Half the fun of this game was creating an atmosphere where the audience could actually participate in the mystery. Most of the time this came in the form of games or challenges that the audience members could try to solve on their own before the actual answers were given.

The ohter part of this was carefully, and creatively hiding clues that would ferret out the Cyber Mole if they paid close enough attention. In fact, if you knew your Cyber Mole, you'd know I placed a hidden clue in the last sentence. Did you spot it, or were you as clueless as everyone else seemed to be in the big Cyber Mole hunt?

Believe it or not there were numerous clues as to the identity of the Cyber Mole. Very few, however, were actually spotted by players or audience members. The audience did seem to find a large number of "Red Herrings" which, surprisinly were not planted intentionally by the staff. People just seemed to find their own evidence whether it was valid or not.

The mixture of real clues and suppositions by the viewers made for an interesting Cyber Mole chase. Here now we present to you the actual list of Hidden Clues. How many did you see?

CLUE 1
A Mole's Knight

In Episode 3, in the solution to the Knights Gambit challenge we posted the final solution image as follows:

The placement of the knight was strategic and on purpose. For if you took the players photos from the front page of the Cyber Mole site and superimposed them over the chessboard aligning them bottom-right. You would see where the Knights image clearly fell.

CLUE 2
Whack-A-Mole

On game night 5 in the chat thread entitled "so let's turn on the music and do a little dance", Jester came into the room and said in response to the fact that Max had just been neutralized:

"I heard max got whacked"

Max had no clue that this was going to be said and actually was worried that we gave away too much information too soon. He quickly realized that no one caught this little statement which actually opened the door for us to plant even more and bolder clues.

CLUE 3
File It Under Mole

In episode 6 during the Mystery of Mole Manor, the clue was there for everyone. When placing the mouse over various items you were given text that for the most part described the rooms and objects within. The office area however held a different clue. The one to the identity of the Mole.

You could stretch and say Office Max... but more appropriately File it under M for Max/Mole is what we were going for.

CLUE 4
All Eyes on the Cyber Mole

In epsidode 7 we weren't subtle at all. The waiting room picture, which showed the map of the united states and ultimately was used by the players in the Great Mole Race proved to be vital in discovering the identity of the Cyber Mole. Every image on the map was looking directly at North Carolina, where Max's dossier states he is from.

CLUE 5
BINGO!

In Episode Eight the players went to the Mole World Carnival. Again, the clue was on the waiting room page. If you had gone to the Mole Bingo tent and followed the games, the last one played involved Max.

9:50:02pm staff_xelda says, "M - 3"
9:50:07pm staff_xelda says, "Just kidding :)"
9:50:15pm staff_xelda says, "L - 14"
9:50:26pm staff_xelda says, "M - 1"
9:50:36pm staff_xelda says, "L - 12"
9:50:48pm staff_xelda says, "E - 16"
9:50:59pm staff_xelda says, "O - 6"
9:51:11pm staff_xelda says, "O - 8"
9:51:20pm staff_xelda says, "O - 7"
9:51:32pm staff_xelda says, "E - 19"
9:51:44pm staff_xelda says, "L - 13"
9:51:45pm mw_max says, "yahtzee... bingo... MOLE!"

On the waiting room page was a BINGO card. Now can you see who's card it was?

CLUE 6
Knowing Is Half The Battle

At least that's what the SpaceMan says in the Episode 9 waiting room. Did anyone look up what kind of toy that was? Yup, you guessed it, his name is Mighty Max.

Still not convinced? How about this remarkable list of clues:

1. Piccolo - Brain Piccolo, the famous football player, played at Wake Forest, in NC.

2. MIA - in Mole’s poem, misspellings in each stanza (tomMorrow, flaIred, accustAions) for “Missing in Action” because of Max’s constant no-show status at LS.

3. SPY - only word in all-caps, three letters in Mole’s name, M-A-X

4. Counters in Waiting Room 2 spelled out Max’s area code (704)

5. NASCAR numbers in waiting room - Nascar capital of the world? Winston/Salem

6. Waiting room #10 - Quill logo, Professor Quill in Mole Manor was Max

7. Monopoly game (Max’s favorite board game) has a “Uncle Max” in it, Monopoply guy in one of the Waiting Rooms.

8. Max posts in journal one day before the rest of us (my super-secret, never shared hint)

9. Casablanca scored by Max Stiener.

10. Spaceman quotes from “Calvin and Hobbes”, who has an Uncle Max (ironically, the week Calvin and Hobbes Uncle Max appears, Calvin plays Monopoly in the Sunday strip - January 24, 1988

11. Jester’s comment about “The Keystone Kops” in silent movie thread. Keystone Kops created by Mack Sennett (sometimes confused as Max Sennett).

12. Two of Max's trivia questions (Jackie Chan and Martha Washington) were part of the Sign of the Times game.

14. Picture of fish in Carnival waiting room is the same color as the NC state fish, channel trout, also called "Red Drum" because of its orangy-red color.

15. Bee in waiting room #1 - The honey bee is North Carolina's state insect.

16. In the player's Dossier, if you spell out "Who is the CyberMole?", one letter per picture, starting with the first picture (Jackie) and going across, the enlarged question mark lands on Max's picture.

17. Mysteriously, the 10 Week Discussion threads disappeared, and alphabetically, Max is the 10th player.

18. On the main page, you click on the word "players" in white to get our dossiers, and Max had the word "player" in Intersecting Images.

19. The game was once called "The Mother of all Moles"... who better to go with a mother than a father, which Max is.