Messages

[potential solution]

Ian Aloser - I don't follow your train of thoght that east is now north. Can you please elaborate? (If not successful, that is, then Mandle will do it for us.) 

I'll probably regret not sending squads to every Bay-area on the map, but...if Bushwick is back to Basic, that one may be the A in the matrix. Glendale could mark the G to the east. So...what if the alphabet paths points to areas to the northeast and southwest of Bushwick?

Because the killer mentions "memories", I'd like to (potential solution) send squads to the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum.

er, never forget...darn!

[Potential solution]

Potential solution. So he's doubling up and going back to baysics (sic!)? Given G for Glen Oaks may anchor the scenes to the east, I suggest we send a squad to Bayside and another one to Bay Terrace.

I went back and looked at the map Jack Putter put up. The lines from the airfields to Governor's Island crosses a few more bridges than we have searched. This is the Manhattan bridge and the bridges nearby JFK (which may or may not be searched already when we searched the bay area).

The only bridges nearby JFK Airport that have been searched so far are the two that lead on and off the large island in Broad Channel north into Howard Beach and south into Rockaway Park.

Yes, that was the bridges I was thinking of.

If I am a loser's search doesn't pay off, there's always the Manhattan Bridge, which is the one between Brooklyn Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge. (I found it hard not to type "betwixt"!) I think someone else ought to call in the search parties...I think I'm jinxed. 

[tolled]

I went back and looked at the map Jack Putter put up. The lines from the airfields to Governor's Island crosses a few more bridges than we have searched. This is the Manhattan bridge and the bridges nearby JFK (which may or may not be searched already when we searched the bay area). BUT more interestingly, the one I thought was a bridge right next to Governor's Island is a tunnel. A tolled tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, mostly called the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connects Red Hook (marked on the map) to Battery Park on Manhattan (not marked on the map).

So it's between an airfield (nest) and Governor's Island (guv'nor), one pays toll and it's beneath the surface. A tunnel is sort of an underwater bridge. (That last one may be a stretch.)

Potential solution again, then...Chief, may we search the Red Hook area and the tunnel connected to it?

Which probably means that my thoughts now are completely wrong, but I'll share anyway.  The phrases "BINGO!" and "Close, but no cigar" made me
think of carnivals/amusement parks. And Coney Island is famous for that, right? They have even hosted plane shows, which might have been the birds flying over. But none of this has anything to do with a guv'nor, and none of it is touched upon in the first theories. I post this on the off chance that it may help someone to suddenly see the light and connect the dots. 

[potential solution]

If we were close, then we may try Mill Basin (yeah, yeah: potential solution) with exactly the same reasoning.

I am a loser - The link to the statue is that it may be the bird's nest. (A theory from Laura Hunt early on.) The troll link is weak - perhaps a troll net in the sea?

I'm aware that I cannot propose any new solutions right now, but I wonder...do we have an IT-departement or a cyber unit of some kind? Another way of investigating this in the real world would be to try to find internet trolls who match the description within the area and cross-reference with missing persons. I don't know if this would
be doable in our timeframe, though. Garcia on Criminal Minds does it in five minutes, but I suspect she's one of a kind.

I also read the words from the police chief as an in-game suggestion to concentrate on the latest letter and not go back to the one we got when we had some errors in the
crossword solution. Just as well - this is difficult enough as it is.

[Potential solution]

The only lead I can see that we haven't tried out, is officer Laura Hunt's thoughts about the Statue of Liberty. Potential solution again, then. Let's check out the waters between Governor's Island and The Statue of Liberty.

[toll]

Back to throwing out thoughts. To bully "those that are buried" may also mean to speak ill of the dead. I don't know if any of the cemeteries in NY is famous enough to qualify in this regard, so the only other options I can think of that are marked on the map, would be Grant's tomb or the 9/11 sites. The last one had a significant death toll, but that may be reading too much into the hints.

Guv'nor may mean any man in a position of power. However, I think the Governor's island is our best bet at the moment. The actual governor of NY doesn't reside in the area marked on the map. It could have been some famous statue of a "guv'nor", but none such is marked on the map.

Officer Stupot points to the word "stay". One stays in hospitals or hotels...any other uses?

