Top GL'er Vegas - Jbvntx

[MNOWAX]

The first Quickfire is a simple, yet very complex quickfire, you will have only two weeks to complete the making of this puzzle. You must make a puzzle using 25 words or less. It may not involve pictures, animations, or other items, just words.


Broken Necklace

Fix my Vegas bling! I lost five links gambling. Finally, what was engraved?

ANOA
ASCOT
CATENAS
EMS
ERASED
LIANA
OBEYED
RODE
SEDILIA
XYLAN
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[Projectyl]

Got it, I think:

The five "links" that were lost are EDUCATE, OTHER, AERO, SEXY, and ADOBE, allowing for this chain to be built: ED(U)CATE(N)AS(C)OT(H)ER(A)SED(I)LIA(N)A(E)RO(D)E(M)S(E)XY(L)AN(O)A(D)OBE(Y)ED

The non-overlapping letters spell "UNCHAINED MELODY". I'm not 100% sure I'm done, though - is there some reason why those five in particular were missing?
_________________
"I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate..."

[groza528]

Elimination Challenge 1: What's on TV?
During this challenge players were asked to create a puzzle inspired by a favorite television program. The genre of the program was not important, but contestants were instructed to demonstrate through their puzzles why the program was worth watching.







The Big Game Caper, by jbvntx.

As the Mystery Van parked at the convention center, Fred announced, “We’re here!” Daphne and Velma started unloading the van as Shaggy yelled, “Yay, can we eat now?” and Scooby Doo barked, “Scooby Treats?” The gang had arrived for the big US Championship Board Game Competition, where they were planning to relax, take a vacation and root for their friend, Tom Carpenter, who was one of the favorites to win the all-around competition.

Daphne said, “I can’t wait to see Tom. He’s just dreamy.” Fred rolled his eyes. “Nevermind that, he’s the best game player and puzzle solver I ever saw. He plays chess blindfolded every weekend in the park and can solve a Rubik’s cube in 20 seconds flat. Velma cut in, “Remember that time we played Risk and all ganged up on him from the start, and he ended up beating us all anyway? I still don’t know how he did it. He has to spot me 100 points in Scrabble. Shaggy said, “Like, I refuse to even play Checkers with him; I have no chance at all.”

The gang checked in and unpacked, then Fred and Daphne left to pick up Tom at his room. Velma and Shaggy went to the main Game Center to pick up the competition schedule and brackets for the first round. “Tom will be competing in the all-around, so he will have to place in five of the events this year,” read Velma. “It looks like his matches will be in Scrabble, Monopoly, Civilization, Boggle and Checkers. I think we should get there early and scope out the competition.” “Can I see the list?,” asked Shaggy. “Hmmm… His first game isn’t for hours. Plenty of time for some lunch.”

<CLUE 1: THE GAME LIST>

Just then Fred and Daphne came over. Fred said, “This is weird. Tom checked in early yesterday morning, but hasn’t been seen since. He even missed his practice rounds. It’s like he vanished into thin air. We reported it to hotel security, but there’s no evidence of a crime, so it looks like it’s up to us to find him!” Daphne said, “I found a master key on the maid’s laundry cart. Let’s go check out his room for clues.” As she, Fred and Velma headed upstairs, Shaggy and Scooby wandered off in search of the cafeteria.

After several wrong turns, Shaggy and Scooby found themselves in the service corridors. They rounded a corner and found themselves face to face with a Mummy! It moaned hideously and waved its arms at them. Screaming, they ran back the way they had come, all thoughts of food forgotten.

Meanwhile, the others realized that Tom hadn’t slept in his room. “He’s been kidnapped!” exclaimed Daphne. “Why would someone do such a thing? We need to find him before his matches or he’s going to be disqualified!” Fred and Velma looked at each other. “That’s it!,” they shouted in unison. Fred went on, “One of his opponents must have kidnapped him to get him out of the competition.” Velma interrupted, “If I know Tom, he’d have left us a message telling us who kidnapped him. He knows we’re here, and would have found a way to leave us clues.” Fred cut in, “But he knows that his kidnapper is also a top-class gamer and puzzle solver, so the clues will surely be very well hidden or else he knows his kidnapper would be able to read the message. We’re going to have to be on top of our game, gang!”

Just then Shaggy and Scooby burst into the room, gasping, “There’s a Mumm… a Mumm… a Mummy! It chased us! Daphne rushed into the hallway and assumed a karate stance. “Where is it?,” she asked? “Downstairs in the service corridor,” Shaggy called out shakily from under the bed.

“Okay,” Fred said, “Let’s split up and search for clues. The only thing I see here in Tom’s room is this Go board. It’s got a strange outline of a cross marked onto it.”

