Tag Archives: sitcom

Puzzles in Pop Culture: The Golden Girls

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In our Puzzles in Pop Culture series, we’ve featured shows as diverse as Gilmore Girls, NCIS: New Orleans, The West Wing, and Hell’s Kitchen.

Strangely enough, we seem to find more puzzly content in sitcoms than any other TV genre. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, M*A*S*H, Parks and Recreation, and more have featured scavenger hunts, escape rooms, and other puzzly activities.

And that’s true of today’s subject as well. Join us as we visit with The Golden Girls and try to unravel a murder mystery weekend gone awry! Please enjoy as we explore the second episode of the seventh season, “The Case of the Libertine Belle.”

During breakfast, Blanche gets a call from the Maltese Falcon Club, confirming plans for this year’s annual outing for the museum staff: a murder mystery weekend at the Queen of the Keys Hotel.

Dorothy is immediately excited for the event, and Rose reveals that she was considered the Sherlock Holmes of St. Olaf.

(Unfortunately, thanks to increased commercial time over the years, syndicated episodes have lines cut from the show to fit into a standard half-hour time slot with commercials, so some of the dynamite jokes aren’t part of regular reruns.)

Dorothy: Blanche, are you kidding? I have read every word Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler ever wrote. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe have become a part of me… “She had more curves than the Monaco grand prix and was twice as dangerous… Her jewelry was mute testimony that Charlie Chaplin wasn’t the only tramp who hit it big in this town.”
Sophia: You do this on first dates don’t you Dorothy?

Blanche is nervous about the event, hoping that it will lead the museum’s director of acquisitions, Kendall Nesbitt, to choose her as his assistant. That promotion would include a trip to Europe to look for rare paintings and antiques.

In typically cutting fashion, Sophia compares Blanche herself to an antique. Blanche then asks Sophia, Rose, and Dorothy to accompany her to ensure the museum attendees get the hotel’s group rate.

Cut to the hotel, where everyone is dressed for dinner.

Dorothy advises Blanche and Rose to keep their eyes open, trying to identify which guests are real and which are actors pretending to be guests. Rose immediately suspects Dorothy, then another guest, then gets distracted because Blanche took her missing earrings, wearing them for the event.

Kendall shows up and Blanche flirts with him, only to be appalled when he sits down to chat with her rival for the assistant job, Posey McGlynn.

Their discussion is interrupted when the maitre d’ calls attention to a birthday at another table. Everyone turns to celebrate Giles Forsythe, specifically mentioning Giles’ adult daughter, adult son, and young new bride Candy.

The lights go out as the cake is wheeled in. We hear a gunshot, then a scream!

The lights come back up, and Candy’s throat has been cut. Giles is slumped face down over the table, having been shot.

The maitre d’ matter-of-factly declares “oh dear, they’ve been murdered,” then calmly steps aside. It’s great.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

We return to the hotel, where private detective Spade Marlowe (UGH) shows up, supposedly having been hired by the late Mr. Forsythe to check up on his 22 year old wife.

Sophia immediately insults his hat. Sophia is in the right here.

Spade infodumps that Forsythe’s son Philip is a collector of pre-Colombian artifacts and Forsythe’s daughter Gloria is a spinster (a label she weirdly seems fine with). He then invites the attendees to help him solve the murder as he picks up the bloody dagger from the floor.

Rose suggests that the dagger might lead them to the murder weapon, and the detective immediately replies, “St. Olaf?”

Kendall identifies the weapon as a rare Mayan sacrificial dagger. Spade goes to check Gloria’s purse, and she claims he won’t find anything suspicious there. Naturally he finds a recently fired gun in the purse.

Rose accuses the maitre d’. One guest accuses Philip. Another accuses Gloria. Sophia accuses Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick.

Dorothy then stands up and wipes the floor with everyone.

She points out it would be too obvious for Gloria to hide the gun in her purse, or for Philip to choose a knife from his collection for the crime. Both weapons were picked and disposed of to frame the other. Furthermore, the dagger was found to the left of the victim, indicating she was sliced from right to left by a left-handed assailant. Gloria, like most left-handed people, wears her watch on her right wrist.

Dorothy concludes that Philip and Gloria committed the crimes and tried to frame each other. As for motive, they both feared their father would change his will for his young bride, and they each sought to be the only inheritor.

Having solved the crime, Dorothy gets a round of applause from the attendees.

[Image courtesy of JoshuaDunbarArt on Etsy.]

Blanche runs over, having received an invite from Kendall for a private meeting. She just gave him her room key and demands the spare from Rose, leaving Rose to bunk with Dorothy and Sophia for the night.

