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[Mouse.IsButtonDown]

Spoiler

Mouse.IsButtonDown -an inquisitive prelude to cheering up a "bright little one".

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Larry refuses to reach inside the vending machine again, but he does oblige by sniffing around and feeling inside room 2A while proceeding down the stairs.  The scent of the runaway teenager has not yet crossed his nose inside the hotel, although he complains that since someone has apparently used garlic cola as a carpet cleaning agent in the hallway it is hard to be certain.  Feeling inside room 2A Larry discovers something that feels like ...little piggies?

In the meanwhile, Jimmy tries his hand at limb deformation by trying to find something of use up the vending machine vent.  He dares not reach too far, but he thinks he can feel a pack of Llama Brand Cigarettes at the tip of his fingers.

You are carrying: loaded revolver (minus several bullets), 3 spare bullets, regurgitated case notes, wallet, woman's earring, blanket/cape, charm necklace, 1/2 used purple lipstick, feeler wand, overstretched latex duck stocking, wallpaper, tobacco pipe, bowler hat, $45 in unmarked bills, nagging burden of guilt, tuft of chest hair, banana boat painting, shard of vendinium, a theodolite and a Philadelphia rod.

[Best character]

It is voting time!

The criteria, as promised:

Best character (most believable, compelling, adorable, captivating, or mesmerizing)
Best setting (best described/developed location for the mystery)
Best word craft (stylistic marks for good word choice or turns of phrase)
Best crime (most creative!)
Best mystery (the subtle weaving of clues and colour to make the story compelling to our sense of curiosity over WHODUNNIT?!?)

One vote per category this time, please.  Votes will be tabulated Friday night and announced on Saturday.  Good luck to all entrants! 

Jimmy and Larry do a quick survey of the stairwell before retrieving a couple shards of vendinium for Larry's twisted-remains-of-bottle-caps collection.

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Blast!  The fact that camel has already been confirmed robs me of the perfect opportunity for a "humpy mammal" Ponch joke!

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I'm thinking the "vast case of a humpy mammal" (ie the camel) might be a cigarette box, or since it's vast maybe a "carton".  In this context "bright little one" might be a "match", and if it is "occupying" the word "carton" I guess that means we should smush it in there....  Carmatchton?  Camatchrton?  That doesn't seem right.  Hmmmmmm....

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Maybe I'm splitting this up wrong.  Maybe "cheer for the bright" might mean some sort of geek celebratory noise, while "little one" means kid, infant, or baby.  That would lead to something like Nyahaha + carbabyton or Huzzah + cainfantrton or Snap + Cartkidon or....

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....or maybe I don't know yet.

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Thinking quickly, Jimmy tears the card in half and shoves one bit into the vending machine vent, and slides the other under the door of room 2A.  But under intense time pressure he forgets to carefully wrap a bullet with the explosive paper!  Instead of going back to fix his error, he wisely joins Larry in a cinematic dive down the steel stairwell to avoid the shards of wood and vendinium from the resulting explosions.

So it's revealing time!  Who's going to show me theirs first?

[Also...]

I'd like to modify my theory of Sinitrena's perpetrator:

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The two crimes required two coordinated criminals, and who was up getting more champagne downstairs before the safe went missing?  The blushing bride whose family connections taught her how to steal stuff out of a safe, that's who!  So Rachel broke into the safe for the cash and real diamonds, while Peter murdered his mom and planted the fake diamonds -slightly blooded -in Ben's room to frame him.  Such a happy couple!

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Also...  Our scheduled speculation phase is almost over.  Please feel free to speculate further, but starting tomorrow our authors are free to post their big reveals.  I for one am giddy with excitement at being proven wrong in my speculative theorizing!   So hurry up and be speedy with those last minute speculations!

I haven't read the other bits of speculation yet (although I'm dying to see if someone has had more insight than I, so guess what I'll be doing as soon as I'm done speculating myself? ).