<CLUE 2: THE GO BOARD>

Fred continued, “Daphne, you take the Game Center. Velma, you take the Chapel, Laundry and Cafeteria. Shaggy and Scooby, you take this floor and the next. I’ll take the lower service corridors where you saw the Mummy. Let’s do it, gang!” They all headed off.

Down in the service level, Fred heard a suspicious noise. He followed it to a room and entered, only to find himself confronted with the Mummy. It was picking up items from a table when Fred burst in, startling it. Fred realized that Tom had been held hostage there, and the Mummy was taking the clues. “Hey, stop that!,” he cried. He rushed the Mummy and they struggled briefly, but the Mummy got loose and ran away down the hall. Fred looked at the table where the Mummy had been picking up items and saw two remaining game pieces. They were large tetrominoes – shapes made from four squares – with scrabble letters glued onto them. Fred took the two remaining pieces and set off down the hallway.

< CLUE 3: TETROMINOES ONE AND TWO>

Shortly, Daphne entered the Game Center, where she took a closer look at the posted schedule. “Hmmm, this is a clue. Looking at this, I bet we can narrow down the possible suspects to just a few.” She made some quick notes.

<CLUE 4: THE SUSPECTS>

As she left the Game Center and started down the hall, she heard a commotion from a side hall. Turning, she dodged just as Shaggy and Scooby rushed by her, followed by a menacing Mummy who crashed into her, then continued on after them! She picked herself up and was about to follow when she spotted a couple of plastic game pieces on the floor. “That’s odd,” she said.” These are tetromino pieces. I wonder why they have letters on them? Maybe this is a clue!” Pocketing the pieces, she returned to Tom’s room.

<CLUE 5: TETROMINOES THREE AND FOUR>

The Laundry and Cafeteria were a bust, Velma thought to herself as she entered the Chapel. Still, one must look everywhere, so she started searching. When she got to the altar, the cross gave her a start. It was covered in colored game pieces. Somebody had stuck dozens of colored disks to the front face of the cross. She drew out her sketch pad and drew a cross, then carefully copied onto it the colors of the pieces that she saw. “Hmmm. It’s not symmetric, and doesn’t look like any kind of pattern to me. Maybe it’s some sort of code. There are six colors, and the same number of disks of each color, but they seem to be randomly scattered around the cross. Tom, you’re a clever lad. I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m willing to bet that this clue is part of it!”

<CLUE 6: THE COLORED CROSS>

Leaving the Chapel, she saw Shaggy and Scooby heading down the hallway towards her. “Hi, guys,” she called out. “Run!,” Shaggy yelled, passing by her with Scooby, who also growled out, “Wwwrrryyyuunnn!!” Realizing what was to come, she hid behind the Chapel door and when the Mummy lumbered by, reached out with her leg and tripped it. The Mummy fell to the ground, but jumped back up with surprising agility, whirling around and striking Velma. She struck her head and slumped to the ground while the Mummy dashed off after Shaggy and Scooby once again. When she regained her senses, she found a couple of plastic game pieces that the Mummy had dropped when she tripped it. “More clues,” chortled Velma. “That was so worth it! Let’s see, it looks like Tom has glued letters on them. Interesting.” She pocketed the clues and headed back to Tom’s room.

<CLUE 7: TETROMINOES FIVE AND SIX>

Back in the room, the gang placed all of their clues on the table. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” said Velma. “One large grid laid out on a Go board. It looks like it could fit all six of the Tetromino pieces we picked up from the Mummy. Good job keeping him on the run, Shaggy.” Shaggy perked up. “Yeah, like, that was our plan all along,” he said. “Rrrrright!,” barked Scooby.

Fred looked at the other clues. “We’ve also got the list of fifty events and this colored cross.” Daphne added, “Don’t forget the list of suspects. We’ve narrowed it down to the five players that Tom was going to be competing against. Nobody else had a motive to kidnap him.”

“Let’s solve this puzzle, guys!,” Fred exclaimed. “Tom’s counting on us!”


GOOD LUCK! After the commercial break, tune in for the solution.

[LordKinbote]

I'm wondering...should the images be placed in the appropriate spots in the narrative?

[groza528]

This is the way the puzzle was sent to us... I try not to affect the formatting of the puzzle because sometimes it has subtleties I may not realize having not yet solved it.
Also the tetrominoes are a single image.

