Ugh sorry for my fail at the last chapter. We were in the top five and now closer to the bottom. I hope we can make up for it! I was just so lost on the voices bit.

: You and me both.

Here you go:

1. Lady with bloodstained hands is Lady Macbeth
2. Cleopatra
3. Puck is the green faun
4. Othello is the man with brown vest
5. 3 Witches from Macbeth
6. Romeo & Juliet
7. Hamlet holding Yorick's Skull
8. Macbeth with the dagger
9. Prospero
10. Ophelia is the blue lady

I would have accepted Ariel for Puck, and possibly even King Lear for Prospero, but no one submitted those alts.

Since the pictures won't show if I copy, I'm going to ask to please repost 's solution below for you. (It was the judges' favorite since it was "above and beyond complete," and clearly evokes the "world inside world" concept while upholding the "still separate" requirement of site rules.

Sarah's quest shop items are Moons, because Sarah is generally shown being kind, compassionate, bringing cheer for others, and carrying on her sister's work. She loves her sister a great deal as well. With Moons being love and happiness, this seems like the best fit. This voice matches the nighttime forest, because of the day/night and sun/moon duality.

The items from the referral shop are Staffs, because Blake (who nominally oversees said shop) is adventurous, daring, and overall very friendly and generally portrayed as one's pal. Even the team he was on for the snowman contest was team BFFs. There's also a lot of BFF items in said shop, further tying it to friendship. Given that we need to rule out three of five places, and given that we are given only two known voices, that means the place we just came from must not be where we are right this moment. Yes, we were in the Gallery of Choices, but we suspect there's more to it than just the room, perhaps a meeting with someone or a secret passage (if there's going to be anything in the room in the future). Thus, we can only really rule out the Singari wagons by virtue of our presence, so it can't be Staffs, and thus Staffs are the Gallery. Additionally, the windows are gateways to different places, and to the start of the active portion of our adventure. Furthermore, we met Madi there, and she is friendly, helpful, and seems the sort to like a good adventure. The Gallery is Staffs.

The items from the Rift Plot prize shop (overseen by Iltallo, the Galaxian Gypsy), are tied to Gears. Setting aside the whole Atebus = steampunk = gears part and the moon/space/universe portion, the rift plot itself dealt with time travel. Many of these items are steampunky, timey-wimey, or even both. This voice belongs to the Singari caravan. Irella, like Iltallo, is an older gypsy. She wants to help us avoid wasting time, and her fortunes hint at the future. She cannot just /give/ us the answers -- for good or ill, we have to figure it out ourselves. By the same reasoning as used for the Staffs voice, where we are now shouldn't be either Suns or Staffs, and so must be Gears.

Suns match the items from the loyalty shop, overseen by Saggitarius. He's wealthy, and he flaunts it. Need I say more? This voice represents the daytime forest, due to the day/night and sun/moon duality.

Lastly, the Gatekeeper of Blackheart Hollow lives in a cave -- underground -- and in the land of Darkside, home to the evil Maleria. It's not a welcoming place, and the items from there correspond to Blades. The place where the Prime Minister met his untimely end is stained with darkness, and indicates some hidden plot, as well as a murderer who thought to hide his guilt.

the Steve is blushing :) well done Steve. ❤

: : TEAM STEVE : (way to go mates!)

Thanks for explaining it for us. None of us would have been able to wrap our heads around all that, there was just too much going on IRL to be able to think outside the box, for which this particular puzzle demanded. We will try harder as we continue. And please understand that we are not given to grumbling as a rule, we generally are very compliant and fair-minded. But when you can't see either trees or forest because you are floundering around in the Sargasso Sea of life....the brain farts that escape sound like grumbling. Again, thank you for your help and understanding.

I so hear you. Serveral of the puzzles make me scratch my head and stare at the screen like this you should see some of our messages. LOL Poor and have tried to explain some puzzles to me and nope, not gonna happen. And other times I'm like woah I understand--though this enlightenment rarely happens. I think in the 5 years its about one per year

- much appreciate the Shakespeare answers. I had been thinking that the blue lady might be Hermione from A Winter's Tale (she was a "dead" statue who came to life in the last scene) and was really not positive how to decide which couple was represented (except, of course, for the fact that Romeo & Juliet are the Shakespearian couple). Thank you so much for not leaving me wandering around the time nexus for all eternity wondering. :-) Also thanks for the really fun and creative puzzle - I really enjoyed this one and it made me feel proud of my (to me) unexpected Shalkespeare knowledge (such as it is). :-)

As for those cards, you really got me with this one and you did it beautifully (with an excellent assist from - thanks) and I am very impressed with the creativity and storyline involved in the card puzzle creation. I was sooo totally confused that (after the team responses were posted, of course) I had to call on and beg for an emergency explanation (and huge kudos to Steve for not only solving this one, but doing it both brilliantly and creatively, as well as congratulations to Chimeriad and Squirrel Tales for also solving it - I am in awe). And you have no idea how relieved my poor tired brain was to finally understand what was happening.

