Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Prime Minister:
Good heavens — listen to this. “Dear Mr gladstone, tonight I will commence to destroy the following ancient London monuments: Nelson’s Column, Albert Memorial and Anna Neagle. Finally, I shall blow up Greater London!”

ANTHONY:
I say, naughty fellow.

PM:
This is, this is terrible! Look he… he’s spelt my name with a small g!

ANTHONY:
Oh, Mr. Gladstone, if London is blown up at midnight, hadn’t we better have some dinner earlier?

PM:
Oh nonsense, nonsense Anthony. This is the work of a practical joker. No man would dare…

[Explosion. Sound of bomb dropping followed by glass smashing and destruction]

PM:
What was that?

ANTHONY:
Nelson’s Column just landed in the garden.

— From The Goon Show episode The Man Who Tried To Destroy London’s Monuments, first broadcast October 9, 1953

(Prior posts on Ferret here.)

Well, if you thought 70s TV sci-fi references were out there, how about a British comedy radio show from the 1950s?

From the cover of a 1971 vinyl LP of one of the radio broadcasts.

The Goon Show was originally — for Series 1 and 2 anyway — actually introduced as

Crazy People, featuring radio’s own Crazy Gang: “The Goons”.

before being renamed. Its regular episodes ran from 1951 to 1960, and it was a strong influence on The Firesign Theater and Monty Python. The Goons also make an appearance in Ferret:

Milligan is the entry room, Sellers and Eric have the projector of doom and the stove.

That’s the names of various people involved spread throughout the map of the office building in Phase 15, like Spike Milligan, co-creator and main writer for the show. And no, none of this turned out to be helpful to observe to solve the puzzle of the last ticket, but Ferret has gotten so difficult I couldn’t leave any possibility behind.

(And if you’re wondering “what happened to Blakes 7 from last time?”, well, that’s still up in the air, but apparently all that information from last time is meant to apply to Phase 16, titled Liberation; there’s at least one reference already in that area, as you’ll see.)

Last time the biggest relevation came from a clarification from the authors; I had previously asked how many tickets phases 9-14 had, and they said five. We found four, so I spent roughly a week going through each one for the fifth ticket. I then found they must have misread and though I was including 15 in my span; the fifth ticket is in phase 15! Furthermore, they clarified in a way that indicated the ticket was in the mysterious Goon Show floor with the projector and the stove where you did not need to bring any outside objects with you.

To recap, you enter the floor of the building via a window washer cradle, into the room “Milligan”:

Milligan
Apparently an office in an office block. The external curtain wall on the north side of the office block is missing allowing egress from the room. There is a corridor to the east.

I had, at the time, the extra problem here that the cradle was going back up after entering the building, and trying to escape the way I came led to going splat.

Yee-haa! As you somersault out of the office block you catch a brief glimpse of the building rising above you with the window cleaners’ cradle near the top. The glimpse is all too brief as you splatter all over the ground at the base of the building.

This turned out to be a bug (?!) but more on that in a moment.

Then there was a stove which just melted everything:

Eric
Apparently a kitchen in an office block. There is a corridor to the east. Along one wall is a worktop above which are three cupboards. Set into the worktop is a sheet of plexiglass, in the centre of which is a circular depression. All other kitchen facilities and furniture appear to have been stolen.
-> put basket in depression
Done.
A strange ethereal humming noise eminates from underneath the plexiglass. The plexiglass starts to glow, first red, then orange then white. You smell the acrid stench of burning from a long uncleaned surface. You appear to have discovered an automatic induction hob. Bang! A faulty one too. The food detection system seems to have inappropriately calculated the cooking temperature required resulting in some overheating, thereby welding the chip basket to the surface of the plexiglass.
The vinyl that melted in the chip basket has cooled to form a shallow pool.

And a projector that kills you:

Sellers
Apparently an office in an office block. There is a corridor to the west. Hanging from the ceiling in front of the north wall is a projector screen. Next to the projector screen are two cords, one long and one short.
-> pull short cord
Your yanking behaviour activates the projector screen mechanism which appears to be faulty as its initial movement is to fall rapidly to the floor accompanied by a loud screeching noise. Unfortunately, you are in the drop zone and receive a glancing blow to the head. You feel absolutely nothing of course, but the dull spark that was your life has finally been extinguished. You’ll be an ideal addition to the nearest wormery (which might eventually turn you into something useful if you don’t poison the worms first).

(Yes, I’ve gone through all this, but there’s so much stuff in this game even I need reminding.)

Knowing that no outside objects were used helped restrict our thought process. None of the items in the stove room seemed to be helpful (including a cabinet that was empty in an earlier build and filled in a later one, suggesting those objects were a red herring!) as they all either vaporized entirely or melted as in the text I’ve already given. The projector was particularly frustrating as the short cord resisted any kind of manipulation I tried.

Voltgloss in the comments eventually hit upon tying the two puzzles together:

-> tie short cord to basket
The cord is tied to the wire basket.
-> w
Your attachment to the cord prevents your egress from the room.
It does however activate the projector screen mechanism which appears to be faulty as its initial movement is to fall rapidly to the floor accompanied by a loud screeching noise. The screeching changes to a series of clicks followed by what sounds like cogs and belts engaging. Achingly slowly the screen retracts and then disappears into the ceiling. At the end of its travel the projector screen emits a rather unpleasant and expensive graunching sound. The removal of the projector screen has revealed a wall safe.

No other item seems to work to accomplish this, and I previously was under the impression (based on being rebuffed by the parser earlier) that the short cord was untieable.

The wall safe has a “vinyl block” which can be melted just like all the other vinyl things, with the difference here being it reveals something useful.

-> put basket in depression
Done.
A strange ethereal humming noise eminates from underneath the plexiglass. The plexiglass starts to glow, first red, then orange then white. You smell the acrid stench of burning from a long uncleaned surface. You appear to have discovered an automatic induction hob. Bang! A faulty one too. The food detection system seems to have inappropriately calculated the cooking temperature required resulting in some overheating, thereby welding the chip basket to the surface of the plexiglass.
The vinyl that melted in the chip basket has cooled to form a shallow pool. During the intense heat a petite waxed envelope has floated free of the vinyl block and is now stuck to the surface of the pool of cooled vinyl.

The envelope has the fifth ticket!

Usually. In one of my saved games when I try to go through this process the envelope is empty. Yes, the later phases of this game are buggy, and this really got borne out trying to escape from the office floor. You see, commenter K had, every time upon arriving at the building, had the cradle stop at the floor and not leave, so it was easy to escape. I always had it go up (I’d never seen it stop). Voltgloss had sometimes one and sometimes the other. I assume this is the same sort of bug that causes the envelope to not have a tangerine ticket in it.

Fixing the problem required Voltgloss playing the game from the very beginning and making a save at the start of phase 9. I took the save and brought it the rest of the way, getting all five tickets (still playing in the version of the game with the easy-to-grab plum ticket, without the “destination” puzzle, I’ll come back to that). I have a saved game linked in the comments which has the player avatar standing at Phase 16 while holding all five tickets.

And yes, I did say Phase 16, the long gloriously sought-after mothership (dubbed Liberation).

Ticket Office
You are in what was probably a ticket office, though it is now hard to tell as the room appears to have suffered from a number of nearby explosions. The north end of the room appears to consist of an automatic barrier, to the right of which is a turnstile and a slot. Unfortunately all of the guidance instructions appear to have been obliterated at some time in the past.
Exits: -S– ——– —
-> i
You are carrying:
  a lime ticket
  a lemon ticket
  a tangerine ticket
  a strawberry ticket
  a plum ticket
-> insert lime in slot; insert lemon in slot; insert tangerine in slot;
Done.
Done.
Done.
-> insert strawberry in slot; insert plum in slot
Done.
Done.
-> n
Entrance Vestibule
You are in a featureless room. There is a turnstile set into the south wall.
Exits: N— ——– —
Score increment of 20 points.

