at that time and
place.
You must tell NO
ONE except for your family about this mission until after it has been
completed. You may bring them along if
you choose, especially if you need transportation.
In this envelope you
will find:
· A puzzle piece
· A part of a decoder
· A painted piece of wood
· A notebook
· A pen
· A book of maps
Each one of these
items is custom made for you and you alone. But beware! You must
bring this envelope and ALL of its contents to Location A. DO NOT LOSE THEM! If you do NOT bring ALL of
these items to the meeting place then your team’s mission will most likely
fail. You will need to depend on one
another to make the mission a success.
If you and your team
succeed then you will all be granted the status of Field Agent in our organization.
We wish you the best
of luck.
I am told that each of the kids went completely nuts when
they found their envelope and read the letter. I can only speak to my boy’s
actions of course. He found his on his sink as he was getting ready for bath time.
After going through the contents and reading the letter he was literally
shaking with excitement. He repeatedly asked “Is this real? This isn't a trick,
is it?” And then he hit me with the question I knew was coming but still hoped
he wouldn't ask.
He inspected the jigsaw puzzle piece and examined its
wood-burned lettering and quietly asked “Did you do this?”
There was a hint of disappointment there, as
if a little bit of magic was swept away.
“Look,” I said as seriously as I could, “All I can tell you
is that I am forbidden from saying anything. Please don't ask me any more
questions.” If anything, that lame
non-answer ratcheted up his excitement even more! Sweet.
See, I knew he would be suspicious especially since, for
several weeks prior, he was forbidden from going out into the garage while I
was working. Normally he is welcome to watch, invited to join in, or is
actively helping with my projects. Also, a pile of random looking “stuff” was
growing in one corner of the normally tidy(ish) room, doing it's very best to
look as unimportant as possible. I'm sort of space-limited out there, so the
best I could do was try and pull off a Purloined Letter and hide things in
plain sight. It seemed to work ok, but I'm thinking that was a “one time good
deal” thing. I’d never get away with that again.
The next day I woke up early to hide the items around our
part of the neighborhood and then go with the neighbor to the local park. I rang his bell and he and his daughter (a
Mystery Solver candidate) answered the door. Excited, she started “Guess what! Guess
what! I… ummm…” Then, remembering the
rules in the letter, ran back inside the house without saying another word. Pretty
funny!
We really didn’t worry too much about the ones we hid in our
neighborhood being discovered but the ones in the park were less under our
control. We waited a little while to go
and hide those at the locations that were referenced in the map booklets.
Oh, yeah, a little about the map booklets. Each one had the same park and neighborhood
satellite images in them but no two books had the same areas marked on these
maps and no two books had the same close-up photos of the hiding spots other
than the initial meeting location. That
is, if the clue told them to do go to Location B, they would see that only one
of the maps had a location marked “B” on the map, and only one (a different
one) had a close-up picture of that location (a certain park bench, say). This was one of the ways I designed into this
adventure to make them work together and not turn the thing into a footrace.
So, anyway, the neighbor dad and I went to the park and hid
a couple of items… We also brought a basketball with us because there’s something
just a little bit seedy about two middle aged guys hanging out in a park
without their kids.
The four kids converged on the spot at the appointed time
and each was excited to see the others.
They quickly agreed to assemble their jigsaw puzzle and use the decoder
pieces to read the secret message. The
secret message congratulated them on working together and directed them to find
a magnetic box at Location B – a park bench.
Now, from the satellite photos I figured this was like any
type of park bench – wood and lots of metal bits. Nope. Nearly all composite, with very little
metal. Thankfully, the metal was ferrous and the box (an Altoids tin painted
black with a big white question mark on the lid) had enough to grab onto. We
were a bit worried that the box was too obvious but I guess it was only visible
if you knew where to look. In fact, it took the kids nearly five minutes to
decide to look UNDER the bench and leave the nearby light post (also in the
pic) alone.
Inside the box were three pennies, a steel washer, and a
note telling them to find “a log that wasn't a log” at another location in the
park. They arrived at the next location but only one of them was brave enough
to crawl under a clump of bushy overgrowth to retrieve a piece of wood that
looked a little suspicious. The piece of wood was a cedar log that I had cut in
half lengthwise, routed, and reassembled using brass hinges. In the routed out
hollow was a red wooden arrow with four holes and a note directing them to go
to the next location.
The next spot was in the neighbor’s backyard. There they
found a waist-high circular table with the letters of the alphabet around its
circumference and vague instructions to “build the arrow” and give it a gentle
spin on the table. The placed their pennies and the washer in the arrow and
gave it a spin. CLUNK! The arrow came to
an abrupt halt on position Q (a hidden magnet pulled the washer and stopped the
arrow dead).
At location Q they found a wooden box and were directed to build the device from the
parts they saw there. The completed
device was a series of colored octagonal blocks that were free to rotate on a spindle. Only by following the clues
could the device be built correctly and the next location be determined.
The next stage was a grid of letters surrounded by a colored
border. The colors corresponded to the colors of the notched wooden pieces they
received in their mystery envelope. Once all the pieces were in place in their
correct locations they were told to “find the keys” at the next hiding place.
Once there, they discovered a small wooden box in the shape
of a piano. Inside the piano were four different, oddly shaped wooden keys.
Each key had copper sheeting on one side and a label that said, simply, “PUSH”.
Now, up until this point everything had gone smoothly.
Arguments were kept to a minimum, everyone was having fun, and all the little
puzzles and contraptions worked as planned. We were long overdue for a glitch.
The penultimate stage required the kids to insert their keys
into the appropriate holes in the lid of a wooden box and push together. Doing
so was supposed to light a light in the dark box that would illuminate the
instructions that could be read if they looked through a peephole labeled LOOK.
In the shop I tested that simple circuit about 20 times and
I was satisfied that, with about an ounce of pressure, the copper strips on the
keys would make good contact with the switches (made from brass picture
hangers) and backlight the message to be read through the peephole. What I
neglected to consider is that when you instruct four seven-year-olds to PUSH
and not give them any other guidance they will put their full effort into it.
The switches were not designed to endure the tens of pounds
of body weight they were subjected to and so they were immediately and irrecoverably crushed!
(The switches, not the children. The kids are fine.) Under my breath I cursed my stupidity, quickly disassembled the box, and had
them hold the peephole part up to the sky so they could read the message and
move on.
At the last stage they found another wooden box. Inside were
four magnifying glasses and four personalized, laminated security badges declaring
them to be official members of the Virginia Mystery Solvers – the kind of
badges I told you about in the first paragraph of this post.
They were all very happy to have finished their mission
successfully. The kids and the parents all had a blast. One of the dads (a GM
of an AM radio station in Virginia) even gave a shout-out to this project on the air
the next week which was pretty cool.
So the dads are now hard at work coming up with a new
challenge for them. This one, we are pretty sure, will involve the dads being
“kidnapped” and the Mystery Solvers will need to follow the clues to rescue
them before it’s too late…
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