Later, in her room, Blanche leaves the bathroom and answers the door. She accepts champagne from a waiter. He steps into the room, and discovers Kendall’s body laying on the bed with a knife in his chest. (Blanche probably didn’t notice through the magic of it being just out of frame.)

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

As the waiter runs from the room, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia arrive. Blanche is spooked, but Dorothy believes it’s all part of the murder mystery weekend. They check Kendall’s breath with a mirror, but there’s nothing. He’s dead.

The waiter arrives with Vaczy, hotel security, who immediately notices the method of death AND that Rose is from St. Olaf. He locks down the room and demands that no one leave the hotel, especially Blanche, who is his lead suspect.

Before we cut to the next scene, there’s a brilliant visual gag after Blanche is declared the lead suspect. As one of the main characters looks over at the next one and the camera follows, the music rises, as if asking a question.

The detective leaves, and Blanche looks at Dorothy, Dorothy looks at Sophia, Sophia looks at Rose, and Rose turns to look, but there’s no one left. It’s a really simple bit, but very funny and well-executed.

Blanche is distraught, but Dorothy promises that Blanche will be fine because she’s innocent. Rose is more skeptical, because the room was locked and only Kendall and Blanche had keys. Dorothy, unfortunately, has no solution to the locked room problem. Yet.

Later, all the guests are gathered in the dining room by Lt. Alvarez, who lays out the case. He mentions the two keys and the steak knife. (Blanche had steak for dinner, giving her opportunity to steal one of the knives.)

He asks if anyone can refute his case, and Dorothy speaks up, demanding a motive for Blanche’s crime.

[Sorry, this video has been mirrored.]

Posey McGlynn stands, accusing Blanche of trying to seduce Kendall into giving her the assistant job. Posey describes Blanche throwing her dress over the bed and changing into a negligee to await Kendall’s arrival. But she claims that Kendall asked to meet Blanche alone — and sent the champagne — to let her down easy, as he was giving the job to Posey. (Also, he couldn’t invite Blanche to his room, because Posey was already sharing a room with him. They were secretly lovers.)

She then accuses Blanche of murdering Kendall.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Lt. Alvarez prepares to arrest Blanche, but Dorothy defends her. First she asks why Blanche would bring a steak knife to what she thought was a romantic encounter. Alvarez ignores it. Dorothy suggests that a simple knock at the door could have caused Kendall to open it, expecting the champagne. (This would eliminate the locked room scenario.) Alvarez dismisses it as speculation.

Then Dorothy hits the jackpot. She remembers the hotel security cordoning off the murder scene, which limited access to the room. So the only people who could have observed the murder scene were the waiter, the hotel security, Alvarez and his officers, and the quartet of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia.

Posey’s description of events was too detailed. There’s only one way she could have known about Blanche’s dress on the bed: if she’s seen it before the room was locked down. This means she was the murderer.

Dorothy then describes the chain of events.

Dorothy: I think I see now how it happened: Last evening at dinner, when Miss McGlynn saw Blanche give Kendall Nesbitt her key, she was furious. She dropped a steak knife into her purse…
Sophia: Big deal. I took a whole place setting.
Dorothy: Not NOW, Ma!

She continues to explain the murder, and Posey pulls a gun on her, but Alvarez intervenes and the shot is directed toward the ceiling instead.

He’s about to arrest Posey when Kendall walks down the stairs, smiling and gleefully explaining that he has recovered from his death. He thanks the Maltese Falcon Club and Blanche for a marvelous weekend, and everyone claps.

Blanche pretends she was in on the ruse the whole time, then immediately confesses that she had no idea, and is mad about being the butt of the joke. Dorothy asks why Kendall’s breath didn’t show up in the mirror, and Rose reveals that she sprayed it with defogger at the request of the Club as revenge for Blanche stealing her earrings.

Sophia then happily declares that no crimes were committed at all, and it was all in fun. She then cannot lift her purse (thanks to all the stolen silverware inside) and asks Dorothy to carry it to the car.

The End!

[This scene isn’t from this episode, but with a knife-wielding Sophia, I couldn’t resist.]

All in all, this is a terrifically puzzly episode. At the halfway point of the episode, we’ve already had a solid murder mystery solution AND a new mystery involving one of the main characters. A locked room mystery, to boot!

Dorothy’s glee in unraveling the mysteries is great fun, and seeing her thrive in the spotlight is a nice change of pace, given that (despite her withering one-liners) she’s often treated as the least attractive, desirable, or likable member of the quartet.

