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Wootdunnit? A Birthday Celebravestigation!

by Amy Nance

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Woot is officially 11. Another year. Another anniversary. Another chance to get swept up in a manufactured tide of utter nonsense. Hurray! What fun!

This Friday, July 17 at Noon Pacific we're doing it up livestream style like we did for World of Wootcrap last year. Only this time we've straight up killed someone. And it's your job to figure out WHODUNNIT?!

Ah yes. It's all starting to make sense. Well enjoy it while it lasts, suckers. Because over the next few days, we're gonna funk with your head so bad, you'll wish you were never bored. We're talkin' twists and turns around every corner. Foes you thought were friends. Secrets, greed, passion, paranoia and, of course, MURDER. But we'll come back to all that later.

By now you may have noticed that a funny little icon has appeared next to your user name like so. Congratulations! You're part of a team. Which team? Match your icon to the team banners above to find out. Maybe pop into your team forum to have a look around and introduce yourself to your teammates. You're gonna be seeing a lot of each other over the course of the week. If you intend to win, that is.

"Win WHAT, Woot?!" Bragging rights. Eternal glory. Bragging rights. (And maybe some other stuff along the way, but no promises.)

"But HOW do we win, Woot?!" Persistence. Master powers of deduction. Sheer dumb luck. It could be any or all of those things. You'll start by earning points for your team every day. At the end of the week, the teams will be ranked bracket-style heading into the Friday livestream. Once there, teams will face off in three rounds of competition. In the end, one team will remain. But you haven't won yet. You'll have one more challenge to face. 

"WHO? IN THE WHERE? WITH THE WHAT?" Those are the three things you need to discover throughout the week. Then you need to win in the livestream challenges. Then and only then will you have the right to make a formal accusation. What if you're wrong? THEN YOU LOSE, SUCKER! IT WAS ALL FOR NAUGHT! OH THE HUMANITY! Either way, we'll reveal what happened to good ol' Lord Bleu-Grey, may he rest in peace.

OH THAT'S RIGHT. We almost forgot. There's a dead guy.


 

His name was Lord Bleu-Grey, and he was a lot of things depending on who you talk to. One thing that everyone can agree on is that he looked mighty fine in an ascot. Seriously, man. Look at that ascot!

So anyway, yeah. He's dead now. And his associate and closest confidante, Stanley Quire, has invited each of you to the reading of his will during the Friday livestream. But his invite doesn't mean you get to waltz right in and take any seat at the table. Oh no. Like we said before, you have to earn it. Here's how:

POINT SCORING BREAKDOWN

Team forum posts - 1 point
We want you to come to a consensus as a team about what the hell happened to Lord Bleu-Grey, and you can't do that if you're not talking. Individual users are capped at 5 points per day, so you can spam the forum all you want with random BS, but only five of your posts will count toward your team's daily tally.

Main Woot poll votes - 5 points
This is pretty simple. You vote in the Main Woot poll, you get 5 points.

BoC purchases - 10 points
BoC WHAAAT? Duh. It's our anniversary. Did you really think we weren't going to have BoCs? Of course, we're not going to tell you when and where you'll find them, but they'll be out there. And if you happen to snag one, you earn 10 points for your team. Usual rules still apply, though. You can only buy one per week.

Murder weapons - 25 points
That's right. We've planted possible murder weapons around the site. Again, we're not going to tell you where they are, but if you happen to find one, your team gets 25 points. No cap on this one. If you find them all, you earn points for them all. But they're not exclusive. Other teams could be finding them at the same time and earning the same points.

Crapword Puzzle - 1000 friggin' points
There's a Woot-Off coming up this week on Main Woot. Each offer will provide one or more clues for the Crapword Puzzle. The first team to post the COMPLETE AND CORRECT Crapword Puzzle in their team forum will earn 1000 points. Get the Crapword Puzzle template, here.

That's all for now. Get to know your teammates, start forming theories and learn more about our bumbling cast of imbeciles/possible murderers via their bio videos in the top space of each category. More updates tomorrow.

Good luck!

----MONDAY EVENING UPDATE----

Hope everyone's nice and rested up, because things are about to get CRAZY. First thing tomorrow morning, The WOOTDUNNIT MANSION will open. That's when the fun really begins. Inside each room of the mansion, you'll find some pretty cool items for sale, plus SECRET PASSAGES. Sometimes the secret passages will be open. Sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll link to awesome surprises, sometimes they'll just go in a circle to infuriate you keep you on your toes.

Some of you have already figured it out, but tomorrow's a Woot-Off! Pay special attention to each and every offer, because that's where you'll find the clues for the Crapword Puzzle. FIRST TEAM TO POST THE COMPLETE AND CORRECT PUZZLE WILL BE AWARDED ... 1000 POINTS.

