This contest contained a mystery constructed by La Esponja Grande, with clues that players were invited to find and interpret. The mystery concerned the death of the newly installed president of Williams College, Adam Falk. The Mysteries Super Bonus (Super #1) was the starting point. It contained a news article from The Berkshire Eagle describing the murder and some background information, and also a pointer to the Police Report.
Several clues were also given on-air, namely:
The explication of the evidence below was written by Dave Letzler, and slightly edited by the archivist.
Who Shot Adam Falk? I'll go over again what I said on-air. Sadly, only LHC seemed to have the manpower to track down any of this:
The first thing you should've noticed was that Part II of Super 1 began on question 21; the first 20 questions (presumably part of Part I) were missing. We said on-air a couple times about 20 Questions being an old game, played by the first four presidents of Williams. Just as you needed to type in www.trivia.to/police to access the police report, you could've typed
Questions 1-5 addressed the interior crime scene, and led you to observe that the crime was likely committed by someone invited into the house, and that the first shot hit Falk near the stairs; furthermore, you ought to have noticed from the spray paint in Falk's bag and the magazines upstairs that he was in league with the anti-neighborhood terrorist group:
| Num | Question | Answer |
| 1 | Who was the first president of Williams College? | Ebenezer Fitch |
| 2 | Where was Adam Falk shot? | Once at the top of the staircase, then again running away |
| 3 | Did Falk's killer break into the house, get invited into the house, or already have access to the house? | Invited inside |
| 4 | Where was Falk directly before being shot? | In the ninepins alley |
| 5 | What was Adam Falk's attitude toward neighborhood housing? | A crypto-opponent who was collaborating with the ANU to end it |
Questions 6-10 should've led you to try to hack Adam Falk's email, which the police report provided. We noted on-air that most people have very guessable, obvious email passwords, like members of their immediate family. Only Falk's son "Alexander" is 8+ characters long, the minimum gmail requirement. The emails you would've found there would've shown you that Falk was helping the laid-off Dining Services staff find jobs, that Michael Conforti had invited the rest of the Falks to ski in Maine for the weekend, and that a mysterious person named Napoleon had invited Falk to discuss some matter at another email address. Only LHC managed to hack this account:
| Num | Question | Answer |
| 6 | Who was the second president of Williams College? | Zephaniah Swift Moore |
| 7 | What is the password to Adam Falk's email account? | alexander |
| 8 | What was Adam Falk's relationship to the staff being laid off from Dining Services? | Sympathetic, helping them find jobs elsewhere |
| 9 | Where is the rest of the Falk family? | Skiing in northern Maine with the head of the Clark Art Museum |
| 10 | With whom (identify by email address) did Adam Falk continue a correspondence elsewhere? | napoleon.the.ivth@mywebdomain.net |
Questions 11-15 encouraged you to locate and hack Falk's secret email account. Falk noted in his regular account that he got all his email at another address: if you checked the forward-mail settings on Falk's account, it would've led you there. Yahoo only requires 6+ character passwords; using the same logic as before, his daughter "briauna" would've led you in there. The only emails there would've confirmed that Falk was in cahoots with the anti-neighborhood terrorists, note that he had discovered a stash of stolen paintings behind the ninepins alley in the basement of the president's house, and that he was planning imminently to meet with Napoleon, early in the morning, to discuss this. Again, only LHC managed to hack this account:
| Num | Question | Answer |
| 11 | Who was the third president of Williams College? | Edwin Dorr Griffin |
| 12 | What is the address of the secret email account? | williamsprez4life@yahoo.com |
| 13 | What is the password to the secret email account? | briauna |
| 14 | Where did Adam Falk make an unusual discovery? | In the back of the ninepins lane at the president's mansion |
| 15 | What was the motive for Adam Falk's murder? | To cover up a conspiracy to steal paintings from the Clark Art Museum |
Questions 16-20, independent of the email evidence, could've led you to ID Falk's murderer by pointing to the crime scene outside. It would've led you to reflect on the course catalog open to the classics classes (which teach you that in Latin "mort" means "death"); that Falk was pointing with his right hand toward the new South Academic Building (which we mentioned in the contest multiple times was renamed Schapiro Hall); and that his left hand, pointing to the northwest, held a compass. That pretty effectively identifies our murderer. (LHC apparently guessed the killer's identity from the location of the paintings, and didn't make the deductive leaps below.)
| Num | Question | Answer |
| 16 | Who was the fourth president of Williams College? | Mark Hopkins |
| 17 | What is the significance of the course catalog on Adam Falk's chest? | It is opened to the page of Latin courses, suggesting the Latin word "Mort" to describe his death |
| 18 | What is the significance of the position of Falk's left arm? | It points toward the South Academic Building, or Schapiro Hall |
| 19 | What is the significance of the compass in Falk's right hand? | It is pointing in a Northwestern direction |
| 20 | Who shot Adam Falk? | Morton Owen Schapiro of Northwestern |
The solution (to which an arrested Morty Schapiro confessed): He and Michael Conforti—reasoning that the Clark has a ton of identical-looking Corot paintings—had conspired to smuggle a number of them out of the museum, to be sold to fences in Chicago upon Schapiro's move into the Midwest. To allow some time to pass, they were hidden at the mansion, and were to be picked up over the summer. They had not anticipated that Falk would be hired so quickly, and would be residing in the mansion at that time. When Falk discovered the paintings, Schapiro set up an emergency visit to meet Falk at the mansion, and got Conforti to lure the rest of the family away to ski. After Schapiro arrived, Falk led him to confirm the discovery in the basement. At this point, Morty pulled a gun, but Falk was able to stun him by throwing a bowling ball at his head. However, this only bought Falk enough time to get upstairs, at which point he was shot in the stomach as he turned toward the door. Realizing he would likely die soon, Falk grabbed his bag as he ran out the side door, and after being shot twice more as he escaped, pulled out the course catalog and compass to indicate his killer's identity.