Your So-Called Second Life
by Jennifer Braun
Answer: DISASTER
In Second Life, players can use the Take Snapshot command to send photos of their characters. This puzzle asks for twelve such snapshots, similar to these:
For each of the twelve snapshots they submit, the team gets a fragment of a phrase. So if a team only got snapshots of the first and second requested items, they would just get THERE and DWOR. The results are:
- On the bridge of the starship Enterprise: THERE
- On a beach at sunset: DWOR
- Inside a volcano: DONT
- Flying next to the top of the Space Needle: HES
- In a gondola: OUT
- Gazing into the mirror of Galadriel: HWES
- Riding a velociraptor: TCOR
- Dancing the tango with a stranger: NERO
- Standing next to a CalTech hack on MIT: FCLU
- On the ramp of a Firefly-class starship: BRUIN
- Swimming with a whale: SIS
- Dressed as a Jawa: LAND
Respaced, this spells THE RED WORD ON THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF CLUB RUIN'S ISLAND. In that corner of Club Ruin's island in Second Life, there is this sign:
The red word on that sign is DISASTER.
Aside: During the Hunt, the oh-so-clever folks at Cal Tech thwarted criterion #9 by removing their own hack from MIT. Let us restate that: They thwarted us by removing any indication that they had ever played a prank on MIT. So we can now say our prank on Cal Tech worked like a charm, and we didn't have to do anything at all.