Case 103

Case 103: Mascot Mayhem

Celest St. Claire's Notes

Hey,

As I mentioned in my note, I’m sure that my conclusions will match Sullivan’s. That being the case, if you’ve already asked him about these clues, you probably won’t learn anything new here.

If you do choose to use this site, you’ll still need to email Sullivan about the case’s Solution once you’ve figured out who the mascot fight club organizer is.

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-103 to send him your first email. When you want to tell him who the fight club organizer, just include the word Solution in the body of your email.

If you need help narrowing down the suspect list once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the word Identity in the body of your email.

If you want to see my thoughts on any of the clues in your case file, just click the corresponding button below.

Somehow, I think the note on the back and the text throughout the ad itself are supposed to work together in order to give us a message.

I’m also pretty sure that the phrases “fall back” and “move forward” in the notes on the back are giving us directions to follow in order to find the word each line is pointing us to.

This one was tough, but I was finally able to crack it.

Each line in the note tells us to look at a specific word in the ad. When we find the word, we then have to move forward or backward as indicated by the rest of the line’s note.

For example, “Miss and fall back once,” is telling us to find the word “miss” in the ad and see which word comes immediately before it. The word it’s pointing us to is “don’t.”

Once I did that for each line in the note, I got the message:

“Don’t call my house again. My little brother will tell my parents about our club.”

It’s not exactly obvious, but I have the feeling that the “club” the message mentions is the mascot fight club. If I’m right, that means whoever wrote this note is probably one of the people organizing it.

More importantly, I think the information here should be able to help us narrow down the suspect list a little bit.

Of course, if you need help narrowing down the suspect list once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the word Identity in the body of your email. If you haven’t sent him your first email yet, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-103.

Good news – slowly, but surely, I think I’m starting to figure out what we need to do here.

Did you notice the note at the top of the menu that talks about how everything on the list is expensive? I think that’s telling us more than it lets on. If I’m right, somehow, we need to arrange the menu items according to their price. When we do, I think the words beside them will make a coherent message.

Don’t worry – I got it!

When you arrange the menu items in the note from the least expensive to the most expensive, the words to the left give us this message:

“I work five to close Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Which night should I leave the mall door open?”

We’re really starting to make some progress now! It sounds like the organizer – who likely wrote this note – is working with someone else. This explains how they’ve been able to sneak into the mall to leave the store owners messages and destroy any stores that refuse to participate in the fights.

On a more practical level, I think this information should also help us eliminate a few more suspects from our list, too.

I haven’t finished the word search yet, but here’s what I’ve found so far:

Once we find the rest of the words, I think the remaining letters should spell out whatever message the author wanted their recipient to find.

No worries – I just finished the word search. Here’s what it looks like:

When you only look at the unused letters, they spell out this message:

“Mascots Club must end before we graduate high school.”

This is great – it’s another indication that we’re on the right track. Who would have ever guessed that high school kids would be the ones behind this fight club? No wonder the police have had such a hard time pinning down a suspect.

Take a look at the suspect list to see who else this can help you eliminate from it. By now, I think the pool should be narrowed down considerably.

I don’t know about you, but I had a hard time trying to figure out what each picture was, at first. I ended up making a list of each row, which might help:

Chicken, Cow, Pig

Pretzels, Salt, Cheese

Cake, Pudding, Ice Cream

Potato, Sour Cream, Cheese

Carrots, Celery, Pepper Bites

Chicken, Lettuce, Tomato

Mushrooms, Breading, Pig

Hotdogs, Breading, Pig

Tomato, Cucumber, Cheese

Chicken, Lettuce, Pickle

Jalapeno, Cheese, Pig

Pig, Chocolate, Sprinkles

Spinach, Onion, Tomato

This seems like a list of ingredients, if you ask me. Do you think each row matches up with a dish from the menu? If I’m right about that, I think we’ll need to read whichever red word is written beside the indicated dishes.

It looks like I was right – each row of pictures is pointing us to a specific item on the menu. Once we’ve found the dish, the trick is to look at the red word beside it.

Here’s an example of what I mean. “Chicken, cow, pig” is telling us to look at the “Cardiac Arrest” sandwich, which is a piece of fried chicken wrapped in a burger and bacon. That really does sound like a heart attack on a bun! Even so, the red word beside “Cardiac Arrest” is “We’ll.”

Once I found all of the menu items and looked at their red letters, I got this message:

“We’ll make more off one fight than I have working for six months.”

If this person is making that kind of money off of these fights, they must be involved with some dangerous people. I wonder if they’ve even thought about what will happen when this all blows up in their face. Probably not.

Regardless, now we know that whoever is behind these fights has probably worked at the mall for about six months, which should help us weed out the last few suspects.

If you need help narrowing down the suspect list once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the word Identity in the body of your email. If you haven’t sent him your first email yet, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-103.

Of course, if you’ve figured out who the fight organizer is, you can send Sullivan an email to let him know. When you do, be sure to include the word Solution in the body of your email so he knows what you’re talking about. Once you give him the organizer’s name, he should be able to help finally put an end to these fights.

Thanks for helping with this case. I love shopping at Wright Hall Mall, and it’s so sad to see some of the employees limping around with black eyes and fat lips. I’m so glad we’re finally going to be able to help everyone!