[LordKinbote]

[ralphmerridew]

Okay, I've worked a good chunk of it, and I'm not sure what to do next:

Fit the tetrominos into the Go board.
Treat the go board as a word search, using the list of games as the word list, and treating letters inside the cross as unknown.
Result after solving is in image 1.
Unused letters spell "Magellan and Robert Downey".
Entering the letters from the middle part onto the colored cross gives Image 2.
Taking the letters by color gives
blue anslupaza
orange csvkikth
yellow tegyoimae
white ionomedici
red eronawrao
green fcniedinn

[LordKinbote]

I'm guessing the next step would be to solve the Rubik's cube and read what you have. But I'm not the guy to complete that last step, haha.

[ralphmerridew]

You don't need to actually solve the cube; instead, note that orange-green is SN and copy it to the target.
Assuming I didn't make any mistakes in copying it over: image 3

I noticed TEEN(S), WOOD(EN), HIPS, DENS, IRON, SHIP, and HOOD written across the middles of faces, but those don't suggest anything.

[ralphmerridew]

Links corrected.

[jbvntx]

Now that I can see your pictures, I can tell you're close, but there's a couple of discrepencies from what I intended. I'm on a trip and working off of a laptop, and didn't have access to that part of the puzzle source. I am worried that I may have a "color typo" in the cross part of the puzzle. So, here's the bit that should be slightly different than in ralphmerridew's last picture...

Reading the middle of the faces is correct. But there are two letters that are wrong (it may be my fault, if I had a "color typo." On the Yellow face, where ralphmerridew had MEC, change it to MEN. On the White face, where ralphmerridew had ODI, change it to NDI.

If you change those two letters, you should be unblocked.
_________________
jbv

[jbvntx]

Here's the text for my answer (minus the pictures, which I don't have a way to post)


The gang quickly assembled the Tetromino pieces onto the Go board, surrounding the cross-shaped hole in the middle. “So far this isn’t too hard,” said Shaggy. “I can see some game names already, like Backgammon on the left edge.” Fred said, “Yes, I see Scattergories on the bottom. Maybe Tom hid all the games from the competition in the grid.”

After a couple of minutes, Daphne had the first big breakthrough. “I see what Tom did. He removed letters that belong in the middle section. We need to rebuild the full grid using the list of games!” The gang worked together, and after some effort managed to rebuild the entire grid.

“Wow!,” exclaimed Velma. “He sure packed those games in there tightly. So far, so good. I think there are so few letters left, that may be the next step in Tom’s puzzle.” The gang carefully marked the letters that did not appear in any of the names of the games…

“MAGELLANANDROBERTDOWNEY,” spelled Shaggy. I don’t get it. “Magellan and Robert Downey,” corrected Fred. Somehow the answer has to do with Magellan and Robert Downey. What an odd pair! What could they possibly have to do with each other? “Robert Downey, he’s so dreamy,” said Daphne.

“We still have the colored cross clue,” said Velma. That must be the key to the whole puzzle. So far it’s been difficult, but nothing that his kidnapper wouldn’t have figured out.” Fred said, “I just feel like we’re missing something! What else was Tom good at?” Just then Scooby Doo came out from under the bed with a Rubik’s Cube that had apparently rolled under there.

“That’s it!,” Velma shouted. “If you lay a cube out flat, you get a cross shape. A Rubik’s cube has a 3x3 set of faces on each side. We just figured out exactly that many letters by solving Tom’s word search!” They grabbed the Rubik’s cube and saw that it was already arranged with the colors matching the faces of the cross. Fred took a marker and as Daphne read off the letters appearing in the cross, he carefully copied them onto the faces of the Rubik’s cube. Once he was done, he handed it to Velma. “You’re good at solving these things.”

A couple of minutes later Velma had solved the Rubik’s Cube. They eagerly looked at the letters, and Daphne saw it first. “Read it in the shape of a cross. Go down the center of the faces of the cube, starting with Red, then Green, Orange, and Blue. Then across the center of the White, Red and Yellow faces. They did so, and saw Tom’s final hidden message revealed.

Daphne announced, “It says WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN.” I love that game. Tom taught me to play it back at school. Fred said, “I can’t believe he hid a fifty first game in that grid. His kidnapper will never have found that. It took all of us to do it. But we still don’t know who it is. What does MAGELLAN and ROBERT DOWNEY have to do with that game?”

They took out the list of suspects one more time.

Frederick Plum
Catherine Quinn
James Roarke
Victoria Stark
Edward Trent

Fred said, “Wait a minute. Magellan sailed around the world in Wooden Ships.”
Shaggy said, “Wait a minute. Robert Downey played Iron Man in the movie.”
Velma said, “Wait a minute. The only one of Magellan’s ships to complete the voyage around the world was the Victoria.”
Daphne said, “Wait a minute. Iron Man’s character was named Tony Stark.”