The “murder” of Kendall does play out more like a performance than an interactive murder mystery for the players to solve, so most of the museum attendees didn’t really get to enjoy the event as planned, but I suppose if they like some curiously intimate theater, the weekend might seem like a success.

As a viewer, I quite enjoyed the stylistic choices. The music was playful, and some of the camera work was surprisingly inventive, making the camera itself something of a character in the story.

Plus the casting was excellent. The waiter, fake detective, and house security are all played by strong character actors who would go on to great things in their careers (Leland Orser, Todd Susman, and Zach Grenier, respectively), and they all added nice touches to the episode.

Kendall does come off as a bit of a jerk for leaving Blanche in the dark about the whole thing, but hopefully she can use that as leverage to get the assistant’s gig she desires.

As someone who both enjoys and designs murder mystery dinner events, I think the team at the Queen of the Keys Hotel did a fairly impressive job, as did the writers of the episode.

Did you enjoy this nostalgic trip to the televised puzzly past, fellow solvers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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Puzzles in Pop Culture: TV Escape Rooms!

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sidequest2

[Image courtesy of Yelp.]

It’s always interesting when TV shows incorporate puzzles into their stories. Not only do we get to see what Hollywood (and by extrapolation, the general public) thinks about a given puzzly experience, but we learn more about the characters when they face a particular puzzle or challenge.

This is especially true for sitcoms and comedies, since they usually have less time to focus on the puzzling and therefore put the spotlight on character relationships.

And it occurred to me that there are a number of different shows over the last few years that have featured the characters in escape room-style puzzle settings.

Why don’t we take a look at how accurately these puzzly experiences were portrayed, how difficult the room appeared to be, and what the characters’ solving skills were like?

Please enjoy as we explore fictional escape rooms from TV in our latest edition of Puzzles in Pop Culture!

big bang theory pic

[Image courtesy of IMDb.]

For our first offering, we turn to the CBS juggernaut The Big Bang Theory. Over the years, TBBT has featured puzzly activities like giant Jenga, a holiday-fueled session of Dungeons & Dragons, and a scavenger hunt with puzzly clues.

So I wasn’t surprised that their take on escape rooms was the same: fairly accurate, but simplified and streamlined for a mainstream audience.

The room in TBBT is pretty spacious, moreso than pretty much any escape room I’ve seen. But the level of detail is easily something achievable for high-end rooms. Also, I’ve heard about escape rooms with actors playing zombies before, so this is legit.

(In fact, one I heard about in Washington D.C. had a zombie on a chain; the chain got longer the more time solvers took to crack puzzles, cutting the room in half at one point!)

We don’t get to see much of their solving, as they allude to puzzles conquered instead of showing us, so it’s hard to gauge difficulty. But given that most of the characters featured in the scene hold doctorates, we can safely assume the puzzles were middle-of-the-road or slightly harder.

However, the episode ignores the fact that you’re trying to escape the room in a certain amount of time. The characters seemed disappointed by their impressive performance, but they probably posted one of the top times in that room’s history. Nothing to sneeze at.

  • Accuracy rating: 4/5
  • Room difficulty: 3/5
  • Character solving skills: 5/5

[Image courtesy of FOX.com.]

Another show that hasn’t shied away from puzzly content is the former FOX and current NBC hit Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This comedy/drama set at a New York City police precinct has featured a seesaw brain teaser, a crossword-fueled arson mystery, and several multilayered heist storylines set around Halloween.

Puzzle enthusiast Captain Holt invites his fellow officers out to an escape room, and is dismayed when the disinterested Gina and the bumbling Hitchcock and Scully end up being his only fellow players. The group is immediately hampered by Hitchcock wasting two of their three hints, and Holt accidentally wasting the third.

The hint system is usually not as rigid in escape rooms. Three hints is common, though many places allow you to ask for more; sometimes there’s a time penalty, sometimes not. Also, the room in B99 is a three-hour challenge, which was a surprise. The standard time is an hour, though I’ve seen rooms push it to ninety minutes.

The group has also clearly not tried the classic escape room method of “touch everything,” because an hour and a half into the game, having found only one of the four keys needed to escape the room, Holt has not yet investigated the bright red phone sitting out in the open.

This is another escape room where difficulty is tough to judge. Unfortunately, we’re not given enough details on the first key (which involves some sort of chess puzzle) and the fourth key to really gauge the room. But despite the rocky start, the lovable team of misfits manages to escape.

  • Accuracy rating: 3/5
  • Room difficulty: 2/5
  • Character solving skills: Holt gets a 3.5/5, everyone else gets a 2/5.

always-sunny

[Image courtesy of Variety.]

