Students get a clue

Lt. Lightning with the femur in Kent basement.

Two amateur sleuths solved the mystery and walked away with the grand prize of a “Clue” board game for each team member during Tuesday night’s Live Clue Night in The Hub, sponsored by CSC Plainswalkers Society and Residence Life Association.

Samantha Merrill, senior of Oral, South Dakota, and Gabriel Guzman, freshman of Gillette, Wyoming, were the grand prize winners of Live Clue Night.

About 30 prospective detectives gathered in The Hub to solve the mystery of who murdered the “owner of the house,” according to script-writer Laven Adair, 25, alumnus of Hot Springs, South Dakota.

This semester’s Live Clue Night had a Halloween theme, with those trying to solve the mystery encouraged to dress up in costume.

This Live Clue Night has been in the works since last semester’s inaugural event, according to Plainswalkers President Makenzy Petty, 21, senior of Chadron.

“We knew we were going to do a different theme,” she said.

Live Clue Night was sponsored with RLA, and the budget for the evening was $245.23.

The grand prize for the evening was board games, and some of the other prizes included laundry baskets, movies and cartoon plushies.

At 7 p.m., the amateur sleuths met in The Hub to eat the provided snacks and mingle with one another. Subway catered the event, and there was an assortment of other snacks and drinks.

Then, just after 7:30 p.m., narrator Mr. Abyss, played by Adair, gave the detectives a run-down of all six of the characters for the evening and how the game worked.

Each team of sleuths had to listen to each suspect give their clues and alibis, solely by listening to the exchange between the two characters in each of the three rooms that were potential murder locations: Kent basement, Andrews basement and The Landing.

The actors had to stay in character for the duration of the night and could not stray from their script.

The first team to determine the room the crime was committed in, the weapon used to commit the crime and the suspect who committed murder would win the grand prize.

Petty said that planning had a few hiccups, specifically when it came to RLA recently changing forms for event proposals, ultimately resulting in having to resubmit forms.

But, these hiccups didn’t stop the event from happening, and Petty said she “could not have done this by myself.”