The Indigo room

[Jubal]

I should maybe have stipulated that the lodestone was fairly strong and the key was fairly small

Ach, I'd better think of another puzzle now...

[Ierne]

epic, I look forward to it

[Jubal]

The Library Room (2 points)

You come to a long room with ten bookshelves around the walls, each labelled for a different sub-field of natural history: marine life, botany, palaeontology, avians, mammals, geology, physical science, chemistry, herpetology and medicine. There is a table in the middle of the room, turkish-style rugs covering the floor, a desk and chair in the middle, and a pen and paper on the desk. The shelves are full of old looking books; the ceiling is decorated with an attractive painting of a flock of emus. There are no visible doors, except the one you came in through.

On the paper has been written:
"Welcome stranger! One of the bookcases is the hidden door to continue your journey: simply select the third book from the left on the middle shelf, and the revolving wall will turn, swivelling the bookcase and floor section you're standing on around and taking you onwards. One slight issue, though: if you try selecting from the wrong bookcase, a hidden panel in the ceiling will pour boiling tar on you, almost certainly killing you. Don't worry, safety precautions have been put in place to ensure your demise in this manner will not risk damage to any of the rare books in our collection. Good luck!"

How will you escape?

[Ierne]

So, there are 10 bookcases, 9 of which have death traps positioned above them? And the answer is to figure out which is the safe bookcase, not to just examine the ceilling minutely, put all of the rugs over your head and hope for the best? Tricky.

[Jubal]

You can look at the ceiling, but you realise that the painting is painted on to tiles, any of which could drop open. You can also examine a rug, but you've no way of holding it over your head in such a way that it'd protect you - you'd need several of them probably, and the tar could well set them on fire.

[Tusky]

Since there is an avian themed mural on the ceiling, can I try the book on the avian shelf?

*braces self*

[Jubal]

Well, Tusky's dead, anyone else want a go?

(More seriously, there is an answer as to how you can actually determine the right one, but it's not just a clue like that - Ierne got closer than you did).

[Tusky]

Ah well.

I figured I could be the sacrificial first hot-head to die in the horror film person

[Jubal]

Hot head in this case proving a fairly literal descriptor!

[Glaurung]

Some exploratory questions:

- Do the Turkish carpets cover the floor areas immediately in front of the bookcases? If so, can the carpets be lifted away?
- Could the furniture in the room be used to wedge shut the ceiling panel above a bookcase?

[Jubal]

> The Turkish carpets do indeed cover the whole floor, and you are able to move (or remove) them around as you wish.
> No, the ceiling is too high.

[Glaurung]

OK, I move the carpets away from the bookcases. How many bookcases have a section cut through the floor in front of them, so as to allow the floor to rotate?

[Jubal]

Precisely one. Good job, correct solution

[Glaurung]

Um. Wow. I was more than half expecting the number to be between 2 and 10, with some more complex problem-solving required. Or would that have been indicated by a higher points score?

Anyway, I go to the bookcase with the swivelling floor section (regardless of its subject matter!) and select the third book from the left on the middle shelf. All of a sudden...

[Jubal]

WHOOSH.

The Monk's Cloister (3 points)

You step off the revolving plate, and it whirls around again, leaving only a blank wall behind you. On one side, a set of pillars give you a view out over an idyllic looking mountain valley, and evening sunlight filters through: it's your first view out of this building, and you realise you are quite high up. You cannot however pass the pillars, since there's solid bulletproof glass between them and a sheer drop even if you had anything to break it with. Looks like you're going to have to go forwards.

There's a thick looking door at the other end of this corridor, clad with steel plates; the corridor architecture is flushwork (albeit poorly made and maintained) with vaulting over the top towards the pillars, in a sort of medieval style. The thick door is predictably locked, with a keyhole clearly visible. There is however an open door on the side of the corridor, which leads to a small room. This has an old parchment book, a delicate quill pen sitting in a dried-up inkwell, and a large, thick candle all sitting on an old-looking desk with four drawers. There is a rough bed thickly covered in straw along the second wall, and an empty fireplace in the third.

How do you get through the next door?



And yes, I'd have awarded an extra point if there was a secondary puzzle once you'd worked out to move the rugs