Next, let’s turn our eyes to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The characters in this darkly comedic show all consider themselves devious masterminds, but for the most part, they tend to get in each others’ way and foil their own schemes through silly self-sabotage. Although a few impressive schemes do come to fruition over the years, it’s hard to consider this group a crackerjack team of puzzle solvers.

This escape room breaks the mold quite a bit, since the company brings the escape room trappings to the apartment of two of the characters. This is much more elaborate than any escape room set you can buy for the home, and I don’t know of any companies that deliver an escape room to the house.

You might think this home field advantage would be a boon, but instead, all chance of cooperation immediately goes out the window. One pair takes the key to a lock, the other pair takes the lock, and they spend the entire time negotiating instead of solving.

iasip

[Image courtesy of IMDb. Because of the language involved, I couldn’t
use an actual video clip and keep the blog post family friendly.]

Once they actually agree to collaborate and open the lock, they discover a list of tasks for them to complete, and they have virtually no time left to do so. (Our only hint to the room’s difficulty comes from the fact that Dee has completed the room beforehand, so it can’t have been too difficult.)

They claim victory when Sweet Dee falls out a window after getting trapped in her brother Dennis’s bedroom. In order to check on Dee’s status, the game runner opens the door and the remaining players consider it a win.

  • Accuracy rating: 1/5
  • Room difficulty: 2/5
  • Character solving skills: 0/5

crazyex_s01a-1170x658

[Image courtesy of Frame Rated.]

The final entry in our comedic quartet of escape room episodes comes from the musical CW show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This romantic drama, comedy, and coming-of-age story often features characters breaking out into elaborate song and dance routines, and many of the songs have become modern classics.

The show didn’t tackle puzzly content often, and indeed, the escape room in question is a b-plot in this particular episode, as main character Rebecca offers her escape room experience to friend Paula and her two disinterested sons.

The escape room is medieval-themed and huge, with lots of great set pieces and detail. The mix of exploring, touching things, solving puzzles, cooperating, and placing objects in particular places are all very traditional escape room moments.

ceg escape

[Image courtesy of Laura E. Hall.]

Though I was a little disappointed that the elements of the final puzzle are sitting out in plain sight the whole time. You could easily ACCIDENTALLY solve the last puzzle first and be out in minutes.

But Paula’s sons prove to be able puzzlers, attentive and clever, revealing things about themselves that Paula didn’t know. (In fact, the entire escape room subplot is all about Paula learning about who her sons have become, which is Puzzly Storytelling in Sitcoms 101.)

They all escape, having found new common ground, and it’s easily the most delightful ending of the four escape room scenarios we’ve looked at today.

  • Accuracy rating: 4/5
  • Room difficulty: 3/5 (the final puzzle is a long anagram, which is pretty tough, but the rest of the room is easy)
  • Character solving skills: 4/5

What did you think of this look at escape rooms from TV, fellow puzzlers? Should we look at more fictional escape rooms and see how they hold up?

I’ve heard Bob’s Burgers has one, as well as Schitt’s Creek. Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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NBC: Novel Board-game Content

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book rock

By the late 2000s and early 2010s, NBC’s Must See TV Thursday lineup was a thing of the past, but they were still putting out quality comedy content. My Name Is Earl, The Office, Community, Scrubs, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock all had loyal followings.

And you’d be surprised how much puzzle and game content ended up on those shows.

The Office featured in-house Olympics and betting games, as well as a Da Vinci Code-esque prank. Community had two Dungeons & Dragons-inspired episodes (which I should really cover at some point).

But those last two shows — Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock — both featured made-up games that either spoofed or were inspired by modern board games.

(Yes, we’ve previously covered the Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt from Parks and Rec, but there were two other scavenger hunt moments, as well as the many game references made by the character Ben Wyatt.)

Parks and Recreation had The Cones of Dunshire, and 30 Rock had Colonizers of Malaar. Both of these games are much more elaborate takes on Settlers of Catan, a board game about resource management that is considered one of the top titles in modern board games.

In one episode of 30 Rock, executive Jack Donaghy is struggling with his position, given that NBC is under new ownership with Kabletown, and he finds refuge in a game of Colonizers of Malaar with the writers for comedy show TGS.

Jack believes his business acumen will make the game an easy victory, only to find the play experience strangely similar to his current problems at work. He flees the game for some fresh air.

Later, Jack returns to the game, inspired. He makes a seemingly ill-advised move — playing a fire card in a desert wasteland — that turns the game on its head. The fire turns all the sand into glass, a much-needed resource, and suddenly he’s back in control.

