The Imitation Game · written by Graham Moore · 2014

Joan Clarke arrives despite an agent’s objection, sits the test, and finishes in five minutes thirty-four seconds, surprising Turing and securing her place among the candidates.

Scene 45 of 130 · ≈ 3 min on screen · Act two

Save the Cat: B Story
Alan Turing
Mi-6 Agent
Joan Clarke
Stewart Menzies

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 35 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 45

At Bletchley Park, Alan Turing must persuade a skeptical team to build a machine that can break Enigma before the war is lost, while concealing the self the law condemns.

Scenes 1–12
Turing is investigated as a guarded outsider in 1951, then enters Bletchley in 1939 looking for the puzzle he can solve.
Scenes 13–30
He sees the scale of Enigma, believes a machine can solve it, and grows isolated from colleagues who make little progress.
Scene 36
Churchill’s order gives Turing command authority; he fires two linguists and begins reshaping the team around his approach.
Just before
Scene 42
Londoners shelter in a crowded Tube tunnel, where people try puzzles and carry on as the lights flicker from bombing.
Scene 43
Turing cycles through a bomb-damaged London past schoolchildren, a milkman, and a couple picking through rubble before entering MI-6.
Scene 44
Menzies questions whether crossword solvers can be useful at Bletchley, and Turing takes him into the room to test the recruits.
Scene 45
This scene

45INT. CLASS ROOM - CONTINUOUS

Alan and Stewart Menzies are in an MI-6 conference room. It’s been set up like a class room: Rows of identical desks, at which sit a COLLECTION OF CROSSWORD ENTHUSIASTS. There are around 20, all men.

ALAN TURING

... You’ll have six minutes to

complete the puzzle, at which

point—

Just then, a WOMAN enters. Everyone turns to look...

Her name is JOAN CLARKE, 20s, a graduate student at Cambridge who’s trying to get as far away from her preacher father as possible, and she’s about to become very important to this story.

MI-6 AGENT

Pardon, Ma’am, this room is

restricted.

JOAN CLARKE

Apologies for my tardiness — bus

caught a flat tire.

ALAN TURING

(irritated)

May I continue, please?

MI-6 AGENT

(to Joan)

You’re not allowed in here, Ma’am.

JOAN CLARKE

I’m only a few minutes late. With

the bombing there’s ten potholes to

each road.

MI-6 AGENT

No, ma’am, the secretaries are to

head upstairs. This room is for the

candidates.

ALAN TURING

May I please get on with this?

JOAN CLARKE

I am a candidate.

MI-6 AGENT

For what position?

JOAN CLARKE

The letter did not say, precisely.

MI-6 AGENT

Yes, so, secretaries are to head

upstairs.

JOAN CLARKE

It said it was top secret.

ALAN TURING

(comes over to them)

What is going on here?

JOAN CLARKE