Josele is turning 40 very soon.
Since there is nothing he loves more than games and puzzles, Laura is
inviting him for yet another Escape Room mission. Also, over the last
years he's developed a serious piernik
addiction, so I'll chip in with some self-baked sweetness of monstrous
dimensions. But those will not be served on a plate, oh no!
On Saturday morning, I'll prepare him a fruit salad for breakfast, and then suddenly hand him an envelope, together with a silly t-shirt he'll wear to commemorate the occasion, and start a stopwatch counting down from 60 minutes. Inside the envelope, he'll find a quick intro...
On Saturday morning, I'll prepare him a fruit salad for breakfast, and then suddenly hand him an envelope, together with a silly t-shirt he'll wear to commemorate the occasion, and start a stopwatch counting down from 60 minutes. Inside the envelope, he'll find a quick intro...
...and the first puzzle:
As soon as he circles them all (bean, pear, fig, pasta, stew, edam, mango, salad, rice, pita, grape, beet, beef, sauce, apple, corn, egg, salsa, lime), Laura starts singing the theme song from Maya the Bee. And in Maya's hands, another puzzle is already waiting:
Once he solves the sudoku and realizes it's a phone number, he must call/text the number (not among his contacts!) and will hear/read only one sentence on the other end. "En un lugar de la Mancha" by our special helper should keep the ball rolling!
He
must then realize he possesses a copy of the very book he has just
heard the opening line of, and reach inside it to find the next envelope
with two sheets of paper:
Once he uses the QR code reader in his phone, he'll realize it's a link to a picture on the internet:
The place should ring some bells, since it's the old town hall he's
passed on his way to work every day for the last decade. But why is one
lamppost painted yellow? Well, why don't you jump on your bike and see
for yourself?
Indeed,
taped to this very lamppost he'll find the next envelope, high enough
to stay out of kids' and dogs' range, and inside a plastic bag as
rainfall/bird protection :-)
Finding the next link should be easy now:
If
only he spots the Hoogvliet logo, he'll realize he needs to find the
bench in front of the supermarket just on the other side of the street.
Taped to the bench, surprise surprise:
This (extremely ugly) railing is just behind you now, so cross the street and collect the next clue!
And he should be in automatic mode by now, thus a small twist! The QR code leads to...
...and taped to L&L's front door, a new kind of clue!
Hopefully
he has been collecting the envelopes as requested. The three empty
squares must be filled in with the same-coloured numbers present on
three out of the four previous sheets. And the icon attached to those
comes straight from Google Maps, so now he needs to realize these are
coordinates! Typing 52.05365, 4.33022 into the address bar of any browser pinpoints this exact lantern, very close to his place:
Taped behind that blue traffic sign, a good ol' QR code, this time with a very familiar sight!
Taped inside his compromised paper bin, the final piece of the puzzle:
It's time to take another look at that original sheet with 7 colourful squares! Faced with a collection of numbers and looking for a secret word, I expect him to figure out very quickly that if 1=A and 2=B, 16-9-5-18-14-9-11 stands for P-I-E-R-N-I-K.
Enter our heroin with her fake mustache and recite THE quote from Josele's favourite movie:
Final
straight! Reach into your DVD collection and find a key taped to the
one in question. Now it's just a question of realizing the key belongs
to that little room under the stairs, and inside the birthday presents
are already waiting. The end!