JudasFm's story:

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I think the culprit is Tania Delarose from Team Gamma.  Race used to work for CGT, like she does now, so they would have known each other.  And it seems like CGT is in charge of transportation, so an insider could probably game the system and move around without being detected (if a cleaning machine was used for transit, as is posited and then ruled implausible, then Team Gamma had four cleaners to help things along).  And there was the detail of Race & Paige's room being in a pretty public space -what was he doing clocking-in in an out of the way sector if not meeting someone he didn't want seen going in and out of his room?  The note indicates jealousy, so a love-triangle suits the motive.  Alas, I can't find any hidden code in the note, but it seems like "SK" doesn't stand for initials (who signs their real name on a murder note?).  What does it stand for?  I bet that would solve the mystery, but unfortunately my mind hasn't been able to wrap around it yet.

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Mandle's Story:

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I gotta go with Marvin Masters.  Guy George seems like he hung around the pub waiting, while Lady Lentil seems to be telling the truth about the dog barking at the car, which is corroborated by Kevin Kline's driving testimony.  This puts Henry Higgins on the roadside at about the same time, since he is probably the dog owner.  Perhaps his dog sustained a small injury, resulting in the bloody dog footprints?  Anyway, the detail that really gets to me is Marvin saying he wiped away the condensation on the basement window to look inside.  But if there was snow on the ground -and there's snow for a good chunk of the year here in Canada where I live -then that cold temperature would cause the window glass to get cold and moisture condense on it on the inside.  Also, his wife seems to have been wondering where he was for a while, giving him lots of opportunity.

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Sinitrena's Story:

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This one was tough.  I think there were two crimes because the murderer needed the distraction of the commotion over the safe theft.  So Ben must be forgetting that someone was absent from the group at that time, for at least a short spell.  The motive for the murder seems to be money: only when the hotel's cash is revealed to be missing does Inspector Coultry determine who the murderer is.  The fact that the real diamonds are also missing confirms this.  The fact that fake diamonds were used to implicate Ben suggests a specific animosity towards him by someone with inside knowledge of his lifestyle.  The most obvious culprit then is Peter, the groom.  He is hard up for cash, has reason to resent his mother (or is goaded to it by his ravishing new wife), and probably heard from her of her brother's (ie Ben's) history of thievery.  The fact that Rachel (the bride) was down getting more champagne also gives him a window of opportunity to commit the deed.  Finally, it seems from the evidence that Lady Susanna crawled to the door and locked it herself.  I mean, if she had the strength to make it that far, why not open the door to get help?  I think it must have been a final gesture of motherly love to give her son more time to escape so that he wouldn't be caught.

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Well, I've probably got them all wrong.  I'm off to read what everybody else thought.  Looking forward to the revelations over the weekend!

Jimmy dutifully drops the duffel bag to ensure that the secret passage cannot be resealed accidentally.  Then he examines Larry's arm, which appears to have gained some sort of elastic property, but is otherwise none the worse for wear.  Upon examining the back of the vending machine Jimmy discovers some advanced circuitry, a cooling vent, and a service panel for replenishing the merchandise.  There is no obvious latch for the panel, but it doesn't look like the bolts that hold it would be too hard to remove, if they had the proper tool for the job.  Finally Jimmy examines the card on the ground.  It reads:  Token of Gratitude: On behalf of the Sisterhood of International Spies and Sabateurs (SISS), our agent would like to sincerely express their appreciation of your unwitting assistance in their mission.  Use this card to redeem a free luxury automobile at participating retailers.  EXP 31-12-17.  This card will self-destruct in 10 seconds. 

[JudasFm]

....And the submissions phase of our little competition is now officially closed.  Thank you to all of our contestants.  They are, in order of entry:

JudasFm with Death in the Stars
Mandle with Stop the Presses!
Sinitrena with Lady Susanna's Necklace

Now to the voting format.  The consensus seems to be to separate the voting from the guessing, and I never was one much for getting in the way of a consensus.  So, we will have 3 phases of post-competition interaction:

Phase 1 - Speculation (now to midnight Saturday): Try to guess whodunnit in each mystery, and why.  Using [ hide][ /hide] tags would be classy, but I'm not going to insist on it.  If you really don't know what other people are thinking, don't read past this post until you've come to your own conclusions!