They all looked at each other, and shouted, “The kidnapper is Victoria Stark!!!”

The gang rushed up to Victoria Stark’s room, where they found Tom being guarded by Victoria’s boyfriend, dressed up as a mummy. The boyfriend admitted he had dressed up as a mummy to scare people away from where he had hidden Tom, and that Victoria had put him up to it. Hotel security held Victoria and her boyfriend until the police arrived, and Tom was able to make it to his first game on time. The gang chalked up another solved mystery!

_________________
jbv

[MNOWAX]

Quickfire #2: Hang by a Thread

Quickfire for the next round is another classic from the last round

You must pick a Topic in the Grey Labyrinth to base a puzzle off of. VSP is banned from being picked, as are the GL's front page puzzles. Additionally, a topic can not be picked that has been made after the start of this quickfire.

You may not use visual aides for your puzzle. it must be in all text, and the words may not be used to create a visual puzzle.

You have one week to complete this puzzle

Oh and one last thing. If you win this challenge, you can not be eliminated in the next elimination challenge.

This puzzle is inspired by a Visitor Games thread called oobaT (backwards Taboo). In my variant, there are four sets of related words, which have been mixed together. Separate them into the correct sets, then determine one additional word which goes with each of the sets. Once you have done that, figure out what those four words have in common to make the final set. All of the words which you will add have the same number of letters. To solve the puzzle, name the item belonging to the final set which is strongly associated with that number.

DISCOVERY
GERIATRICS
WEATHER
MOUTH
OBSTETRICS
OUTCOME
PEDIATRICS
RECEIVER
REFEREE
SCIENCE
SINK
SPECTATOR

Good luck,
jbvntx
_________________
The Man The Myth The Legend
MNOWAX

[LordKinbote]

Three out of four (and the fourth grouped by default):

1. Types of medical fields: OBSTETRICS, GERIATRICS, PEDIATRICS

2. People at a football(?) game: RECEIVER, SPECTATOR, REFEREE

3. Cable channels: DISCOVERY, WEATHER, SCIENCE

4. ???: OUTCOME, MOUTH, SINK

[jbvntx]

Guess it's time for a nudge. The thing that the last set has in common has to do with antonyms.
_________________
jbv

[ralphmerridew]

So, MOUTH as in mouth of a river - opposites of SOURCE?

[jbvntx]

Yes, exactly. And SINK is the opposite of SOURCE in a thermal sense, as in heat sink. etc . Anyway, next is to think of a fourth word to add to each of the sets.
_________________
jbv

[xalolo]

So all of these lists seem to be fairly open -- there's a lot of cable channels, lot of medical fields, lot of positions at a football game, and a fair number of words opposite to source.

The only thing jumping out to me is that all the medical fields are *****trics, and thus ten letters long. So maybe all the added words are ten letters long? For football, that could leave LINEBACKER

If its 11, we have DESTINATION and QUARTERBACK, but long cable channel names are tough to find.

*ponder*

[jbvntx]

DESTINATION is correct (so you know the length as well). The others are not.

This step is a bit of a jump, I know, but GL solvers seem to be getting the answers to the puzzles so quickly I was trying to put a little bit bigger jump. I probably missed the mark a little on this step, but live and learn. I'd still like to see it get solved. At first I put the first letter and length of each of the missing words, then I took them out. Anyway, keep at it.
_________________
jbv

[LordKinbote]

Okay, possible other words:

CHEERLEADER or PLACEKICKER for the football category.

Maybe PHYSIATRICS for the medical field category. Unless the similar ending was a total red herring.

For science TV channels the only one I can find is SMITHSONIAN.

[xalolo]

SMITHSONIAN looks pretty solid, I have to say. So with that and DESTINATION, perhaps we can start building a set. Nothing immediately jumps to mind, though. CHEERLEADER seems likely as well, I'd say.

[LordKinbote]

The only thing I can think of is 11-Letter Last Words of Movie Titles but that's so general that it can't be it.

[LordKinbote]

Maybe....summer camps? Naaah...

[jbvntx]

So far DESTINATION and CHEERLEADER are correct.
_________________
jbv

[LordKinbote]

Oh, got it.


NICKELODEN (nickel)
CHEERLEADER (lead)
DESTINATION (tin)
aaand...

Okay, I don't have all of it.

[xalolo]

Aha! Well I'm going to wager the final answer is 11=SODIUM.

Perhaps the other medical type is NEONatology?

[LordKinbote]

[jbvntx]

Yes, you solved it. There are no more hidden anythings. [/spoiler]
_________________
jbv

[xalolo]

[LordKinbote]