Clue 7
Sector S - Excelsior / Visitacion Valley
Fingernail Polish Grid
Author: Team Grue (executed by Game Control, particularly Alexandra Dixon)
At the start of the game, one player on each team had submitted (more or less gracefully!) to having his or her (mostly his, heh heh) fingernails painted by Game Control. The 7x8 grid of squares below is painted with the same fingernail polish as was on the players' fingernails.
Hints
Hint 1 was in a hint envelope in teams' game packets: Game Control provided an image of ghostly hands on a computer/typewriter keyboard:
Hint 2 was a gimme -- a team that called in was to tell Game Control which words they'd already found, and Game Control would then provide them with three more words.
Solution
The color of a given square indicates which finger you should use to type that letter. Since there are several letter choices for almost every finger, this has the potential to be very difficult to solve. But Game Control took pity on teams (at the demand of the playtesters), and made the message relatively short and rather intuitive once you realized what it was.
If you've ever had a formal typing/keyboarding class, you know that each finger corresponds to a different set of letters on the keyboard, as follows:
|
A Q Z |
S W X |
D E C |
F G R T V B |
Space Bar |
Space Bar |
J H Y U N M |
K I |
L O |
P |
|
Left pinky |
Left ring |
Left middle |
Left index |
Left thumb |
Right thumb |
Right index |
Right middle |
Right ring |
Right pinky |
The first word thus has the following possible combinations:
DKAL, DKAO, DKQL, DKQO, DKZL, DKZO, DIAL, DIAO, DIQL, DIQO, DIZL, DIZO,
EKAL, EKAO, EKQL, EKQO, EKZL, EKZO, EIAL, EIAO, EIQL, EIQO, EIZL, EIZO,
CKAL, CKAO, CKQL, CKQO, CKZL, CKZO, CIAL, CIAO, CIQL, CIQO, CIZL, CIZO.
Of these, only DIAL is a recognizable word; and it follows that the rest of the message could be a series of numbers…
Of the possible combinations of the second word, only FOUR is a number. And so on, until you get:
DIAL FOUR ONE FIVE FIVE SIX THREE FIVE SIX THREE SIX NOW
On
the answering machine of 415-563-5636 were instructions for teams to go to
the Sanitary Fill Company (the San Francisco Dump) at