This might also be an excellent place to stop and thank the WS judges who, at least from what I could see given my team's solution, were very generous in awarding partial credit for all our work and effort in trying to make it all make sense. Thank you so much for not making me feel completely clueless, even though I was!

- I wish you had saved those messages - I would have really enjoyed reading 's attempts at explaining puzzles. She is really good at knowing and solving them, but, unless you happen to have a good translator (something I've been working on over all these years), not always so good at explaining (unless, of course, you already know what she's talking about in which case you generally don't need the explanation to begin with :-)) Sometimes, I can't even understand her explanation after I have already solved the puzzle myself. Thank goodness, she came up with the perfect explanation of the card sorting, "It's based on where they come from." Otherwise I would have been muddled until considerately posted the solution.

I'm sure you've felt exactly the same way about some of my explanations of things too. Love, always <3 .

Sending the same back to you. Hope to sleep soon seeing as it's going on 6 a.m. :)

furious blushing Honestly, I tried to sort by the items themselves at first too -- and even after I determined that some just didn't fit right, that Book of Gilded Suns bothered me no end. Me being me, though, I kept banging my head against the wall until the wall broke. ^.^; It does help that I recognized the source of a number of the items from memory.

hush your face, you figured out sun/moon day/night immediately, and didn't think "well that might be a trick" the way I did equally quickly. And you rp very well, and have ideas when I need 'em, and are all around a great teammate. You get to make that face on some things. Never adverse to explaining my reasoning -- though as says, my explanations are not always helpful. ^.^;;

Speaking of, we do actually have 90% of them, because skype keeps records of IMs.

hahaha, brainfarts sound like grumblings. I can get behind (wink) this idea!

By the way, I didn't say that your explanations weren't always useful, I said they aren't always understandable. I'm totally willing to concede that they would be useful if I had a clue what you were trying to tell me. :-)

hehe this conversation reminds me of Finding Nemo

I did :) and helped with the gears/staffs too. We got there in the end. It amazes me that I was in on some of it haha. aww thanks. Rp is my fav part by far. And i'm down with trying to have explanations, but if its based on maths its rather hopeless as my head has switched on musack ;) But that's part of why teams really do help, everyone has a role to play ❤

Weren't there bonus points for guessing Madi's nickname? Everyone got the same points for the Shakespeare part that had that bonus in it, did everyone guess the same nickname for her?

- (sorry for the late response, I've been trying to avoid my computer as much as possible - I need a break from it every so often).

Great images from Finding Nemo. And sometimes I think talking with is a little like dealing with Dory. :-) so you chose well.

By the way - I like your HA - so happy feeling.

Shy is very Dory. Better memory, but more distractable.

Weren't there bonus points for guessing Madi's nickname? Everyone got the same points for the Shakespeare part that had that bonus in it, did everyone guess the same nickname for her?

What Truffula said!

no worries hehe XD glad you liked it.

- thanks

Sorry for the delay. This stuff hangs on--try NOT to get it! Moving on:

I updated all the rosters, and I hope I got them all right now. Please, if I didn't, and someone else needs to be removed or status changed, let me know!

I just sent the Chapter 6 scores to Cutie, so she'll have them up soon. Every team got all five riddles; I can't stump you!

As to the bonus, a lot of you went far afield into books and games I had never eveen heard about, or stayed cloaserr to home with tribute phrases like the Doctor Who references, but those are haqrdly hidden.

The real answer was simple. The clues were each delivered in one of the Voices. (Example from Chimeriad.)

Chimeriad and Steve get 100 points each for figuring this out.

PS Madi's name credit has not gone away. It also has a 100 point credit, but it will be used as a tiebreaker. Almost all of you got it right.

Chapter 7 is still being scored for a couple of reasons. First, the judges had something in mind for the challenge which they didn't get, so they're working around that. However, that is easy to solve. The second issue has to do with what I can only describe as a "penalty flag" down on it. (This isn't the first one--there was an issue with a previous chapter as well.) We're trying to figure out how best to resolve this and what/how much to pass along to you. Scores and selections will be up soon though.

Thanks for your patience!

stares Oh no penalty flag. tosses off a cliff SHE DID IT!