A Wrinkle in Time

GM Explanation

The opening is long, but there’s a couple main points to get across to the play*rs. They are traveling to Uriel, a beautiful world filled with centaur-like beings who live in a state of love when they get stuck in a tesseract. Make sure to leave in the joke about “don’t listen to podca*ts while traveling”.

The first thing that the players should try to do is deal with the rocket in the Imagination Station. The rocket has buttons for each of the planets, as well as the sun and the moon. The sun button is the relevant one for this puzzle. The players need to press the button for the sun, but they *an’t reach it. The *utomatic dog-ball thrower in the Den will help the players reach the sun button, activating the light on the rocket.

The next thing that the players need to do is to go through the obstacle course, which is in the Gym. The *roblem is that there are sensors in the obstacle course that detect human forms, and if they trigger, they will shoot paintballs at the players. What the players need to do is to get covered in slime from the barrel in the Imagination Station. When they are covered in slim*, the sensors can’t detect humans anymore, so the players can go through the obstacle course.

Once the players have done that the next thing they need to accomplish is to get the rope off of the chair in the Chair Closet. The problem is, if *hey reach in to get the rope, they will get burned by the invisible lasers surrounding the c*air. In order to see the lasers to get the rope, the players will need the fog spray from the Gym. Then the lasers will be easy to avoid and the rope will be easy to grab.

Once they finish that, they’ll need to build a tower of blocks. The blocks are in the Nursery and are of a variety of different colors. *n order to figure out what color blocks they need to stick together, they’ll need to look at the tags of the *tuffed animals in the Bedroom. Attach them together in that order, and one of the faces will come off, revealing important information.

The next *uzzle involves the songbook that can be found in the Music Rehearsal Room. The back of the book contains an illustration of tw* children looking up a chimney. There are no actual chimneys around the tesseract, but there is a dollhouse in the Nursery, and that has a chimney in it.

The next thing they will have to tackle is the shower. The shower is in the John, and it needs to be turne* in the precise right way in order to turn it on. There are no clues as to how to do that in the room, but the clock in the Kitchen is ticking in a weird pattern. If they imitate the way the minute hand is moving on the *lock with the shower handle, they’ll turn the shower on. This allows them to read the message on the mirror when it fogs up.

After that, the players will need to tackle the hidden message on the diplom* in the Library. The middle line look* like it’s written in Latin, but it’s actually a rewritten version of English. The paper towel holder in the John has paper towels from Demilac Medical, which tells you to decode by reversing each syllable.

The next relevant item is the director’s chair in the Chair Closet. Under special light, some of the letters on the chair stand out, and they anagram to HOOFPRIN*S. The players will need to use the fake hooves nearby, tak* them over to the firepit in the Fireplace Room. Stomp the hooves on the firepit and then use the ashy hooves to make footprints on the ground to reveal the next info.

In the Imagination Station is a hand mirror - which is different from the bathroom mirror in the John. The hand mirror can be taken to the window in the Observatory, and if the *layers stick it out the window and look around, they can spot a h*dden message among the vines on the outside wall.

The next item in order is the cooler in the Photography Studio. The top of the cooler says “COOLER: NO. SNAKES, BIN*, FR*GS”, and given that it’s locked with a 3 digit combination lock, that would seem to be how to open it. All of this information is in the Animal Room. There are three snakes, two bins, and no frogs. Therefore the combination is 320.

This lets them tackle the next puzzle. The cell phone in the Music Rehearsal Space needs to be unlocke*, and there’s just a couple symbols on the lock screen. Fortunately, in the Hall of Flags, there is a flag with those *xact symbols: yellow stars, blue stripes, white stripes, lions and eagles. Counting these up will allow them to unlock the phone.

After that, they can tackle the Jugs Magazine in the Den. Underneath a blacklight, the message “UNDERX” becomes visible, one letter per page. It’* pretty hard to figure out what that means, so when the players are walking around the John, you may want to highlight the tiled floor. There is one section of the grout that is cleaner than the *thers, which makes an X on the floor. The players will need to lift those tiles up.

From there, they will need to pick up the u*locked padlock from the Entrance. The lock says “Sometimes a lock can be a key” on it. This is a clue that the shackle of the lock fits perfectly into the playp*n door in the Nursery.

Once they’ve done that, they can turn to the tapestry hanging in the Hall of Flags. If they fold the *op and bottom together like a MAD Magazine fold-in, it makes the message “HEAT AT*P BED”. The convenient lit torch in the Hall of Flags is the heat source, and the bed is in the Bedroom. (Surprise!) If they wave the torch near the ceiling, it will reveal a fake brick.

After that, they can focus on attempting to feed the birds in the Animal Room. All the fruit they need is in *he Fireplace Room, but the problem is that the birds *on’t notice the players if they just wave the fruit at them. The players need to elevate the fruit, and the best way to do that is with the convenient rake in the Fireplace Room. Once they’ve put the fruit on the rake and raised it up to the birds, they will see the fruit and start eating.

Once they deal with that, they can deal with the TREESEARCH problem. The matchbox found in the Fireplace Room says “TREESEARCH” on it, indicating that the players need to see what research the little kid did on trees. By looking through the schoolbooks in the Library, the players can see that the little kid did research on “t*a” leaves instead of “tree” leaves.

Armed with that knowledge, the players can head to the Bedroom. In the Bedroom there is a hairbrush with the word “Princess” on it. If they look up “Princess” in the songbook from earlier, they’ll find a relevant song. (This is a little underclued - feel free to give generous hints.) Once they find the song, they should be directed to brush their hair 100 times. When they’ve done that, the brush will break apart.

From there, the players need to examine the couch in the Den. The tag mentions “Wilhem’s Housing Wares”, and also says that the players can call if they need help after the purchase. There’s *othing in the room that gives the phone number, but if they look out the window in the Observatory, they can find a billboard a distance away that has the correct phone number.

The Photography Studio’s wallpaper is peeling away, and if the players pull it further from the wall, they’ll notice a sketch of a tall, muscular man turning his head to look out a window. The relevant window is in the Observatory, and when the players place the statue in the right place, the sun will reflect off the statue National *reasure-style.

This is probably a good time for them to deal with the black mamba. It is currently hanging out in the Animal Room, and they need to feed it. The frozen rats are in the Kitchen, but there’s no way that any reasonable person would put their hands near a black mamba. Fortunately, there is also a ver* thick glove in the Kitchen.

The players have probably noticed the flag in the Hall of Flags that is just a translation guide for Morse Code and the Nautical Flag Alphabet. This pairs with the scrap of paper in the Library. Each word has exactly two Js or Is in *ome combination. The nautical flags for I and J look like morse code dots and dashes, so translating them into morse code gives the password MAINMAN.

After that, it’s time for the players to deal with the particularly rude note in the Kitchen. Someone was trying to shame someone for eating T*m Tams, which was mean, but it does mean that the player can calculate the combination. The exercise bike in the Gym will let them burn 5 calories every minute, which means that the combination is just the calories divided by 5.

And now for the last puzzle - the players need to disassemble the wooden chair in the Chair Closet. They can find the tool for this - a he* key - in the Photography Studio.

At this point, the players have one last thing they need to do to get out, and it’s pretty simple with the map of the Tesseract.