The Great Escape: Solution

by Dan Katz, Jennifer Braun, and Foggy Brume, programming by Stephen Peters
Featuring Ken Stern as the voice of the ship's computer
Answer: The Hunt ends!

At each of the first seven Outposts, the applet required the one letter contained by three answers from a particular round. These letter indicated lettered clues on the appropriate crew members' Collectible Disaster Response Sheets. At the first seven outposts, the letters needed were:

  1. O from LEPER COLONY / PSALM BOOK / TUCSON ARIZONA)
    1. Algernon - 9 (JOIN)
  2. M from FOURIER TRANSFORM / MILLENNIUM FALCON / TOMATO JUICE (vowels were ignored, as all Virtual Sectors words contained AEIOU)
    1. Algernon - 9 (PEDAGOGICAL)
    2. Harold - 6 (RECOGNITION)
  3. T from FATU HIVA / FEATHER BOA / NETWORKING
    1. Algernon - 3 (LABORED)
    2. Harold - 3 (VALIAN)
    3. Scotchy - 3 (CRETACEOUS)
  4. N from AMMONIA / TORONTO / SHANIA TWAIN
    1. Algernon - 3 (SUBLIME)
    2. Harold - 8 (RECOMMENDATIONS)
    3. Scotchy - 1 (SMALTITE)
    4. Leah - 2 (FRENCHMAN)
  5. E from ELLIS / EVOLVE / VERSE
    1. Algernon - 5 (MORNING)
    2. Harold - 7 (VIBRATE)
    3. Scotchy - 8 (TECTONIC)
    4. Leah - 4 (DENISE)
    5. Ralph - 1 (DOVE)
  6. R from DRAGONFLY / RUDGE / SABRE
    1. Algernon - 9 (SUITCASE)
    2. Harold - 3 (TROUBLEMAKER)
    3. Scotchy - 2 (SMUGGLER)
    4. Leah - 3 (MUMFORD)
    5. Ralph - 2 (FLETCHER)
    6. Zoe - 2 (RUINS)
  7. I from HELLRAISER / ITALIAN FOOD / SUBCONTINENT
    1. Algernon - 2 (SYSTEM)
    2. Harold - 1 (WONDERFUL)
    3. Scotchy - 1 (VOLCANIC)
    4. Leah - 2 (HOYT)
    5. Ralph - 2 (HYDE)
    6. Zoe - 3 (AMERZGANE)
    7. Ernie - 1 (ENGLISH)

At Outpost 8, the starmap was covered with room numbers, and it could be placed over the EfZ game board in such a way that each of the crew members' MIT locations would line up with the gameboard location where the crew member was abandoned. For example, 4-402 (Strobe Alley) was Algernon's location, so it was placed over Harvoid, the story location where Algernon was stranded. The current location corresponds to Zyzzlvaria Alpha, the red dot above "Home Game." After heading through Outposts 1 to 8, the next logical step was to discover the location of Outpost 9, one of two remaining spaces on the game board. The room number corresponding to Outpost 9 was 2-384.

At Outpost 9, the puzzle consists of a series of clued seven-letter words in which four letters of a second word is removed, leaving a three-letter word in order. The answers to the clues were:

  1. SPIT + UHF = UPSHIFT
  2. TURN + NEO = NEUTRON
  3. MARE + DRU = EARDRUM
  4. DENT + EUR = TENURED
  5. (something) + (something) = (something)
  6. EVES + NTH = SEVENTH
  7. GALE + ESS = AGELESS
  8. RIPE + ANT = PAINTER
  9. PROD + TOE = TORPEDO
  10. LEAD + HIP = HELIPAD

Two clue answers and two columns of the solution are marked as Parts 1 through 4 of the COIN location. Parts 3 and 4 could be read down as UNDERNEATH and FOURTH STEP. This left R_T, which could be the appropriately Brass RAT. A final location on the game board that scrambled its four-letter first word plus RAT into its seven-letter second word was the CORE REACTOR. Returning to the map correspondence, the Core Reactor lined up with 13-0034. The COIN itself was found underneath the fourth step of a metal staircase near Room 13-0034.