That's right. 1000 friggin' points. So whoever wins will have a serious lead, but not an insurmountable one. Speaking of points, here's how the day played out:

1st: Team D.H. with 985 points

2nd: Team Hunk with 885 points

3rd: Team Xenia with 875 points

4th: Team Skye with 845 points

5th: Team Rihannon with 840 points

6th: Team Tom with 820 points

7th: Team Char with 815 points

8th: Team D'Arby with 760 points
 

Also, a little direction and clarification regarding the murder weapons. Once you find one, take a screen shot of it. Post that screen shot in your team forum. Our amazingly talented and wonderful mods will award you a Quality Post. That's how you earn 25 points for your team. Now, we said that this 25 points is not exclusive, meaning that other teams can also be winning them. HOWEVER, there is a 25 point cap PER MURDER WEAPON per team. So only the first user to post a new murder weapon will earn the 25 points for their team. If another user comes along and is the first to post a different murder weapon in their team forum, that's another 25 points for the team. But don't go all crazy posting the same murder weapon over and over, cuz it won't be doing you any good.

That's all for tonight. You guys are KILLIN' IT hahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

----TUESDAY EVENING UPDATE----

Greetings! Another productive day of clue-huntin' and crap-snaggin'. Nice job, teams. Along with a few murder weapons, you may have noticed a couple "Mystery Item" sales popping up. Here's the deal on those. THEY ARE NOT BAGS OF CRAP. What they are: some pretty cool higher-priced items we're selling to you for the low low price of 11 bucks. There is only ONE of each. First come, first served. Wanna know what they are? Of course you do. Here's the list:

MYSTERY ITEM #1  Gear4 PG529US Airzone Series 1 Docking Speakers

MYSTERY ITEM #2  Asus X54C-BBK15 15.6" B960 4gb 320gb win. 8 DVD

MYSTERY ITEM #3  Asus UX31A-BHI5T11         

MYSTERY ITEM #4  ESCORT 9500IX 9500IX Radar Detector

MYSTERY ITEM #5  Onkyo TX-NR525 5.2 channel network A/V receiver

MYSTERY ITEM #6  iHome iP1C iPhone CES Innov v speaker

MYSTERY ITEM #7  Apple (MC769LL/A or MC954LL/A)16GB WiFi iPad 2 Black

MYSTERY ITEM #8  Onkyo LS-B50 6.1-Channel 3D Sound Bar

MYSTERY ITEM #9  HP 6930P C2D 2.4GHz 4GB 160GB

MYSTERY ITEM #10 HP 8440 i5 4GB 250GB Win 7

MYSTERY ITEM #11 Zike Bike SA90083U Saber Hybrid Bike DARK SILVER

MYSTERY ITEM #12 Zmodo ZMD-P4-NARBZ4ZN Sony

MYSTERY ITEM #13 CUISINART 44-10N 10 PC. Silhouette Stainless Set

MYSTERY ITEM #14 Pinnacle BD 2500 PIANO LACQUER 4-Element Floor Speaker

MYSTERY ITEM #15 Dell D630 Core2Duo 1.8Ghz/2GB/80GB/14.1"

Next up, the Crapword Puzzle. Some of you have already posted your answers. We have not yet determined a winner. We will wait till the Woot-Off ends at 10:00 PM PT to go through all of them. What I can say is, great job on the teamwork, teams! Whoever ends up with that 1000 friggin' points definitely deserves it. If you haven't posted your answers yet, all is not lost. There's no telling if the previous submissions are correct, so keep going. Just make sure it's your official CRAPWORD TEAM CAPTAIN posting for your team. Will will ignore all others.

Speaking of captains, guess what? We need you to pick MOAR CAP'NS PLZ. Three of them per team to be exact. Why? To compete for you in the livestream on Friday! We've got three rounds of competition lined up over the course of our three hours (give or take) together, and we doubt one person on your team will be able to dedicate an entire three hours to the game. If one person CAN dedicate that much time, sweet. But we don't expect it. All captains will need to have access to a web cam and Skype so we can see each of their pretty faces.

One thing to keep in mind is that only two teams will make it to the final round. That means only two teams will need all three of their team captains to participate, approximately one per hour starting at Noon Pacific. We'll post an official schedule later in the week.

So that brings us to the current standings, MINUS the Crapword Puzzle. Here they are:

1st:  Team D.H. with 1490 points

2nd: Team Rihannon with 1465 points

3rd:  Team Char with 1350 points

4th:  Team Skye with 1300 points

5th:  Team Hunk with 1290 points

6th:  Team Xenia with 1285 points

7th:  Team Tom with 1255 points

8th:  Team D'Arby with 1185 points

Little bit of shuffling today. But as you can see, it's still anyone's game. Stay tuned for more clues, mystery items, murder weapons and BoCs tomorrow. Also, don't forget to start forming your theories. Even if you make it to the last round in the livestream, you don't win unless you guess right!

