Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Click here to catch up on my Avon posts before this one.)

So I resolved two puzzles from last time during summer, resolved (probably) one during spring, and made headway on a puzzle that spans all three seasons and might be one of the most cryptic in the game.

The general theming was: what object from one Shakespeare play could be used to help with a dilemma from another?

From PcwWiki.

I was still stuck on the Puck/farmer dilemma, which I’m starting to suspect is resolved via some sort of wordplay.

You are at the remains of a chicken farm. A fox has clearly visited this place and killed half the stock. The only way the farmhands will let you go is back to the west.

“What! all my pretty chickens and their dam, at one fell swoop?” he mutters. “I asked my keeper, Puck, to get the fox’s earth seen to, but he went away saying that he’d put a hurdle round the earth in forty minutes (and that was hours ago.)”

This he repeats, over and over again, trying to understand the tragedy.

(Incidentally, the words “chicken”, “puck”, “dam”, “hurdle”, “fox”, and “girdle” are not understood, so none play a part in resolving the puzzle. Not like it is shocking, really, given how many things have been resolved in a lateral way.)

That was the last “winter area” puzzle (I think) but I decided to wallop a bit more on spring and summer. I started going with the assumption that if a location was unimportant in two other seasons, it had to be important in the third. There was a battlefield with Richard III muttering about the winter of our discontent; it seemed like I needed to return to the battlefield later, and indeed, in summer, I found the “kingly hunchback” crying about his kingdom for a horse.

Hogarth showing his friend David Garrick as Richard III. Via the Met.

If you’ve been paying attention in my previous posts, you may already know the resolution for this dilemma.

You are on Bosworth field. There is battle raging all round you. The only safe way out is to the north.
A kingly hunchback is fighting here. Hopelessly outnumbered he cries “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Your appearance on the scene, complete with ass’s head causes his enemies to flee in terror.
The king thanks you, removes the ass’s head from you and departs. You find that he has left his crown under a nearby bush.
You are on Bosworth field. There is battle raging all round you. The only safe way out is to the north.
The Plantagenet crown is here!

So you get your head turned into an ass in Midsummer Night’s Dream-land, then utilize said ass-head to help Richard III. Makes sense.

Another object I hadn’t messed around with yet was the meat pie. I always am hesitant to test eating things in games (it often makes the food disappear and softlock the game), but here I needed to be hesitant for another reason:

There is a nourishing meat pie here.
> get pie
OK.
> eat pie
Although the cheer be poor, ’twill fill your stomach. You eat of it with pleasure until a man dressed as a cook enters and reveals to you that two of the ingredients in the pie were named Chiron and Demetrius. ‘Tis true; witness his knife’s sharp point… I’m afraid he stabs you.

That’s the pie made out of people! (See: Titus Andronicus.) I didn’t think much of this scene yet, but later, while off the computer, it suddenly struck me that the meat pie would solve an entirely different dilemma: the merchant who wants a pound of flesh. In the play (Merchant of Venice) this results in a dramatic court scene as Shylock tries to get his pound of flesh, but here, we already have the flesh pre-cooked:

As you pass the moneylender’s premises, their owner comes out to greet you. Scenting business, he offers to lend you 3,000 ducats until you next meet, the security to be a pound of flesh.
Three thousand ducats. ‘Tis a good round sum.
Wilt thou borrow it from the moneylender?
yes
The moneylender gives you the money and goes back into his establishment.

You are at the docks. Roads lead to the north, southwest and southeast.
To the south is a barge; its poop is beaten gold, purple the sails
and so perfumed that the winds are love sick with them.
> drop ducats
OK.
> inv
You are holding:
A scroll.
A meat pie.
There’s the smell of blood upon your hands.
> n
The moneylender accosts you as you pass, saying “I would have my bond.”
Since you do not have the ducats, the moneylender demands a pound of flesh from you. Fortunately you are able to persuade him to accept that disgusting pie you were carrying: he takes it from you and then he leaves.

For my third puzzle, I was trying to resolve (in Spring) being attacked by knights.

You open the door and enter the house.
The door slams behind you and you hear sounds of a key turning in the lock.
You are in the kitchen of a small house. There are several doors leading from it, all of which appear to be locked.
There is a letter here, addressed to Mistress Golesind and signed
‘Thine own true knight,
By day or night,
Or any kind of light
With all his might,
For thee to fight,
John Falstaff.
> wave trophy
Nothing of great import happens.
Suddenly the door opens and several knights armed with swords rush in. They brand you as an intruder and promptly slay you.

I did a little structural solving first and realized there was no way to really attack the knights directly, so I needed to hide. One laundry basket (from The Merry Wives of Windsor) later:

Do you want to get into the basket?
YES
You are in the basket. It is a very tight fit and you are unable to move your hands.
Do you wish to spend any more time cooped up in the basket?
YES
Suddenly you hear sounds of people entering the room. They pick up the laundry basket, with you inside it, and carry it off. After a while there is a mighty SPLOSH! and you are tossed into the river.
Unfortunately the current is too strong for you and you are swept under and drowned.

Well, that’s not quite it, but I already got one magic power from the witches, maybe swimming? The frog toe seemed promising but holding had no effect.

I baffled for a while, but if you’ve been paying attention to my little playing quirks, you might realize the problem. I hadn’t tested eating the frog toe before getting tossed in the river.

The frog’s toe that you ate gives you tremendous swimming ability: the torrent roars and you do buffet it, with lusty sinews, throwing it aside. You are able to struggle to land, narrowly escaping being swept over a waterfall.

Voila! Unfortunately, going through that whole sequence seemed to yield me nothing. The letter in the building can’t be picked up (you only have one turn that must be used going in the basket). So maybe the information is important?

I realized that the name Mistress Golesind sometimes changed (like Mistress Legosind) and I also compared it with passwords I had been getting from Yorick the Jester way back at the graveyard (like SILEGODA). Maybe it is supposed to be

SI/LE/GO/DA = silver/lead/gold/??

LE/GO/SI/ND = lead/gold/silver/??

That is, these match the materials of the caskets. Back in the mansion, we were offered to open two caskets, remember; it turns out this offer is given in every season. Since we are offered two caskets per season, we can open six caskets.

This suggests opening the caskets in order as given by the password and the name, concatenating the six materials (SI + LE + GO + LE + GO + SI), but my testing this yielded no treasure. (You get a smoothed ice, a perfumed violet, and a painted lily, but this seems to happen if you just guess randomly.) So I’m not sure what to do here. I feel like I’m missing something. Yes, you can mash up DA and ND to get D AND, but from there …?

> OPEN GOLD
The casket is empty. Shielded from your view, the Lady Portia performs a rearrangement of the contents of the caskets and invites you to open a second casket.
Choose again. Which casket will ye open now?
LEAD
You open the second casket, which contains a perfumed violet.
The lady Portia picks up her caskets and leaves, murmuring “Sweet, adieu.”

That’s essentially everything for now, except one bonus thing. I found if you go back in the graveyard in summer (where you meet a live Yorick in winter) you can find a Yorick skull. Then you can go back to the witches, who will happily trade the rest of their items for the skull. This means you can get the last two items (wool of bat, tongue of dog) instead of just one of them! (Or maybe the skull is really what you need, the game is willing to be that evil.)

The gravedigger scene in Hamlet, from a Wentworth engraving in 1870.