The order is simply determined by the destinations written on the tickets; phases 9 through 13 are Richmond, Ashford, Staines, Egham, and Virginia Water Station, as seen on signs at each location, so the tickets just needed to be inserted in that same order.

The game incidentally has one of those “inventory resets” here where quite a bit of inventory doesn’t fit. We know from prior hints that a teleport bracelet is required, and you’ll see in a moment that a nickel key (from that water maze with the key in the cage) is also needed, and there isn’t much inventory space past that, so we’re finally “out of the woods” for the most part in our Phases 9-15 nightmare (not that there might not be yet another piece of info squirreled away, but other than the plum ticket puzzle, it seems like we’ve prodded every corner).

I haven’t started seriously puzzle-solving yet, but let me at least give the lay of the land of the new area. It is essentially a “main route” with “branches”.

-> l
Car Park
You are standing on a vast tarmaced area surrounded by fences. The tarmac is marked with strange white stripes. To the south is the entrance to a Railway Station. A lane leads off to the east. A metalled road proceeds in a northerly direction.
Exits: NSE- ——– —
-> e
Lane
On a fenced lane running east west.
Exits: –EW ——– —

Branch one is fairly boring, and is just a lane that gets blocked off by a warehouse. Unless there’s a secret way to open it, or we loop back and use this place as an exit, this is just filler.

End of Lane
On a fenced lane running north south. The southern end of the lane is blocked by the side of an immense warehouse.

Branch two is more interesting:

A small hut with a bench running along one side under a window. On the bench is a large metal box surmounted by various instruments, notably a keyhole, a plunger, the toggle for a hooter, numerous terminals and wires. Attached to one wall of the hut is a framed notice.

The keyhole takes the nickel key, and will give a “clunk” if turned.

The toggle will given a siren with the specific verb PUSH DOWN:

-> PUSH DOWN TOGGLE
A siren wails, echoing around the mine workings.

(This would be extremely hard to find — PUSH alone doesn’t work — except for the TEST verb which has been useful the whole game.)

You can LIFT the plunger (the game just says “Done.”) and again, the game is very finicky about the syntax here and TEST saved a lot of experimentation..

What I have not been able to do is “wind” the plunger, as per the instructions:

-> read notice
Only parts of the notice remain legible as the handwritten elements have faded:

Conquest Mining Corporation

Blasting Procedures

Hooter must be sounded no more than     minute(s) before blasting.
Wind plunger       turn(s) to prime blaster rotor.
Depress plunger to initiate blast sequence.

Blasting is forbidden between the hours of   and  .
In event of problems call Central Mining Control Centre.
Operations out of normal parameters contact neighbourhood liaison on red.
Last safety check completed:

I’m guessing this will fall to a bit more experimentation (and maybe another nasty verb use) but let’s move on for now to the next branch:

Gaol
In front of a large building protected by an armoured door.
Exits: —W ——– —
-> open door
Opened.
-> e
The door closes behind you and emits an ominous click.
Jailhouse
A featureless room with a noticeboard on one wall. At one end are a table and chair securely fixed to the floor. The jail has just one cell separated from the main jailhouse by strong iron bars. The cell comprises the northern end of the jailhouse and is accessed through a barred iron door. Attached to the inside of the bars is a semi-transparent banner with writing that is indecipherable from the reverse side. To the east is a wooden door and there is a stairway leading down.
Exits: —- ——– -D
The prison cell contains:
a flesh-eating zombie
some rotting carcasses

The entry is one-way; getting out is the primary puzzle here. The wooden door is incidentally locked and gives the default message when using a key which suggests no key will unlock it. You can still die by kicking it, just like that red herring all the way in Phase 1.

-> kick wooden door
Your foot goes clean through the wood of the door causing you to lose balance. As you fall forwards you impale your anal sphincter on a very sharp splinter of wood, resulting in massive internal injuries and severe bleeding.
You’ve curled your toes.

Also, yes, the zombie feels “out of genre”; we have had some a mutant creature (that we had to hand a defective weapon to in order to defeat) but nothing like a zombie. EXAMINE ZOMBIE incidentally crashes the game.

The lower section has a pair of headphones which give an audio tour of the surroundings.

Vestry
A small dimly lit area with various coathooks and clothes racks. There is a bead curtained exit to the south. The east wall is panelled in dark wood, above which is a beautiful icon depicting a heavenly female figure. Set in the halo surrounding the figure in a spectacular jewel.
Exits: -S– ——– —
There are some wireless headphones here
-> wear headphones
Done.
Over the headphones a pre-recorded message is looping through a presentation:
Welcome to the Liberty Tours Audio Guide.
You are in the Vestry. A robing area used by the resident priest.
-> s
Dock
A small enclosed area that overlooks a courtroom. There is a solitary chair and a stairway leading down.
Exits: —- ——– -D
Over the headphones a pre-recorded message is looping through a presentation:
Welcome to the Liberty Tours Audio Guide.
You are in the Dock. Suspects were required to sit in this area while their trial proceeded in the adjoining courtroom.

On to the last branch:

There’s presumably a lot more to see, but I’m fairly immediately stuck.

Antechamber
You are in a corridor with walls made completely from a weird opaque substance.
There is a steel door to the north.
Exits: -S– ——– —
-> open steel door
Opened.
-> n
Bottom of Lift
You are in a small aluminium-lined room. To the south is a steel door. Next to the door is a red button, under which is a chrome plate.
Exits: -S– ——– —
Score increment of 10 points.
-> push button
Click.
-> read plate
FEDERATION SECURITY
PROCEDURES DICTATE
THAT VALID AUTHORITY
(E.G. NAPIVS) MUST
BE CARRIED AT ALL
TIMES WITHOUT EXCEPTION

The Federation indicates pretty clearly we’re in Blakes 7 territory here, but wearing the Teleport Bracelet gives no change to the red button. I think it likely the other branches need to be finished before this one does anything.

That’s almost all the new discoveries for now. We’re still trying to retro-solve the business with the plum ticket (that is, the puzzle that only got added in the most recent version, but we can play an older version and skip it); we have received the info that we do need to say a particular word at the Archive of Angst in order to get the ticket, and this word can be found by forming a projector (out of items we have on our person) and use that projector to look at two transparencies that we’ve found in odd spots in the game. However, we have made no progress on this at all. Many “assembly” puzzles in games are naturally easy in that you can accidentally fit two pieces together without knowing what’s going on, but the verbs in Ferret are finicky enough you might be properly intending to fit item X into item Y (say, a piece of linen and a plastic fruit bowl) but not using the right verb. There is a conspicuous lack of a light source; we still have a flashgun but the button only worked when we were using it way back in Phase 8.

I did also resolve the book! I’m going to skip how I figured out the puzzle (check the comments of my last post if you’re dying to know) and just do this without words:

The title here is a quote from Blakes 7, or possibly Blakes7 or Blake’s 7, depending on what reference you’re looking at (modern fan works go with Blakes 7 with no apostrophe so let’s stick with what the superfans say). And yes, a relatively obscure sci-fi TV show from 1978 is relevant to Ferret. (Prior posts on Ferret here.)

Cover from an audio drama spinoff.

The creator, Terry Nation, described it as “The Dirty Dozen in space”; if you imagine the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars being even tinier and scrappier you can get roughly the idea. Oh, and the Bad Guys (or True Bad Guys, I suppose) are the Federation, which includes Earth, so maybe the evil-goatee-Spock parallel universe of Star Trek went terribly wrong.

Blake: I meant what I said on Goth, Avon. We are not going to use Star One to rule the Federation, we are going to destroy it.
Avon: I never doubted that. I never doubted your fanaticism. As far as I’m concerned you can destroy whatever you like. You can stir up a thousand revolutions. You can wade in blood up to your armpits. Oh, and you can lead the rabble to victory — whatever that may mean. Just so long as there’s an end to it. When Star One is gone, it is finished, Blake. And I want it finished! I want it over and done with, I want to be free!

So what happened is I had innocently posted my maps of the mysterious phase 14 section just after Satan’s Bumhole (with one error I have now fixed — Jenna was repeated twice).