----LATE LATE TUESDAY EVENING UPDATE----

The challenge was hard. The competition was stiff. But in the end, the victory went to a late-comer.

(We realize how that sounds. It wasn't intentional. It's late. Don't read too much into it.)

1000 friggin' points. That's how much the Crapword Puzzle was worth. And those points now belong to ...

TEAM CHAR!

Winning submission posted on Jul 14, 2015 at 11:48 PM CT.

That puts Team Char in the lead with 2350 points.

Congrats for a game well (but not always fairly - you know who you are, you turds) played.

 

----WEDNESDAY EVENING UPDATE----

Hey all. Another day (almost) done, which only leaves one more day for you to be forming your theories about WHO KILLED LORD BLEU-GREY?!. Make sure you have that done going into the livestream on Friday, because you won't have a lot of time to chat with your teammates at the end. Plus, THERE WILL BE NO OUTSTANDING CLUES ON FRIDAY. That's right. By end of day tomorrow, you should have all you need to make a formal accusation about WHO & WHAT & WHERE.

A lot of you have been wondering exactly what you'll be doing during these "challenges" and whether or not they will take a great amount of skill. The answer is, of course not! We wouldn't do that to you! They will be quite similar in difficulty to last year's challenge, and will be murder mystery-themed. So keep that in mind. More specifics, plus a bracket for the first round head-to-heads (seeding based on points earned throughout the week) will be posted along with a complete schedule during tomorrow evening's update.

Now, the thing you've all been waiting for:

1st:  Team Char with 3200 points

2nd: Team D.H. with 2160 points

3rd:  Team Xenia with 2080 points

4th:  Team Rihannon with 2070 points

5th:  Team D'Arby with 2000 points

6th:  Team Skye with 1915 points

7th:  Team Tom with 1890 points

8th:  Team Hunk with 1855 points

 

----THURSDAY EVENING UPDATE----

Congratulations, teams! You’ve found all the clues and all the murder weapons. Basically, everything you need to know to figure out WOOTDUNNIT?!

Tomorrow during the livestream, you’ll go head-to-head in three rounds of challenges until only one team remains. That team will have earned the right to make a formal accusation about who killed Lord Bleu-Grey, what they used as a murder weapon and in which room they committed the crime.

By this point, all of your chosen livestream captains should have received a PM from one of our staff members requesting their Skype username information. If you are a captain and you haven’t replied to the PM with that information, PLEASE DO SO RIGHT NOW.

We bet you’re wondering what it is exactly you’ll be doing in these challenges. So we’re going to tell you now.

GAME 1 (8 teams, 4 rounds) - POISON, PILLOW, PISTOL
Never heard of it? Sure you have. It’s usually called “Paper, Rock, Scissors.” To play, your first captain will need to print out these. (If you don’t have access to a printer, just write out the words on a piece of paper in big, bold letters.) Just like “Paper, Rock, Scissors,” we’ll count one-two-three-shoot. On shoot, hold up one of the items. Each head-to-head round is best of three. Who wins? Poison stains pillow, pillow covers pistol, pistol shoots poison, like so:


 

GAME 2 (4 teams, 2 rounds) - OCHOPICTIONARY
Back by popular demand! Our very own Ochopika will be drawing clues in the following theme: Cat Crime Dramas! For example, “Purry Mason.” But not actually Purry Mason because we just gave it away. Captains will compete head-to-head, back and forth against their competitor. You’ll have two minutes to guess a clue. A score of 1 wins. So if captain one guesses wrong and captain two guesses right, game over. If both guess wrong or right, sudden death.

GAME 3 (2 teams, 1 round) - MURDER BEE
Pretty simple. It’s a spelling bee with murder-themed words. What’s not simple is that you’ll have to be blindfolded with your hands over your head. Why? Because cheaters suck. Don’t be a cheater. The two remaining captains will compete back and forth until one misspells a word. And before you ask … no. We will not define it, and we will not use it in a sentence. Just spell the friggin’ word. You have 20 seconds.

Now for the nitty gritty. Who plays who? First we’ll need to know the final standings. And here they are:

1st:  Team Char with 3435 points
2nd: Team D.H. with 2375 points
3rd:  Team Rihannon with 2270 points
4th:  Team Xenia with 2245 points
5th:  Team D’Arby with 2180 points
6th:  Team Skye with 2060 points
7th:  Team Tom with 1970 points
8th:  Team Hunk with 1960 points

Which leads us to the first round match-ups:

So there you have it. You know your games. You know your competition. Do you know who killed Lord Bleu-Grey? Find out tomorrow. Streaming live, Noon Pacific.