Phase 2 - Revelations (Sunday - Tuesday): The heavens will burn and the seas will boil and... wait, not that Revelations!  In this phase authors will reveal whodunnit, either as a continuation story or a "she did it, because of clue x, y and z".

Phase 3 - Voting (Wednesday - Friday): Specific voting criteria to be revealed when voting starts (but they'll probably be very similar to the ones in the OP).  Actually, if all the revelations are in early, we'll just start this early.

Sorry for drawing the process out, but it takes time to coordinate people from all over the internet.  So, to get started, start speculating! 

Larry and Jimmy celebrate Larry's liberation with a hearty yodelling contest.  Their efforts are greeted by angry shouts and pounding from within the adjacent rooms, until suddenly they realize that the Dame of Dangerous Disproportion has disappeared down a secret passage that has opened up behind the vending machine.

[Dave Gilbert?]

Don't judge me on my serendipitously accurate logic, but on the final product of the process.

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  Dave Gilbert? 

"top legal official" = da, and everything follows that.

"down-under spread" = vegemite (I wouldn't have known this without listening to the Blue Cup Tools podcast )

"zero-emission" = remove the word "emit" from vegemite, and "tail-less" means take off the final "e"; thus -> vegemite

"yourself" = I

"middle of everything" = L (possibly due to the word "ALL")

"Ernie's mate" = Bert (aka the "creepy one" who's into bottle caps and pigeons.... )

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The Dame of Dangerous Disproportions raises the battle axe to commence her final assault, while Larry frantically pulls at his stuck arm.  Suddenly there is a ka-chunk! sound as the last dial in the vending machine slides into alignment, followed by some sort of prize bell ringing.  Jimmy listens intently at the door of Room 2A, but can not hear a thing with all the racket.  Suddenly Larry's arm slips free of the machine and....

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To Be Continued....

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Exactly!

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Can't remember which parts we're supposed to hide when we post in this thread.

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I think....

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As far as I'm concerned, the more nested hide-tags, the better!

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Jimmy goes through his wallet but discovers no coins.  He does, however, discover a coupon for a wind-shield cleaning, an expired drivers license belonging to one James Jokowi Wag, and a heart-warming picture of him and Larry from a carnival photo booth.  A little nostalgic for those happier days, Jimmy puts away his wallet and man-tear and lends his battle axe to the Dame of Dangerous Disproportion while he tries to jam the Burden of Guilt into any mechanical orifice that will accept it.  Unfortunately Jimmy's guilt is too large and malformed to fit in any of the vending machine's unblocked slots.  But all is not lost, for Larry has heard the sound of the battle axe being readied and has redoubled his own efforts to extract himself.   

Two more days!  Let's keep heaping the stories onto the pile, folks.

[Edit:]

All's I can say is you're thinking to much.

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Edit:  Updated the original clue with a letter count as an entirely unnecessary hint.

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Larry, perhaps a little irrationally at this point, refuses to relinquish his arm to the vending machine.  Pull as he might, however, he can not free himself.  Jimmy tries to wrestle the vending machine's arm backward, but the vending machine is a champion arm wrestler and refuses to budge!  The Dame of Dangerous Disproportions goes back to her futile kicking of the machine.  Is this the end of Larry Coffstopsky?

You are carrying: loaded revolver (minus several bullets), 3 spare bullets, regurgitated case notes, wallet, woman's earring, blanket/cape, empty duffel bag, charm necklace, 1/2 used purple lipstick, feeler wand, wallpaper, severed arm, extra stretched latex duck stocking, tobacco pipe, bowler hat, $45 in unmarked bills, nagging burden of guilt, tuft of chest hair, banana boat painting, battle axe.

Eee!  Are you teeny, Vidiae? (9)

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Adventure Related

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