Spookiness Rating: 1

Stumpophobia

"the fear of running for office"
or "the fear of not being able to solve a Mystery Hunt puzzle"

 

This puzzle will take you to some noted offices on campus. Call us and we will give you the first office to go to. (In order to ease congestion on the path, we may use staggered start times. First call, first served!) Using its building and room number, the text appearing on the office door, and instruction #1 below, determine the next office to go to. Using the new office building, room, and door, follow instruction #2 to get the next office. Repeat until all instructions are complete. The instructions use letters on the doors as numbers; use the standard alphanumeric code (A=1, B=2, etc.). Two consecutive instructions actually use a letter as a letter. Each instruction has two parts. The first part gives you the new building. The second gives you the new room.

To get the answer for the trail, you must extract one letter from each door. The letters in order of when you visit their doors spell the answer. The key letters are described following the instructions; however, they are not given in order of the doors. You'll have to use logic, the doors' characteristics, and your knowledge of English to determine which clues go with which doors. (If a clue for a key letter describes multiple letters, those will all be the same. For example, a clue referring to this paragraph might be "First letter of first word or last letter of second word". The answer would be T.)

Instructions

  1. Add eleventh letter of sixth line to building; add third letter of seventh word to room.
  2. Divide building by seventh letter of fourth line (rounding down); add to room the square of the difference between the first letter of the fourth line and first letter of the first line.
  3. Add first letter of surname to building; subtract from room the square of the sum of the first letters of the first and third lines.
  4. Add first letter of left half's third word to building; subtract product of number formed from last two digits on the door times third letter of left half's third word from room.
  5. Divide building by first letter of last word then multiply by fourth letter of that word; add to room the product of third and last letters of sixth word.
  6. Add tenth letter to building, then precede sum with twelfth letter; multiply room by eleventh letter, then add three-digit number formed by repeating fourth letter from end.
  7. After dropping sixth letter from building, subtract twelfth letter; next room is fifth letter times sum of second and last letters of last word.
  8. Multiply building by ninth letter, then subtract fourteenth letter; add product of first two letters of second line to room
  9. Subtract third letter from building; subtract from the room the product of fourth letter from end of second line and third letter from end of third line
  10. Divide building by sixth letter; add product of fifth letter and sum of first and last letters of last line to room.
  11. Add eighth letter to building; subtract product of second word's fourth letter and third line's fourth letter from room.
  12. Subtract last letter of first surname from building; add product of fourth letter of third line and fourth letter of fourth line to room.
  13. Obviously you can't go any farther up the line than this room.

Key Letters

  1. Fifth letter from end of both spelled-out words on first line
  2. Fifth letter of both first word and eighth word
  3. First letter of words on second, third, and seventh lines
  4. If you spell out the first abbreviation, it's the first letter not in the abbreviation
  5. Letter appearing once in second word on first line, once in first word of second line and nowhere else
  6. Letter following two pairs of doubled letters
  7. Letter in the same position as the V, but on the other line
  8. Only doubled letter
  9. Only first initial
  10. Second letter on one line, third letter on another line, or fourth letter on the remaining line
  11. Second lowercase letter
  12. Sixth letter of third word on first line
  13. Third letter from the end