Puzzle-Making Practice: RAMSHACKLE ASYLUM

[Creamy]

RAMSHACKLE ASYLUM

The late Ghost wrote a mouthwatering pitch for his last project Collateral Jelly:

"An alien fleet makes their home right under a ramshackle asylum because you gotta have a sinister home base. It's a matter of style. And they have a plan. An evil, secret plan, deliciously overcomplicated and with just enough wriggle room to fail.

Enter Willow, Earth's last- and best- hope.
She knows the plan. She can save us all if she plays her cards right. Unfortunately, she's several cards short of a full deck, and an ace up your sleeves isn't much help when you're in a straitjacket."

***

So...you see it coming...I want you to help Willow escape from her asylum cell in what's presumably the beginning of the game.

Let's flesh out the premises for this competition:

You're locked in a cell, restrained with a straitjacket.
From time to time, a single guardian watches the residents through a camera on the ceiling. You can ask her to:
- take you to the toilets.
- let you draw on paper with paint sticks.
- bring you some food. Her tray contains mashed potatoes in a plastic bowl, mint flavoured syrup in a plastic cup, an anxiolytic pill and a spoon.

She'll untie you before each activity but will tie you up again when you're done.

Your room contains:
- a standard bed with a mattress, sheets and your beloved cushion (Uncle Norris).
- padded walls, torn in several places. The largest tear reveals a small hole in the wall. You can peep into the adjacent cell through it.
- a high barred window overlooking the nearby forest. One of the bars is loose. Even if it was removed, the opening wouldn't be wide enough to let you out.

The toilet room leads to several cubicles. In the main room, there's a faucet, soap, a mirror made of safety glass, a hand towel, a hand dryer and a mop.
A low cabinet with a single drawer reveals a nail clipper, cotton swabs and a first-aid kit containing bandages, a safety pin, band-aids and a spray disinfectant.
The cubicles contain toilet paper, brushes, a discarded magazine, a twisted hanger that's been used to unclog a pipe and a fish in one of the toilet bowls.


The Rules!

Participants respond to the set-up by writing entries that must do the following:
1. Use at least 3 of the provided elements (inventory, NPCs, a piece of the room like a cabinet or faucet etc.)
2. Give a step-by-step walkthrough of your puzzle solution.
3. Don't add new elements. For example, if the room is a forest, breaking a thin branch off a tree makes sense unless the host said the trees were huge and tall. But adding a hollowed-out stump with a bear sleeping in it is too specific. Assume all important elements have been mentioned by the host.
4. Keep any dialog elements summarized rather than typing out the whole conversation (for example, "threaten the mailman", "ask the child for advice", and so on, instead of giving every spoken line).

Each contest runs for two weeks to allow for a good number of entries, and then it switches to voting for one week. The participant whose solution gets the most votes gets to come up with the next scenario! (Please also provide a link to these rules).

Voters use the criteria of:
a) how logical the puzzle seems
b) how creative or unexpected (but still sensible) is the use of elements
c) how satisfying is the solution (Is it too simple? Way too complicated? Or just right?)

Entries accepted through September 14th.

Have fun!

[cat]

I still get a sad feeling deep in my heart whenever I think of Ghost. I hope I can come up with good puzzles that he would have liked.

[RootBound]

I totally forgot about this... will have to try to think of something

[RootBound]

OK, I forgot about this several times over, but let's see if I can resurrect it since it's still before September 14th ( ).

The slippery approach Completely unedited.

Spoiler

You try a few things that don't work: Going to the bathroom and then slipping the HANGER inside your clothes before getting tied back up, in hopes of using it to somehow undo the belts of your straitjacket. Once you're tied up again, however, you can't access the hanger. Time for plan B.

Next time you go to the bathroom, you turn on the HAIR DRYER in hopes of starting a fire that would cause enough chaos to allow you to escape. But no matter how long you hold the hair dryer over the TOILET PAPER, it does not ignite.

Plan C: forget about mischief while the caretaker is outside the bathroom. You can get out of here even when restrained. Once alone, you peer through the HOLE IN THE WALL to see when the caretaker is with your neighboring resident, and not watching you through the camera.

You run to bathroom and knock the SOAP and the MAGAZINE onto the floor, and contort your until you can run one of your slippers under the FAUCET. You kick the soap and magazine out of the bathroom and in front of the door out of your room. You use the WET SLIPPER to push the SOAP around and slick up the floor just inside the door, using your WET SLIPPER to make sure is gets nice and slippery. Then you slide the MAGAZINE on top of the soap.

Finally, you return to the bathroom shimmy the MOP handle up the back of your straitjacket, and then sit down to push the mop head all the way up to your lower back. Now you have a big stick behind your head.

You call the attendant.

As planned, she opens the door, steps on the magazine (which starts sliding) and falls completely on her back--with the door still open. An ORDERLY hears the commotion and runs in, but you're ready and you bend over forward and charge him, knocking him over too with a lance made of mop handle right to the stomach. Ouch.

You jump over the soapy area and into the hallway. No telling what comes next.

[close]

[Creamy]

OK, I forgot about this several times over, but let's see if I can resurrect it since it's still before September 14th ( ).

The slippery approach Completely unedited.

Spoiler

You try a few things that don't work: Going to the bathroom and then slipping the HANGER inside your clothes before getting tied back up, in hopes of using it to somehow undo the belts of your straitjacket. Once you're tied up again, however, you can't access the hanger. Time for plan B.

Next time you go to the bathroom, you turn on the HAIR DRYER in hopes of starting a fire that would cause enough chaos to allow you to escape. But no matter how long you hold the hair dryer over the TOILET PAPER, it does not ignite.

Plan C: forget about mischief while the caretaker is outside the bathroom. You can get out of here even when restrained. Once alone, you peer through the HOLE IN THE WALL to see when the caretaker is with your neighboring resident, and not watching you through the camera.

You run to bathroom and knock the SOAP and the MAGAZINE onto the floor, and contort your until you can run one of your slippers under the FAUCET. You kick the soap and magazine out of the bathroom and in front of the door out of your room. You use the WET SLIPPER to push the SOAP around and slick up the floor just inside the door, using your WET SLIPPER to make sure is gets nice and slippery. Then you slide the MAGAZINE on top of the soap.

Finally, you return to the bathroom shimmy the MOP handle up the back of your straitjacket, and then sit down to push the mop head all the way up to your lower back. Now you have a big stick behind your head.

You call the attendant.

As planned, she opens the door, steps on the magazine (which starts sliding) and falls completely on her back--with the door still open. An ORDERLY hears the commotion and runs in, but you're ready and you bend over forward and charge him, knocking him over too with a lance made of mop handle right to the stomach. Ouch.

You jump over the soapy area and into the hallway. No telling what comes next.

[close]

That sounds spectacular