The Puzzle

The Puzzle—A bizarre series of accidents

•          A fat and disruptive student eats a rhubarb pie—that contains a healthy portion of minced leaves

•          An incessant coffee drinking professor who is currently trying to quit smoking is poisoned by one of their nicotine patches falling into the coffee pot

•          A biology student comes down with a severe case of bird flu

•          An athlete takes a bad fall and is paralyzed

•          A girl is grabbed as she’s walking back to her dorm alone—but she escapes

•          A professor, well-known gourmet, and is always convinced of his superiority dies from incorrectly prepared blowfish

•          A jogger is ‘clotheslined’ and chokes to death

•          A biology professor is diagnosed with mad cow disease and commits suicide

•          A prankster puts emetics in the cafeterias condiments—the infirmary is over-run, but no one dies

•          A warning sign on a ski trail is removed and a number of students are killed in an avalanche

•          A inexplicable icy patch sends a car careening off the road, and through the thin ice of a pond

•          A professor dies while soaking in a relaxing bath of poisoned bath salts

•          A coed dies after pricking her finger on a rose thorn from the vase of roses someone sent her

•          A professor dies from dehydration after his diuretic medication somehow finds its way into his water cooler 

The Intended Victims—An ex-lover; a romantic rival; a fellow professor and a colleague she is currently collaborating with on a book.

The Antagonist—A brilliant, but insane female English professor decides to take revenge against her enemies.  She is a great Agatha Christie fan, and is currently teaching a Children’s Literature course.  She remembers how Ms. Christie used nursery rhymes as the frame of several of her mysteries and is struck by the delicious possibilities listed in the rhyme ‘Simple Simon’.  She also decides, in another homage to Ms. Christie that she’ll bury the three or four ‘real’ murders in a series of random, and seemingly, at least for a while, accidental ones.

The Protagonist—A college junior, majoring in Elementary Education and currently enrolled in a Children’s Literature class notices that a series of mishaps on campus remind her of one of the nursery rhymes they’ve read in class.

The helper(s)—Haven’t decided if there will be one or two, and if one should be a potential romantic character.