While I have seen some Dr. Who from that era, Blakes 7 had passed me by, and so I did not spot that the location names in the first map matched up quite closely with proper nouns from the Blakesiverse. Just to make a proper list out of it:

Avon, Blake, Cally, Jenny, Soolin, Tarrant, Travis, Vila, Dayna, Gan, Servalan, Zen, Orac, Scorpio, Slave

The “sarcophagus” from last time is at Blake, which I’ll re-quote in case it is relevant:

The sarcophagus glisters and sparkles in a most tremendous way. You are bedazzled and, not to a small degree, hypnotised by the beauty of the object. Strange that such wonder should be associated with the morbidity of death. Any road up, you may be interested in the inscription on the side of the gaudy object which reads:
The Most Exulted
The Highmost
The Leader of Freed Men
The Champion of the Underdog
The Most Betrayed of All
Put to Death this Day
ABCDXY0123789
By Federation Termination Order
May his Magnificence Rest in Peace

To the south of this is another roughly similar grid (with some rooms missing) where a convoluted route was needed to open various exits and get to the end.

In the version I originally played, the objective (a plum ticket) was already sitting there; in the most recent update, there is much more description:

Archive of Angst
Cramped, poorly lit, smelly hovel. This room appears to have been partitioned from a previously larger room as, incongruously, there is a brass plate set off-centre in one wall. The plate features a grille under which is an engraved instruction. Sprayed across one wall is a graffito that reads: “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”.

This configuration raised suspicions that a “teleport bracelet” from earlier in the game is relevant. (It initially gets described as having hieroglyphics, although examining the bracelet later shows no description.) Teleport bracelets are a big part of the original show, and the suggestion of stating a destination makes it likely the idea is to a.) wear the bracelet while standing at the Archive of Angst and b.) state the correct destination. I have no idea what this destination would be. It could be some sort of encoded thing (see the numerical message at Blake) or it could be some sort of Blakes 7 trivia, in which case I might want to just run through a big list of proper names of planets and the like to see what happens.

The odd thing about all this is it seems terribly unlikely the teleport bracelet business happens at all in the original just-find-the-ticket version of the game. Since I do technically have a way through, and others have watched more episodes than I have, I toss this riddle out to my readership with the hope someone can break through. To keep things organized, these clues from elsewhere in the game might also be relevant:

Yo, ya kno’ that Graham geezer and his massive number. Well, like, X is the spot an’ it’s the last free digits, dig it?

Blap, blap. This is fierce. Y, oh Y, does the posse go mental when I jive some symbols at ’em? All I said was “pi and mash”.

It appears that a builder from some distant time in the past (the language appears to be ancient estuarine) has left his calculations inscribed for posterity on the wall.

Wifdf = AX
Hiftf = BY
Lemff = 9782C310

In the meantime, I still have a ticket to find amongst phases 9-14, and I was given the fairly explicit hint that it was to be found near an vinyl block, which was also going to be useful.

So I set to work combing over every phase and every loose thread we’ve ever had. And dear reader, I failed. I revealed nothing, despite re-checking:

– the house with the ghost (phase 9)
– the gate with the spheroid (phase 9)
– the ticket office with the keypad (phase 10) including trying every 7-digit combo possible, since one combo reveals a tan block and maybe I thought an vinyl block would come out, no dice
– the cave of despair/graveyard that seems to be a dead end (phase 11)

Graveyard
You are in a small room with concrete walls that appear immensely strong as rusty reinforcing bars are visible in various places. The room is gloomily illuminated by a dim light entering though a hole in the roof. The east wall of the room is formed from a mound of rubble.
There is an emblem on one wall.
Partially buried in the floor is a juvenile’s skeleton.
There is a rubber ball here
There is a rigid pvc hoop here
There is a birch cane here
There is a weathered satchel here

– the giant Mastermind puzzle set-up in phase 12, and the book that comes out of it
– the ticket office at phase 13 (other ticket offices are blown up, and I had some explosives, so I tried to use them)

The game manages one bit of meta for clues in terms of useful locations. The SCORE can only go up in places that are useful to visit, or at least don’t go to dead ends.

-> n
Station Platform
You are standing on a station platform. Set high on the north wall is a sign.
There is a locomotive waiting on the tracks to the south.
Exits: NS– ——– —
Score increment of 5 points.

The game is guaranteed to let you arrive at a full score, so, for example, the lack of score in the Sewers of Phase 9 are a hint that they are a red herring. (The Graveyard above also gives no score, but I never got absolute confirmation from the authors it was a dead end.) This turned out to be very helpful at a pier at phase 11, which appeared to have nothing remarkable but gave a healthy slice of 50 points. The room was key to getting over to the other side of the lake.

Similarly, the room with the book — just a broom closet — gives 50 points. Given the lack of room description that suggests the book itself has a secret, but I’ve been baffled ever since I’ve found it. The closest I can think of in regards to the ASCII art is it depicts the projector-falling-and-hitting-you-in-the-head from phase 15.

Any ideas? I’ll take even extreme stretches at this point. I’m still serious about my deadline; I have 14 days to complete Ferret, and I’ve gone an entire week with no progress whatsoever.

While we’re very, very, close to finishing off the long multi-phase section of the game, that doesn’t mean the last part of the haul is easy.

(Prior posts on Ferret here.)

From the Department of Defense booklet Facts about Fallout Protection, 1961.

I left off last time entering a water maze in Phase 15, and said I got through, but I didn’t say how I solved it. See the title? Heh.

-> n
Sunken Plot
Floating in water in a dark area between very high walls. To the south is a stairway leading to a raised area. High above you is a wire cable.
Exits: NS– ——– U-
-> n
Holloways
Floating randomly in swirling, turbulent water between high walls. Hidden low level currents occasionally pull you below the water level but the life jacket eventually pulls you back to the surface.

Being in water, you are not allowed to drop any items. However, I started to notice something very quickly about the structure of the maze.

-> w
Holloways
Floating randomly in swirling, turbulent water between high walls. Hidden low level currents occasionally pull you below the water level but the life jacket eventually pulls you back to the surface.
-> w
Holloways

I have the game here turned on BRIEF mode. That means it will only give the full description of a room the first time you enter it. Notice that after moving west twice I get just “Holloways” which means I have re-entered a room I have already been in.

I realized, after a little experimentation, that this was an all-or-nothing maze, where you need to do exactly the right steps, or otherwise it drops you off the path. Not only that, it drops you off the path in a room that “loops” with no escape.

This might seem overly cruel, but it is in fact helpful. Because the pattern simply is:

a.) if you go in a wrong direction followed by another direction (of any kind) you will see “Holloways” with no room description

b.) if you go in a right direction followed by a wrong direction you will get full room descriptions both times

c.) if you go in a right direction followed by a right direction you will get full room descriptions both times

It doesn’t really matter you can’t tell the difference between b and c. What matters is knowing if you’ve fallen into a. That means you can test an exit, and if you find that is a wrong exit, mark it off your list. This process leads to:

There is likely some clever solve, as all this leads to a Pylon of Xephelous…

Holloways
Floating randomly in swirling, turbulent water between high walls. Hidden low level currents occasionally pull you below the water level but the life jacket eventually pulls you back to the surface. To the north is a stairway leading up out of the water.
-> n
Floating Platform
A floating platform at the base of a pylon. Attached to the side of the pylon is a ladder.
Exits: -S– ——– UD
-> u
Pylon of Xephelous
You are on a small ledge commanding a spectacular view of the surrounding country. Unfortunately, the vistas are quite depressing, showing as they do, a world of total devastation. There are extensive earthworks creating a lunar landscape of deep trenches and spoil strewn with filth and rubbish and smouldering heaps of rotting flesh. High above you is a wire cable. Suspended from the cable is a maintenance cage. A ladder leads down the pylon from the ledge.
Exits: —- ——– -D
The maintenance cage contains:
a nickel key

…and there is a very similarly named pylon in a poem from way back in Phase 9.