His success in the game inspires him to do the same with his new employers, and Jack leaves, reinvigorated.

The game itself allowed for a few silly throwaway lines, but Jack’s gaming experience was a clever way to allow him to reach rock bottom and rebound. Like many newcomers to a game, he struggled, found his way, and later triumphed, his day improved by playing the game.

Plenty of board game fans have had similarly joyful experiences.

Colonizers of Malaar, as far as we can tell, is a marketed game in the 30 Rock universe. The Cones of Dunshire from Parks and Recreation, on the other hand, is created by character Ben Wyatt and initially treated as a mistake, a nonsensical result of his boredom and frustrations.

The game becomes a running gag in the show. Ben leaves it as a gift at an accounting firm that he has been hired by (and walked away from) several times.

Later, we find out the game has been produced, and Ben stumbles across it when dealing with a dotcom company. He mentions that he invented it, but is shrugged off. He then proves not only his gaming skill but his authorship of the game when he beats the dotcom bosses in a tense playthrough.

It’s mentioned once that a gaming magazine called Cones of Dunshire “punishingly intricate,” a point that makes Ben proud.

Part of the fun of Cones of Dunshire is that the viewer never really understands what’s going on, so supposedly dramatic moments can be played for laughs. (I also appreciate that the name of the game is basically a fancy way of saying “dunce hat.”)

And, in the sort of cyclical storytelling that could only happen in a nerdly pursuit like board games, the company that made Settlers of Catan — Mayfair Games — produced a giant version of the game as part of a charity event at GenCon.

2783642-2767076242-563bb

A Kickstarter campaign for a limited run of the game was launched twice, with copies costing $500 due to the insane complexity and number of pieces for the game, but it ultimately failed to reach its goal.

Nonetheless, these two fictional games made an impact on both the characters of the show and the fans as well. What more could you ask for?

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Puzzly Romance Strikes Again!

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For some reason, people simply do not associate puzzles with romance. And that’s ridiculous.

In this blog alone, we’ve documented several examples of puzzly romance, including several proposals delivered with the help of our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles.

Pop culture also has its fair share of romantic moments where puzzles play a huge part. The West Wing shared a moment of hilarious, quiet domesticity between the president and the first lady where a crossword was involved. Parks and Rec celebrated Valentine’s Day with a puzzle-filled scavenger hunt.

And last week Brooklyn Nine-Nine — already familiar to PuzzleNationers for their seesaw puzzle episode — added its own unforgettable moment of puzzly romance to the pile of evidence.

[Image courtesy of Indiewire.]

The episode in question, entitled “HalloVeen,” has the officers and detectives of the 99th Precinct engaging in their annual Halloween heist to determine who is the craftiest and most brilliant member of the squad.

As the players double-cross, triple-cross, and outmaneuver each other with increasingly ridiculous and circuitous plans to acquire this year’s MacGuffin — a championship belt in the style of pro wrestling — both the players and the viewers are surprised by one player’s long con…

Jake has used the heist to propose to his girlfriend, fellow detective Amy.

Although there’s a lot of clever plotting in this episode, that’s not the puzzly moment. That comes later, as the characters each share a story explaining when they planted the idea of proposing in Jake’s head.

Jake replies that none of them are correct. It turns out, it was a quiet moment at home with Amy that convinced him:

[Image courtesy of Heroes and Heartbreakers.]

It’s not dramatic or overscripted or full of fireworks. It’s an everyday moment with the woman he loves. It’s nerdy and funny and silly and idiosyncratic. It’s simple. It feels genuine.

All thanks to a typo in a crossword.

Ain’t love grand?

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Mother’s Day Answers edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’ll be posting the answers to our Mother’s Day Unscramblers puzzle!

On Sunday, in honor of the many puzzle-loving moms in the audience, I created a twofold challenge. First, you had to unscramble the names of 12 famous sitcom mothers, and then you had to match them with their respective TV shows.

So, without further ado and hullabaloo, here are the answers!

1. Marion Cunningham — H. Happy Days
2. Samantha Stephens — D. Bewitched
3. Morticia Addams — B. The Addams Family
4. Jill Taylor — L. Home Improvement
5. Peggy Bundy — G. Married… With Children
6. Sophia Petrillo — K. The Golden Girls
7. Claire Dunphy — J. Modern Family
8. Florida Evans — E. Good Times
9. Maggie Seaver — F. Growing Pains
10. Thelma Harper — A. Mama’s Family
11. Harriette Winslow — I. Family Matters
12. Jane Jetson — C. The Jetsons

How did you do? Are you a Mother’s Day puzzle master, or did you sitcom this one out?

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