201: The One With The Spyglass In Their Pants

## Summary

The party employ all their powers of subterfuge to try and glean some help solving their last puzzle from 3 rival puzzlers. Will successfully seduces them disguised as a buxom damsel in distress. Dew's locked book starts screaming.

## Synopsis

Raphina says she can sometimes get Will to do things and Batthwack asks her if she can get him to write a letter to Will's brother. Raphina reminds Batthwack that he and Will are friends so they should be able to sort their problems out.

Dew wants to go after the group of 3 puzzlers and talk to them. Dew catches up with them while they're sitting on a bench discussing the puzzles in low tones. Dew goes across the street from them and pretends to window shop while eavesdropping on their conversation. They're talking about the group's unsolved puzzle, saying they've spotted numbers on the smokestacks and are trying to work out various ways to "plus" them. They eventually decide to go and have another look and Dew carefully follows surreptitiously.

Will is following the party from a distance and trying to make eye contact with Raphina to reveal his identity (initially forgetting he can just cast *Message*) and Raphina thinks he (in his current guise as Cliffsider woman) might be hitting on her. They start brain texting each other and Raphina asks Will to find out what Dew's doing.

Dew explains to Will that he hasn't learnt much and is currently following the puzzlers. They're now hanging back from a second group who are standing where they were originally, apparently also working on the same puzzle. While trying to keep his distance from both groups, the first spots Dew, shouting *"Hey! Are you trying to get our answers?!"* Dew says he's just waiting to get a chance to look at the smokestacks. They accuse him of cheating and Dew calls them dickweeds and walks away.

Will alters his appearance, making his breasts bigger and walks up to the puzzlers in a seductive manner and asks them for help, making herself out to be completely helpless and stupid. The rest of the party are watching this in horror and discuss whether they need to intervene, but decide against it. Will casts *Detect Thoughts* to find out which of them is most attracted to his disguise. The puzzlers are totally taken in and show her/him how to use the spyglass. Will looks up at the Plant B (in the west) smokestack and sees at the very top five numbers: 2, 13, 1, 11 and 0. He looks up at Plant A (in the east) and sees five more numbers: 5, 5, 0, 5, 5.

Will asks the puzzlers about one of their other puzzles and leads them off on totally the wrong track, telling them to go and fight each other in the Lichen Cave. The puzzlers leave in a hurry and Will changes back to the plain guy disguise he adopted when first arriving at Morrow's Inlet. He relays everything he learned to the group who figure out the puzzle.

Raphina and Gwen suddenly make out the faint sound of screaming and although it would seem to be distant Gwen can tell it's actually coming from Dew. Gwen goes up to him and puts her ear hole close to him. Batthwack asks if it's Dew's book and when he takes it out the screaming gets louder.

## Trivia

* The episode title is a quotation from Eric who was clarifying which puzzler is most attracted to Will's damsel in distress (in dis dress).

## References

1. ↑ Listener, the answer is *"GRAPE"*. By adding the two lists of numbers together and then indexing them against the alphabet, you get 2+5=7 (G), 13+5=18 (R), 1+0=1 (A), 11+5=16 (P), 0+5=5 (E)