Report of the Vlandorf Expeditionary Force
Date: 27 November 1957

How long is it since we took a good look?
Could we ever find what we were looking for?
Once we analysed the text and found the missing “the”.
Luckily that led us to the location of the pylon.
Another thing that we should have thought of.
Unless we had made that expedition to Xepherous.
Xepherous gave us lots of clues as to when.
Eventually, though, we may just end up floating.

Your humble servant Obcequs, the Tharp of Tranydore.

Look at the last word of each line: Look for the pylon of Xepherous when floating. If there’s some extra connected material amongst the other documents that hints at the zig-zag path of the maze, I haven’t found it. (The fact it is a zig-zag means it might not even be specific directions like we’ve had on other mazes.)

Moving on, you can grab the nickel key from the cage and BOARD it (not CLIMB or other verbs I tried).

Your enormous bulk causes the ancient brake mechanism of the lightweight cage, which was quietly suffering the ravages of time and rust, to shear completely, releasing the movement restraint from the trolley supporting the maintenance cage. It rolls down the cable, which due to its age, starts to stretch ominously. As the cage reaches its nadir it smashes into the ground disgorging its heaviest occupant (you) most unceremoniously. The relief from your great weight causes the cage and its contents to fly skyward, releasing it from the cable bogie and hurling it off the cable into the surrounding countryside.

Unfortunately, the nickel key doesn’t fit into anything else in the phase 15 area. There are many locked doors in the tall building…

-> u
Landing
A small diffusely lit area with stairways leading up and down. In the west wall is a pair of swing doors. Painted on each door is a large number 1.
Exits: —- ——– UD
-> u
Landing
A small dimly lit area with stairways leading up and down. In the west wall is a pair of swing doors. Painted on each door is a large number 2.
Exits: —- ——– UD
-> u
Landing
A small dimly lit area with stairways leading up and down. In the west wall is a pair of swing doors. Painted on each door is a large number 3.
Exits: —- ——– UD

…but alas. I guess it’s for phase 16?

Speaking of the building, we’re stuck on the roof-heating depression-projector that falls on your head section.

-> put chip basket in depression
Done.
A strange ethereal humming noise eminates from underneath the plexiglass. The plexiglass starts to glow, first red, then orange then white. You smell the acrid stench of burning from a long uncleaned surface. You appear to have discovered an automatic induction hob. Bang! A faulty one too. The food detection system seems to have inappropriately calculated the cooking temperature required resulting in some overheating, thereby welding the chip basket to the surface of the plexiglass.

Placing something vinyl (there’s a vinyl cup, beaker, and spoon in a cabinet) will cause it to make a melted pool, but otherwise everything we’ve tried has vaporized. The asbestos bag would be quite promising but it doesn’t fit. This all suggests there’s some item there is missing, which is not unlikely, because we know we’re missing at least one section from all the past phases.

Let me loop back and talk about tickets.

You are carrying:
  a lime ticket
  a lemon ticket
  a strawberry ticket
-> read strawberry ticket
The strawberry-coloured ticket is very faded but appears to allow journeys from Egham Station to any destination in the local Western Transit Loop. The duration of validity appears to be perpetual.

We found the lime ticket at phase 9 (in the same cabinet that had the automaton), the strawberry ticket at phase 11 (the lake) and the lemon ticket at phase 13 (the dark maze). Each corresponded to a different station, suggesting to me perhaps there were more; some gentle inquiry with the authors led me to find out the are five tickets from phases 9 to 14.

Since this information we’ve found one of the tickets (in phase 14), but are still missing one. If we assume a phase has at most one ticket (not a safe assumption, but it is a starting point at least) then phase 10 and 12 and 14 were the ones worth study; it turns out there was already lingering suspicion something was missing with phase 14, so I’ll discuss what happened in detail and go back to talking about 10 and 12.

That sequence with Old Nick -> Sataniacha -> Goat Stall -> etc. was a series of riddles which all turned out to have triangular numbers as their answers. It turns out to be useful to look closely at the text that happens when one of the riddles is solved:

‘0’
There is a tremendous grinding of gears and the hiss of compressed gas escaping as the floor shakes violently, closely followed by the lower part of one of the walls lowering out of sight.

The trick here is that this setup is over another one — notice the “Prototype” room marked on the map in blue. It is originally dark. After solving the first riddle:

Prototype
An area with a low ceiling. The feeble ambient lighting appears to be seeping through the ceiling.
Exits: N— ——– —

That seemed to be that, although it was a very curious stub indeed.

There used to be a way through, but it was blocked by the sliding of the wall when solving a riddle! When the room is still dark, you can navigate through, and it turns out the steps to get through are identical to the steps it takes to pass through the riddle rooms. It’s another reverse-info puzzle — you really need to have the entire layout of the riddle sequence in order for the dark layout sequence to make sense. That is, you have to block off the dark maze (making the dark maze unsolvable, but only in one quantum time-branch) in order to solve the dark maze.

I just cut and paste my walkthrough from the riddle section, which leads the player avatar to amusingly say answers to riddles that do nothing. (I mean, I could cut out the say statements, but overall move efficiency is not really a concern in this game.)

-> say 0;e;say -1;n;say 3;e;say -6;s;say 10;s
‘0’
You are in the dark.
‘-1’
You are in the dark.
‘3’
You are in the dark.
‘-6′
You are in the dark.
’10’
You are in the dark.

Curiously, the revelation here (from commenter K) came from an update to the game. The game has still been getting regular updates on the webpage and the most recent update mentions preventing brute force from working on phase 14. This led K to suspect brute force was related to navigating in the dark, leading to the solution! However, the message was referring to the next section after the dark one.

Looking Up Satan’s Bumhole
A small room with a low ceiling. The feeble ambient lighting appears to be seeping through the ceiling. There is a dark and foreboding stairway leading downwards.
Exits: -S– ——– -D
-> d
Underpass
You are in a narrow passageway very poorly lit from a room at the top of a staircase.
Exits: -S– ——– U-
-> s
Underpass
You are in a narrow passageway very poorly lit from an exit to the west.
Exits: N–W ——– —
-> w
Quadrangle
A square alcove off to one side of a large open area in a huge cavern cut from rock with lighting suspended from a very high ceiling. There is a vast lit area to the west but a dark and foreboding exit to the east. Affixed to the north wall is a poster.
Exits: –EW ——– —
-> read poster
Visit Jock’s Bar

Market Street next to the Seck’s Shop

Liquor in the Front

Poker in the Rear

Spit-roasts a speciality every Saturday

This leads to a 3 by 5 grid of rooms.

Each room is a “large open area” with some kind of artifact, but only one of the rooms I could refer to the artifact:

Blake
A large open area in a huge cavern cut from rock with lighting suspended from a very high ceiling. In the centre of the room is a spectacular sarcophagus.
Exits: -SEW —-SESW —
-> test sarcophagus
Begin test.
LOOK AT INTEREST
The sarcophagus glisters and sparkles in a most tremendous way. You are bedazzled and, not to a small degree, hypnotised by the beauty of the object. Strange that such wonder should be associated with the morbidity of death. Any road up, you may be interested in the inscription on the side of the gaudy object which reads:
The Most Exulted
The Highmost
The Leader of Freed Men
The Champion of the Underdog
The Most Betrayed of All
Put to Death this Day
ABCDXY0123789
By Federation Termination Order
May his Magnificence Rest in Peace

This might be related to the scribble back in the manor of Phase 9.

-> read scribble
It appears that a builder from some distant time in the past (the language appears to be ancient estuarine) has left his calculations inscribed for posterity on the wall.

Wifdf = AX
Hiftf = BY
Lemff = 9782C310

0123789 also is mentioned in the dark maze:

It could be that 0123789 is a number pure and simple, representing, say, the number of days since a given start point, possibly denoted by some other equation. Alternatively, it could be symbolic, with, for example, 9 and 0 denoting some simple code, one that often stares people in the face.

I’m also suspecting some signifcance to the the rooms in the grid beyond what is visible, because afterwards is a section of rooms with another 3 by 5 grid, kind of.

