Jello gets it mostly correct:
Each investigator/team is locked in their own private compartment. They’ve got the info they’re collected on their own, and that’s about it. All they’ve got is a handful of unconnected puzzle pieces. There are many such teams, each with their own puzzle pieces that are entirely different from the pieces other teams have collected. In fact, they probably don’t even know exactly how many other teams there are, or how many pieces any of them have. Nobody knows if all the pieces have yet been collected, or even how many pieces the finished puzzle will have.
Enter Sundance. He goes to one investigator/team and borrows their puzzle pieces. Then to the next team and borrows theirs. Then the next, and so on until he’s got them all. But there are still a few pieces missing… fortunately those are pieces that Sundance himself had all along. And once ALL the pieces are in hand, he goes back to the individual teams, dumps the whole mess in front of them, and says “Here, NOW put it together.”
An apt metaphor except….
I didn’t give them puzzle pieces, I gave special investigator William Aldenberg the fully assembled puzzle.