Do we have any other potential meanings of "bird's nest" than the Statue of Liberty and the airports? Do any of the sites on the map contain bird names?

I still feel like the troll and toll points to a bridge of some sort, so it feels wrong to suggest a potential solution that doesn't involve it. But based on the above, I'd
like to ask the chief for permission to check out the area of Kings County Medical Center, as it is a place to stay located between JFK airport and Governor's island. (I'll be so admonished for chasing these wild geese.)

Breaking the fourth wall again: Mandle, are all the clues we need in the poem? Do we need to find additional hints in the letter about our attempt to solve the crossword, or may we safely ignore it?

Manhunter: New York.

Blast those action sequences...I never managed to finish the game.

The problem probably is, as mentioned above, that us dinosaurs who played text adventures in the early days are used to using look/examine in the same manner. L was commonly a valid abbreviation. It's entirely possible to make these two verbs perform a different action, but there ought to be a point to it. If one gives more details, why shouldn't the player always use that one?

There have been several attempts at doing this differently. Melbourne House's "Sherlock" allowed the player to "closely examine", IIRC. Several games have used the verb "Search" as another action than examining, usually meaning a hunt for objects. Infocom sometimes had different reactions to examine/look at or the other senses, like smell, feel, listen to or taste. And of course, there is the famous "look under bed" command.

I, for one, am more partial to having the text parser understand several ways of saying the same command rather than hunting the verb. Generally.

One solution is to make "examine" or "scan" take more time or resources than simply looking. That way, the player has to choose what to examine. But in a standard fixed storyline with save options, this puzzle type doesn't really work.

Okay, Van Cortlandt can be the guv'nor, right? If we draw a line from LaGuardia to Van Cortlandt, we cross over Kingsbridge, which does not seem to be a bridge, but
with poetic licence it's close enough. I have no idea if the rest of the clues match up, though.

It seems wrong that the killer should target an internet troll if he's going after the bad eggs in the judicial system.

Captain, may I please search the Kingsbridge area?

Here's another theory: What if the airport is LaGuardia and the guv'nor in question is Grant's Tomb? They would have to fly over Ryker's Island, which is connected to the mainland by a bridge. The prison system on Ryker's may be the target, perhaps a corrupt correctional officer or warden.

While this isn't exactly a Black Story anymore, I agree it's entertaining in its own right. Especially for those of us with another native language than English, crossword puzzles and the likes of it are very hard, so I appreciate the team setup.

In my earlier case, "This serial killer had a pattern", my plan was to update the case with more victims if and when the players got stuck as well, but it turned out they
solved it before that became necessary.

So, going inside the fourth wall again:
This time the letter has to contain the clues. It could be the first letter of every line that we need for something, or perhaps the words in quotation marks: "sadly", "sigh", "yesterday's solution" and "ingenious".

The phrase "my gavel-swinging hand is a bit tired" may point in the direction mentioned earlier in the thread that the killer may be a retired judge. Or not.

We also have to look at the victimology. The killer is not restricted to lawyers, so perhaps he(?)'s taking out someone from each branch of the judicial system that have failed in his or her opinion.

- The Megaphone of Destiny

Can we ask the local police at Mount Ross north of the city to do a sweep? It's the one keyword that stands out, as a fellow officer pointed out. At worst, we can cross it out as a dead end.

And we still need 7 down. I would guess the killer finds the court system corrupted or unfair, so we need an eleven-letter-word for that, probably ending with ED, if not

Spoiler

12 across is LAWYERS instead. But I think LEECHES is correct because of 11 down.

[close]

[not]

This animated series looks great if you're interested in military operations and weapons. It's hard to tell from the trailer or the first episode whether the story and characters make the show worthwhile in the long run, but there is good voice work here, authentic-sounding dialogue, and it's nice to see different perspectives of an imagined Soviet attack. The details of planes, ships and the likes are impressive. If you're not a military buff, then I guess this is not the series I'd recommend. This is the armed forces' view, which means fewer female characters, lots of explosions and battle scenes with many moving parts and loud music playing. 

To sum up: It's really well made, but it won't appeal to everybody.

what was probably a