I’m honestly very puzzled what’s going on — all these rooms are “poorly lit hovels” and there are rooms that appear to be dead ends but if you revisit them they suddenly have exits appear.

Cataract
Cramped, poorly lit hovel.
Exits: N-EW NENW—- —
-> e
Arc of Oblivion
Cramped, poorly lit hovel.
Exits: N–W –NW–SW —

At the end is another “hovel room”, the Archive of Angst, which has a plum ticket. At least in version 10.20! If you have upgraded, something different appears.

Archive of Angst
Cramped, poorly lit, smelly hovel. This room appears to have been partitioned from a previously larger room as, incongruously, there is a brass plate set off-centre in one wall. The plate features a grille under which is an engraved instruction. Sprayed across one wall is a graffito that reads: “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”.

To explain what’s going on, I’ll just let the authors take over:

The brute force referenced on the website News page was the method for obtaining the route to the Archive of Angst.
There is a puzzle (not yet solved) that reveals the route to the Archive of Angst.
The tweak applied in 10.21 makes it necessary to solve the puzzle in order to get past the new grille.
You can still brute force the route but it doesn’t give you the complete solution.
If you have a saved game with the plum ticket available then you can continue with that.
If you transition from Phase 13 to Phase 14 then you will need to solve the grille puzzle to get the ticket.
It’s more for new players than the current group of expert game players (although it gives them something more to think about).

In other words, there’s some kind of puzzle that’s supposed to be happening — probably you need to step in the right rooms — in order to arrive properly at the plum ticket. However, it seems we also have the author’s blessing to keep moving if we got the plum ticket through the grace of playing with a prior version. This is unlike what happened earlier with a bug that let us jump straight to phase 17 without solving anything in the 9-16 section; the puzzle does work as originally designed, just it is easy to “luck out”. I would still like to retro-solve the puzzle, especially if it crosses-off some of the clues, because that means less clues to consider in solving other puzzles. However, I’m still moving on for the moment as if I’ve found the plum ticket.

So now: where is that fifth ticket? Neither phase 10 nor phase 12 seem that promising. Phase 10 had the theater fire and the giant crypto-crossword layout, phase 12 had the big Mastermind board. Probably the most suspicious “unfinished” part in 12 is a waterfall that traps you:

Vision of Moisture
The path here has been cut into the side of a mountain. The path runs from north to south, but to the north your passage is obscured by a most beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall.
Exits: NS– ——– —
-> n
Waterfall
You are standing in a most wonderful, beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall. The water has a wonderful cleansing effect but the sheer force of the water is totally disorienting.

This waterfall only is activated at full blast because of the spigot being turned on in phase 11. However, even without the waterfall active, you still get stuck in this section.

Waterfall
You are standing in a most wonderful, beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall. The water has a wonderful cleansing effect but the force of the water is quite disorienting. To the east is a dark and foreboding cave.
Exits: N-E- ——– —
-> e
Retreat to Desiccation
The cave is dark and foreboding, very gloomy and grey, most suffocating in its cloying damp atmosphere.
Exits: —W ——– —
There is a stone tablet here
-> read tablet
The tablet appears to have been engraved at some time in the past but the ravages of time have caused much distress to the surface of the stone. However, a little of the inscription is still legible.
On one side: 6, 26, 10, 11.
On the reverse side: M, V, X, Z.
-> w
Waterfall
-> n
Irriguous Cul-de-sac
The path here has been cut into the side of a mountain. The path runs from north to south but becomes too narrow for further passage to the north.
Exits: -S– ——– —

Really, the whole point behind the waterfall activating seems to be to trap people who solved phase 11 before exploring 12; if you’ve not seen the cave, then you won’t get the clue about the crypto-crossword puzzle (on the stone tablet) because it now gets blocked by the waterfall. Having a blocked exit in both cases suggests to me this is really meant to be a one-way exploration spot, like the sewers in phase 9.

One last thing to mention: in my recent 1982 recap I announced I would be folding up with Ferret at the end of January. I still plan to stick to that, essentially: if I’m not done before the end of the month, the only other post I will allow myself to make is one with “Finished” or the like. Progress can still happen in the comments. While I know my readers do like my ultra-long-game writeups, things have gone on long enough to be a strain and I really need to be getting on with some more 1982 games.

Setting a time limit also serves as a good incentive to try to push to the end. This seems like a dangerous thing to say for Ferret, but I don’t think we’re that far away.

(Prior posts on Ferret in chronological order here, and in case you’re curious, we’re now at Part 34.)

The lake is defeated! (Probably.)

A 1977 Data General Eclipse MV 7800 Dual Mode Controller Board.

Last time I had arrived at a mysterious “Control Center” after moving past an airlock under a lake.

Control Centre
This is a large area that has been thoroughly ransacked. Only a few items of the original equipment remain, possibly because they appear to be immovable or of little value. Attached to one wall are a green button and a red button together with an electrical contact breaker. Near to the green button is a tiny slot. To the right of the slot, embedded in the wall, is a copper spigot. Set in the middle of the floor is a curved pipe surmounted by a big rusty wheel. There are tunnels leaving the area to north and south.

Past this there was a tower that you could climb in order to see a dam with a hole letting out water…

This circular area has a staircase leading down into the base of the tower. Your position commands a tremendous view of a wide lake surrounded by high mountains. One end of the lake disappears into mountains but at the other end is a dam. The concrete wall of the dam appears to be damaged as there is a vee-shaped disruption to the integrity of the wall that allows a torrent of water to flow out of the lake and away.

…and a waterfall, where entering the waterfall essentially sticks the player and forces them to restore a saved game.

Waterfall
You are standing in a most wonderful, beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall. The water has a wonderful cleansing effect but the sheer force of the water is totally disorienting.

Recapping my item list, I had put a “long duralium spanner” in the pocket of the diving suit I had used to enter the airlock, but otherwise wasn’t able to bring in any outside items. I also had access to a “PVC Bin” and an inflatable dinghy in a side room. None of these caused any effect from the parts of the Control Center. I tried pushing the buttons in various sequences, patterned and not. I tried turning on and off the spigot. I tried with and without pulling the contact breaker. I tried turning the wheel at various intervals.

-> push red
Click.
-> pull breaker
The contact breaker snaps downwards viciously, nearly smashing your fingers.
-> turn wheel with spanner
It won’t budge.
-> turn spigot
Done.
-> turn spigot
Undone.
-> push green
Click.

There’s also the “slot” in the description but the only plausible item to be slotted in was the spanner, which didn’t fit. So I switched to the assumption I was missing an item, and starting messing around with a “hogshead” (large cask) by the lake and seeing if I could get it to float over to the other side of the lake where the dam was. Mind you, the dam is placed such that you can’t actually reach the lake water, but I was low on options.

-> push off hogshead
It’s a bit of struggle given the weight of the hogshead, the roughness of the terrain and the unwieldy size of the barrel but eventually success is achieved. The hogshead is bobbing gently in the lake water.
-> get on hogsheqad
You are in the hogshead.
Lake
You are wallowing around in a hogshead on a beautiful lake. In the middle of the lake is an island.

The above works if you have no items, and no items stuffed in the hogshead. But you’re also stuck, and eventually float to your death:

Geronimo! Over the dam we go and you experience the sheer thrill of flying down a waterfall in a barrel. Unfortunately, the hogshead does not appear to have any form of braking (breaking yes, braking no). A fact that becomes strikingly evident as the hogshead explodes as it encounters a rather substantial rock outcrop snuggling under some shallow water at the base of the dam.
You have been smashed to smithereens.

It is still faintly possible — because the hogshead passes by the Treasure Island where we blew up a rock a little while back and got stuck underground — that there’s some relation to that, but I expect this is simply an extended red herring, as it turns out I was making things more complicated than I needed.

The diving suit has a second pocket!

