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Obsolescence


In order to complete this puzzle, teams must submit items worth (10 + 2N) points, where N is the number of "experienced" solvers on your team. You may submit photos of the items, as long as you actually have the items in the same room with you (e.g., you should appear in the photo). If you are on campus, you will receive 1 point bonus per asterisk for demonstrating live that any asterisked item works successfully. If you are unable to reach the requisite number of points but are on campus, we can be bribed by talking with HQ, who are known to be very generous in person and even more so when bribed with Winchell's. If you are off campus, it might be useful to know that the longer you wait to submit, the more likely it is that our fact checkers will be fooled by convincing fakes. Our testing indicates that approximately 1 point per (hour since your team unlocked this puzzle) worth of fakes is likely to evade detection.

Submit photos to 2018caltechpuzzlehunt@gmail.com with the puzzle title as the subject, and make sure to mention your team name in the email.

1 point items:
Caltech alum (bonus point if they played golf for Caltech)
key made out of metal which opens the outside door to a Caltech building*
record player*
cassette player*
hourglass
yellow pages phone book (physical copy)
floppy disk - 1 point* each for 3.5" and 5.25", 3 points** for 8"
Blockbuster card
abacus*
HD-DVD
slide rule*
picture of a team member in front of the old Red Door Cafe.
Caltech PFW pamphlet
any sort of telephone modem*, with 2 bonus points if it has an acoustic coupler and 2 bonus points if 2400 Baud or lower
MIT alum
fax machine (if you claim a computer can do this, you must demonstrate it works)
Flashdrive under 512MB
Working Flip-phone
Sega Dreamcast*
Tickle-Me Elmo*

2 point items:
sundial*
PDA*
Walkman*
carbon paper
Physical AOL install disk
BlackBerry*
sextant**
microcassette**
minidisc*
laserdisc*
Phone Hacking Wistles (bonus two points for Captain Crunch)
Tamagotchi (bonus five points if its an adult and alive)
VCR/VHS*, 2 bonus points for Betamax**
slide projector*
film camera other than 35 mm, such as a 110 film camera*
rotary phone - must be a real rotary phone, not a touch tone with the buttons in a circle!
Polaroid instant camera*
Caltech alum from the 1980s or earlier (bonus two points if they played football or wrestled for Caltech)
punch cards***
typewriter*

3 point items:
Telegraph**
8-track tape**
Zip drive**
Super-8 film**
Any sort of printer that uses tractor-feed paper**
View-Master cardboard stereoscopic disks (not the VR goggles they make now), with 2 point bonus for the audio ones with an attached plastic audio disc
stereoscope slides**
mimeograph**
Ditto/spirit duplicator**
Caltech alum from the 1950s or earlier