Smaller Projects

An antique telephone switchboard rewired into a puzzle. Players have to plug the cords into the correct slots, which are hinted at by clues scattered through the rooms. Seat every wire correctly and it plays a victory tune and releases a magnetic lock — opening either a picture frame or a hidden wall. To reset, a game master unplugs every cord except one specific cord in the middle, which plays a Star Wars theme (the game masters were fans) and re-engages the lock. That middle-cord design kept customers from accidentally engaging the lock and shutting themselves in the room.

This puzzle reuses the same photoresistor approach as the briefcase prop. A photoresistor sits behind the painted eyes of a gorilla on the window, wired in series with a 240 Ω resistor as a voltage divider into the Arduino. I sampled the ambient light as a baseline; when a player covers the eyes the voltage drops and triggers a magnetic lock. The lock sits high on a drawer, so disengaging it drops the drawer to signal the player can open it, then re-engages after about five minutes. A scarier variant hid the photoresistors in the eyes of an old painting — tuned so sensitive that anyone walking past would trip it and drop the drawer to startle them.