-> look in suit
Peering inside you can see:
a comb pocket
which contains
a long duralium spanner
a coin pocket

The reason I missed this is a.) I had learned about the pocket second-hand, rather than seeing a direct message and more importantly b.) the game is very picky when it comes to verbs for looking at things. Specifically, LOOK AT, LOOK THROUGH, LOOK UNDER, and EXAMINE don’t work; the first three are included under the TEST verb (which if you remember, tries a whole bunch of verbs all at once). LOOK IN wasn’t included, and while I’ve used it with containers without prompting, I didn’t think of the suit as a container.

The coin pocket is enough to fit a “a tiny rectangle of mica” that I had been toting around — this is back when we solved the giant crypto-crossword and we got a code that got put into a keypad — and to the game’s credit, I almost immediately realized this had to be the item that I needed. Tucking it in my coin pocket, I went back to the control center:

-> put mica in slot
Done.
-> pull breaker
The contact breaker snaps downwards viciously, nearly smashing your fingers.
-> push green
Click. Off in the distance a tremendous rumbling starts and then gradually mutes to a distant hum.
-> turn wheel with spanner
Eek, eek, squeak, squeak and other onomatopoeias. The wheel requires a tremendous effort to turn. Once turned a distant whine appears to emanate from an unknown source.

This slows down the waterfall and lets you pass through, even finding a secret location in the process.

Waterfall
You are standing in a most wonderful, beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall. The water has a wonderful cleansing effect.
Exits: -SEW ——– —
-> s
Venus Crux
You are in a hollow in the concrete of the dam. There is a most wonderful, beautiful awe-inspiring waterfall to the north.
Exits: N— ——– —
There is a cellophane bag here
which contains
a strawberry ticket

Moving past the waterfall (and a hike of a fairly large number of “plain” locations) finally leads to a well, where two more puzzles awaited.

-> d
Wee. Oh. That’s no fun. Just looking forward to a good fly by no wire when the voyage is rapidly arrested by a jarring thump on something quite hard. No damage done, though, as you landed on your head.
Dog Leg
You are on a small ledge formed by a large rock intruding into the side of the well. The well does not appear to have been formed by hand nor machine, rather the shaft appears to have been rent in the earth’s surface, the contours of the shaft being irregular and uneven. The rock is only a short distance below the opening of the well so there is light from above.
Below you is only darkness.

First, surviving the trip farther down, which is just a plummet to death. As long as you leave it uninflated until this very point, you can carry the dinghy down here with you, drop it, pull a cord it has, and, well:

-> pull cord
Phsstt. Phssshhhh. Phsstt. The dinghy inflates to its full size. Amazing really considering the chances of an ancient dinghy still having enough compressed gas available to do the business. Lucky old you.
-> board dinghy
You are in the dinghy.
-> push off dinghy
It’s a bit difficult to launch when there’s no water around, let’s try pushing off anyway….
Wee. Oh. Great fun. This flying lark is wonderful. All the more so, by doing it in the dark, with no idea of the consequences. Let’s have a hard think while plummeting. What are the chances of a soft landing? Probably not good really. Squidgy plop. This dinghy is certainly a useful thing to have around as it forms a quite respectable bouncy castle cum emergency landing platform. After some considerable rocking and rolling you arrive at a reasonable level of equilibrium.
You are in the dark.

(Yes, PUSH OFF is also a weird verb choice, only used in this game as far as I know, but it dates back to Phase 1 now so I’m used to it.)

The problem is that you are entirely in the dark here with no way out. It took me not long to suspect I had done something wrong, and I’ll skip past some flailing (you can, through extreme shenanigans, take the teleport bracelet with you — it doesn’t work) to the point where I landed on something other than solid ground. Notice the difference in description below:

Wee. Oh. Great fun. This flying lark is wonderful. All the more so, by doing it in the dark, with no idea of the consequences. Let’s have a hard think while plummeting. What are the chances of a soft landing? Probably not good really. Squidgy plop. This dinghy is certainly a useful thing to have around as it forms a quite respectable landing craft, splashing as it does into some sort of fluid. Let’s hope it’s not dangerous. After some considerable rocking and rolling you arrive at a reasonable level of equilibrium.

What had happened is I created an unusual variant of the Parallel Universes Problem, which I’ll recap here to save you clicking the link:

Suppose you are a happy adventurer going from point X to point Z and manage to do so without any obstacles. However, you later restore a previous game (because you got eaten by a bear, say).

After restoring, you try going from point X to point Z, but get stopped in the middle at point Y this time. Something different happened! What changed? Perhaps you had picked up an item in universe #1 but didn’t realize it; perhaps there was some secret timing element that you lucked out on the first time. Either way, you ran across the frustrating situation of being in an alternate universe without being aware something had changed.

This time, rather than stumbling across a puzzle that was previously not encountered (due to it being invisibly solved) I solved a puzzle without understanding what had happened! (This is sort of like playing an adventure with a group, where a particular member of the group doesn’t have a new insight, but rather types things in a slightly different order so manages to get through. I created my own clone helper.) Fortunately, the game has ample scrollback and combing through my log I realized while I had in all iterations turned the spigot at the Control Center on, in the save that was working I had taken a brisker route to the well.

The water is timed: you have to turn the spigot, then make sure you move rapidly enough that you land in water.

-> wait
Time passes (yawn).
You are experiencing a strange therapeutic sensation, as if gently bobbing in water, which gives you slight feelings of elevation and elation.
-> wait
Time passes (yawn).
You feel a sudden rushing sensation as if you are being thrown sideways with quite considerable force. There is a period of buffeting with the sound of rushing water followed by a brief period of silence with a wonderful flying feeling as if you have been launched into free-fall. You confirm the falling sensation by falling into daylight followed by a slight bump as you come to rest on the floor of a cave.
Crux of Turbulence
A dimly-lit bowl carved out of solid rock. Above you is an angled hole in the rock roof. There is a similarly angled exit in the rock floor.
Exits: —- ——– -D
There is a human skull here

Going down leads you back out to the south side of the Lake, where you can get back on the train and leave.

Assuming this completes the Lake section, that means the only two left to tackle are Phases 15 and 16. As a public service announcement, I’ll mention the Holloway Museum in Phase 15 has a crash after all these activities:

-> n
Holloway Museum
A dark area between very high walls. To the south is a steel door, to the north a stairway leading to a raised area. High above you is a wire cable.
There is a mildewed infosign on the east wall.
Exits: NS– ——– U-
-> read infosign
Holloway Museum

Opened 1957

A system of deep trenches created through the woods during the War of the Three Forests.

To confuse the enemy in the event of invasion the trenches changed direction many times with curves, rises and falls to disorient anyone unfamiliar with the layout. The difficulty of navigation was exacerbated by the many dark, interconnecting tunnels between the trenches. An intrinsic feature of the deep sheer-sided trenches was the propensity to flood during rainy periods, which mandated the need for regular and frequent maintenance of the drainage system. Regular users of the Holloways knew to follow the green arrows painted on the wooden signs if the water level started to rise.

An infosign provided by the Trustees of Holloway Museum. Digest and Enjoy.
-> n
Raised Platform
A raised area between very high walls. There is a sunken area to the south.
High above you is a wire cable.
Exits: NS– ——– -D
-> n
Raised Platform
A raised area between very high walls. To the north is a staircase leading down into water. High above you is a wire cable.
Exits: NS– ——– -D
-> n
The Event that was expected wasn’t found; a situation that would cause Windows to crash, but in this world the next message will be wrong…

That’s because the area is now filled with water — dealing with the dam and control center has affected an entirely different phase! In order to prevent the crash (which is just a death that lacks description) you need to be wearing the life vest. (Which you can grab from the dark maze, which is way back like 7 posts or so.) This drops you in a watery maze, which I have solved (see in the comments if you are playing and need help), but I’ll get into it more next time.

(All prior posts on Ferret here.)

Oddly enough, we’ve started to close in on a finish for Phases 9-15. As of the events mentioned in this post:

9: probably complete

10: probably complete

11: more than half complete

12: mostly complete (still haven’t dealt with the cyborg, but it might be optional)

13: probably complete

14: probably complete

15: ???

16: still haven’t gotten anywhere yet

For the small glimpse players had of 17 (Guru) it seems to be more of a meta-section as opposed to a region to explore, and there probably is a separate “endgame” after. Still not sure on a finish time; I’d really like to at least wrap up the 9-15 region by the end of the year but I don’t think we’re quite going to make it. (Also, 16, where we are currently blocked by a ticket slot, might have some new information which requires a revisit to a past phase.)

From a 1953 booklet on Operation Doorstep, making a simulated town to test the effects of a nuclear blast.

To recap from two posts ago, we had left off on what appeared to be an Oscar Wilde puzzle where you were given the initial letters of a quote and had to type what the quote was, with all the spaces removed.

type amancanbehappywithanywomanaslongashedoesnotloveher
type alwaysforgiveyourenemiesnothingannoysthemsomuch
type americahadoftenbeendiscoveredbeforecolumbusbutithadalwaysbeenhushedup
type anyonewholiveswithintheirmeanssuffersfromalackofimagination
type argumentsaretobeavoidedtheyarealwaysvulgarandoftenconvincing
type biographylendstodeathanewterror
type consistencyisthelastrefugeoftheunimaginative
type everyportraitthatispaintedwithfeelingisaportraitoftheartistnotofthesitter
type experienceisthenameeveryonegivestotheirmistakes
type fashionisaformofuglinesssointolerablethatwehavetoalteriteverysixmonths
type geniusisbornnotpaid
type iamnotyoungenoughtoknoweverything
type ithinkthatgodincreatingmansomewhatoverestimatedhisability
type ifyouwanttotellpeoplethetruthmakethemlaughotherwisetheyllkillyou
type illusionisthefirstofallpleasures
type itisaverysadthingthatnowadaysthereissolittleuselessinformation
type itisalwaysasillythingtogiveadvicebuttogivegoodadviceisfatal
type moralitylikeartmeansdrawingalinesomeplace
type oneshouldalwaysplayfairlywhenonehasthewinningcards
type patriotismisthevirtueofthevicious

Curiously, at least two of them are misattributed Wilde quotes; “illusion is the first of all pleasures” is from Voltaire, for instance. “Genius is born, not paid” also is misattributed. Despite that, both are commonly attributed enough to Wilde that the difficulty was in finding the rarer quotes (like Sha1tan spotting “Biography lends to death a new terror”) as K managed to plow through a number of them but collecting some Wilde texts and using a regex tool.

The puzzle resulted in giving us a scroll, mentioned in my “One Puzzle” last post.

As noticed by Andrew Plotkin, you can word-for-word change #2 into Radio Detection and Ranging, that is, RADAR.

This was enough for others to pile on and solve the puzzle. All the acronyms turn out to be military ones:

PATRIOT (Phased Array Tracking to Intercept of Target)
RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging)
AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System)
NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes)
SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe)

I’ll refer back to how these get used later, as the direction of solving actually went from Phase 9 (done?) to Phase 10 and the fire in the theater.

The problem was that downstairs in the theater is dark, and turning on the lights requires flicking a switch which also starts a fire.

-> turn switch
Click.
There is a not inconsiderable explosion as the ancient workings of the brass switch generate a miniscule arc of electricity which, combined with the methane gas, causes a conflaguration that knocks you bodily down the stairs.
Rehearsal Room
You are in a large circular area with a low roof. There is a stairway leading up from the room. In the middle of the space is a podium mounted upon which are four pads. The pads are designed in the shapes square, triangular, oval and round.
Exits: -S– ——– U-

There’s a zinc key nearby as well as a PVC vessel that explodes when you shake it and wait, but neither was a help for solving the puzzle. The mystery of the pads had the triangle give a long beep, and all other buttons give short beeps followed by long beeps.

Some major lateral leaps made by Voltgloss and The Larch led to the thought that the buttons are differentiated by number of sides; we can say the circle is 1 side, the oval is 2 sides (kind of?), the triangle is 3 sides and the square is 4. So there’s something to differentiate them.

Then if we think of it in a sort of binary system (where 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, etc. make up numbers) then the 1, 2, and 4 buttons are for typing the numbers, and the 3 is for entering them in. We were needing to form the number 119 (Dial 911, “a retrospective”, from the poster in phase 9); for the “1” digits just pressing the circle sufficed, and and to input a “9” we needed to do 2 + 1 + 2 + 4 to get a sum of 9.

-> press round;press triangle
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a long beep.
-> press round;press triangle
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a long beep.
-> press oval;press round;press oval;press square;press triangle
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a short beep.
Pressed. The pad emits a long beep.
The podium gently levitates as a hidden trapdoor opens above you. The base of the podium stops moving once it is flush with the stage which is currently participating in a significant conflagration.
Well, that’s saved the crematorium a job.

This apparently resembles the old Data General Nova in form, so I’ll let the Ferret authors themselves give some more detail:

The pads are enumerated according to the number of sides.

Short beep = Add.

You can’t enter the same number twice in a row as this resets to 0 (just to make the puzzle interesting and stop repeat, repeat, repeat).

Triangular pad emits long beep so not part of the sequence.

There are such things as Triangular Numbers (0, 1, 3, 6, 10…) so there was scope for trial and error by experimenting with different values.

The Triangular Pad is Shift Right, effectively Multiple by 10 (Long Beep = Long Add, i.e., multiply).

PRESS ROUND PAD: 1
PRESS TRIANGULAR PAD: 10
PRESS ROUND PAD: 11
PRESS TRIANGULAR PAD: 110
PRESS SQUARE PAD: 114
PRESS ROUND PAD: 115
PRESS SQUARE PAD: 119
PRESS TRIANGULAR PAD: Enter

It will be interesting to see if you think this is the hardest puzzle in the game?

I’m not sure about “hardest” (that’s difficult to measure) but I will say it is the only puzzle that seems to be a fourth-order one. You need to realize:

1. the sides on the buttons are what matters (and oval counts as 2)
2. the triangle lets you “input” numbers
3. the numbers are being added
4. the sequence needed is 119

None of these have any feedback if you are on the correct trail! So essentially, four puzzles need to be solved all in combination with only the hope that it might work.

So no, I wasn’t a fan of the puzzle design, although the bit after was neat: how do you survive the fire? Notice pushing the buttons does not bring you back up to the green room (where the fire was) but into the center of the stage (where the fire has spread after starting). So really, the puzzle is: how do you keep the fire from spreading? Fortunately, due to being stuck on the buttons for long and suspecting some other gimmick, I already knew about the oddly-placed doors on the map that could be closed, which I have marked in orange below.

Closing both doors before activating the switch gives you a route to walk out of the theater before it collapses in dramatic fashion. I’ve already gone on the record as “preparation puzzles” being highly satisfying, and the case here was not an exception.

The explosive and the key turned out to both be immediately helpful in Phase 11. I was able to hop onto a ferry over to Treasure Island, where a new location awaited.

Alright Corral
A road running from north to south with steep rockfaces on both sides of the road which is blocked by a mass of fallen rock possibly from a mountainous outcrop overlooking the road. In front of the rockfall is a giant slab of rock with an irregular crack running from top to bottom.
Exits: -S– ——– —
-> shake vessel
Whatever internal partitions that were keeping the vessel’s contents separate appear to have been demolished by your violent behaviour.
The vessel appears to be ticking now.
-> put vessel in crack
Done.
-> s
Treasure Island
-> wait 2
Time passes (yawns).
There is a small explosion nearby.
-> n
Alright Corral
A road running from north to south with steep rockfaces on both sides of the road which is blocked by a mass of fallen rock possibly from a mountainous outcrop overlooking the road. To the north, apparently blown out of the mass of the rockfall, is an entrance to a cave.
Exits: NS– ——– —
-> n
Cave of Despair
You are in a small rock cave formed by an explosion within a rockfall. There is a brightly lit exit to the south. Set into the road is a manhole cover.
Exits: -S– ——– —

The cover is locked but the zinc key works on it, giving what appears to be a one-way trip down.

Graveyard
You are in a small room with concrete walls that appear immensely strong as rusty reinforcing bars are visible in various places. The room is gloomily illuminated by a dim light entering though a hole in the roof. The east wall of the room is formed from a mound of rubble.
There is an emblem on one wall.
Partially buried in the floor is a juvenile’s skeleton.
There is a rubber ball here
There is a rigid pvc hoop here
There is a birch cane here
There is a weathered satchel here.

This appears to be another “information trip” where the whole point is to gather knowledge but otherwise the only way to escape is to restore to a previous game; yet another doomed quantum echo. The emblem and answer sheet I gave last time; the answer sheet never got solved so I’ll give it again:

The emblem technically gave a hint (mentioning NORAD) for the scroll with military acronyms, but surely that’s not the whole point of the section? (I’m not even sure if Andrew was referring to this when he made his breakthrough; it doesn’t seem necessary given the clues on the scroll already present.)

Back to the scroll’s solution: we knew (from explicit hint of the authors) that the scroll served to give a hint for a mobile phone hooked up to some explosives.

Asylum from Enmity
A dank crepuscular room made from reinforced concrete as if to survive a blast overhead. There is some form of opening in the ceiling apparantly to permit the ingress of light and ventilation. Against one wall is a safe surmounted by a resin slab.
Exits: —W ——– —
The resin slab contains:
a mobile phone
some Semtex explosive
-> type 219934875
Typed.
The communicator emits a beep followed by a ring tone. After 2 rings the line clears and you hear a voice that says “Text Sequence commenced”.

We now had the list of acronyms to follow up, but just trying to “type” the words doesn’t work; they need to be numbers. I (and Voltgloss, in the comments) thought of old phones and how they will “cycle” to do texting (that is, a number says ABC, so you press it twice to get a B and three times to get a C) and tried translating the five acronyms into numbers:

dial 7287774446668
dial 777232777
dial 2922227777
dial 6622333444
dial 7777442733

This works, if you’re next to the explosive, but that kills you. It also kills you if you are a few steps away, and I was stumped trying to survive.

Voltgloss mysteriously got through by standing far enough away, but I kept getting a busy signal.

What we eventually discovered (after some back and forth) is that when the message about “you have failed to register with The Department” the communicator is charged enough to send messages, but if you wait an extra turn, the communicator gives off two more beeps and is now “fully charged”. This gives it slightly more range, which is sufficient to dial and live.

There is an explosion nearby that causes the ground to rumble and dust to rise as a blast-wave hits the air in the immediate vicinity. Thankfully you are far enough away to avoid any concussion.

Going back to the safe reveals we have found…

Asylum from Enmity
A dank crepuscular room made from reinforced concrete as if to survive a blast overhead. There is some form of opening in the ceiling apparently to permit the ingress of light and ventilation. Against one wall are the remnants of a safe, the top has been sheared off leaving a ragged edge. The room appears distressed, as if it has suffered a recent explosion.
The rusty safe contains:
an asbestos bag
-> open bag
Opening the asbestos bag reveals:
a diving suit

…a third diving suit! We knew the one in the sewers was a red herring, the one under the trapdoor was probably a red herring, and here we have one we can finally access. It feels like the end of a long shaggy dog joke. (There was some ultimate use in seeing them earlier — K somehow discovered the presence of “pockets” while noodling with the suit. There is no mention in the description.)

Moving on, the issue with the suit it is too big to move around in unless underwater. So normally we’d go to the end of the pier and fall in the water; DIVE does exactly that but seems to be a bug; the idea being we can’t move enough at all.

Pier
The pier overlooks a wonderfully picturesque lake. In the middle of the lake is an island. The pier is made from ancient cedar planks. There is a rocky path to the south.
-> DIVE
Weeeeeeeee … splash! Oh, this is fun, splishy, splashy, splishy, splashy. Uh oh! There appears to be some undercurrent here. It is dragging you beneath the surface. You are beginning to fill with water.
You seem to be all drowned init.

We did know that the entry point surely had to be the pier, because entering the room gives 50 points! One of the general observations we’ve made is that point-increase usually indicates a hint about an important room. For example, the room near the gate in phase 9 increases points, yet is apparently a dead end; that’s supposed to mean you can bust through.

It turns out the pier’s description contains a very small clue “The pier is made from ancient cedar planks.” The ancient is supposed to hint they can break. Unlike a similar situation in the phase with the number riddles, jumping doesn’t work. What does help is crating over a bunch of heavy items (I used the rug that was covering the trapdoor in phase 9, plus the “security casket” from back in phase 8 that had the card and was now empty) which causes it to break.

-> n
Pier
The pier overlooks a wonderfully picturesque lake. In the middle of the lake is an island. The pier is made from ancient cedar planks. There is a rocky path to the south.
Exits: -S– ——– —
There are some interesting objects here:
a colourful rug
a security casket
The pier emits an ominous creaking sound.
-> wear suit
Dropped.
Done.
The pier emits an ominous creaking sound accompanied by a worrying snapping sound.
-> wait
Time passes (yawn).
The pier emits an ominous creaking sound accompanied by a worrying snapping sound followed by a terrifying splintering sound as the ancient timbers of the pier give way. You feel briefly weightless before plummeting into the icy depths. Good job you took your preparation seriously as the diving suit appears to be performing its function, albeit not too well as the suit starts to fill with water.
In a Lake
You are at the bottom of a lake. The water is very murky here.
Exits: NSEW NENWSESW —

Fortunately it doesn’t take too much searching to find there is an “airlock” nearby.

Airlock
You are in a very small room that is full of water. Set in the middle of the floor is a curved pipe surmounted by a big rusty wheel. There is a steel door in the south wall and an armoured door to the north.
Exits: -S– ——– —
The diving suit continues to fill with water.
-> turn wheel
It won’t budge.
The diving suit continues to fill with water.

Part of the issue is parser-related; CLOSE DOOR, which you think might logically apply to the open door (the one to the south, the steel door, which we had to open to enter the airlock) actually gets applied by default to the armoured door, the one to the north that is already closed. You need to CLOSE STEEL DOOR specifically. (I mention this because I surely won’t be the only person passing through who makes the same mistake.)

The other issue is the wheel being stuck. We had a “spanner” from an earlier phase which seems to fit the bill, but how to get it underwater? (Anything on the pier when it breaks disappears.) I mentioned already the discovery of mysterious pockets. What you can do is put the spanner in the pocket, cause the pier-breaking sequence, and when you get in the airlock and close the steel door, drop the suit; this gives you exactly one turn to do one more action.

-> close steel door
Closed.
The diving suit continues to fill with water.
-> drop suit
Umm, it’s a bit of a struggle with all this water around but I think I can just about…. Oh no, I haven’t. Oh, I have. Silly me. What came over me. A lot of water apparently.
-> turn wheel with spanner
Taken.
Eek, eek, squeak, squeak and other onomatopoeias. The wheel requires a tremendous effort to release it from years of disuse, but once freed the water is rapidly emptied leaving you in a small room.

Phew! This opens yet another brand-new area I haven’t experimented enough with, containing a dam which begs to be blown up with the explosive and an inflatable boat seemingly taken straight out of Zork.

Control Centre
This is a large area that has been thoroughly ransacked. Only a few items of the original equipment remain, possibly because they appear to be immovable or of little value. Attached to one wall are a green button and a red button together with an electrical contact breaker. Near to the green button is a tiny slot. To the right of the slot, embedded in the wall, is a copper spigot. Set in the middle of the floor is a curved pipe surmounted by a big rusty wheel. There are tunnels leaving the area to north and south.
Exits: NS– ——– —
-> n
Maintenance Tunnel
This tunnel-shaped area is quite claustrophobic with little room left for your passage due to many pipes running the length of the room.
Exits: NS-W ——– —
-> w
Storeroom
A featureless undecorated chamber ground out of rock.
Exits: –E- ——– —
There is an inflatable dinghy here
There is a pvc bin here

My suspicion is we can now go across the lake with the boat and explore, but I haven’t done enough yet in this section to give a full report, so we’ll save that for next time.

Two of the mannequins used in Operation Doorstep, hiding behind a ladder.