The Gold-Bug

Hello all

A momentous time in the Hunt. Tomorrow night, Saturday 15th March, Mr Grandison attends the Masque and two Hunters will be in attendance in his party along with myself. Back to announcing those in a sec. But if you were not lucky enough to be one of those, you can still attend the after-show by emailing me GUESTLIST.  And can enter from 10pm by the normal exit to the Masque. A great opportunity to meet fellow Hunters, Mr Grandison and myself, and I think there may be a few surprises in store.

I should walk you through the Creative Puzzle first.  Relatively simple, once you get the trick. I imagine the first revelation may have been that 26, the number of letters in the alphabet, goes exactly twice into 52, the number of cards in a deck. In actual fact, the red cards from 2 up to Ace (aces high) and then the black cards similarly each encoded the relevant letter of the alphabet. Reading left to right and top to bottom, it spelt out the need to add BATTERSEA after snipurl, which revealed the card you had to send me.

The lucky two rolled by the magic dice were Stephen Taylor and Yaz Al-Shaater. You both enter the Hunters’ Club and can gain a pair of tickets to re-enter the Masque, although that will be after tomorrow evening.

Now the Special Puzzle. The person to whom we know Moray must have told his story was of course EDGAR ALLAN POE and his full name became the key to my trademark columnar transposition. This revealed that this was only the first step of three and took you to the next step, the trademark of my predecessor Sonia Delfont - whom we learnt of course should be perhaps addressed as Sonia Moray - a substitution cipher using the keyword GUILE.  A word which actually holds great significance to Miss Moray and those who still follow her. Deciphering revealed a dilemma to which I required a suggested course of action. I presented it hypothetically but of course it is really true. If you are curious to know what is happening then I suggest you come on the guest-list tomorrow night to the aftershow.

Many of you sent beautifully considered pieces of advice as requested for your answers, many of which we are following now to deal with this situation.  It was a very difficult decision but the following two presented both wisdom and wit of the others  with an originality of suggestion.

They are Peter Ayres and Alex Bowley, and they will be joining myself and Mr Grandison in the Hunting Party.

The rest of you, please email me to join the guest-list!

My very best wishes to you all.

ps

I forgot to add that there were more entrants into the Hunters' Club for their accounts inside the Masque.

Step forward: Mat H, James H. SusieQ, Megan H, Ash, Tod B

[anyone who thinks they should be there, email me why and I'm sure it's just a harried Harper oversight] 

- will be made early this afternoon. It's been a tricky decision.

 Those Hunters who have made the Hunting Party, I will email you and you must confirm otherwise I may have to offer to someone else, so be ready.

Those coming for the after-show, you can enter from 10pm through what is normally the exit to the show, down the road on the right-hand side of the building as you're facing it. Make sure you've emailed me 'Guestlist' to be on the same in advance of tomorrow night.

I'll see you tomorrow!

Does anyone know the significance of this piece of music?

If you're curious or have any suggestions, do email me regarding it!

- of puzzles is here, including the special puzzle for joining Mr Grandison's hunting party next Saturday 15th March.

Apologies for the delay, blogger went down last night. Cue Phil banging flame-haired head against desk. 

A bit of a musical theme this week, and my apologies to anyone for whom this proved inadvertently inaccessible. Those of you doing these at work [winks] should tell me what you can access and I’ll make them work for that. Next time. The ones I’m just polishing now should be better. They’ll be up sometime this evening.

But – here are the answers for the last wave.

The columns deciphered to ask you to add the age of the Gold-Bug story after to snipurl.com/. It was published in 1843 so that makes it 165. The musical tease then was to write down the notes of that little ditty which I’d composed especially: A-D-D-E-D-A-D-E-C-A-D-E. So adding ten years gave you 175 and putting that after snipurl.com/ gave a page asking you for the name of the singing host at the Palais Royale. Which is Maurice.

The creative was particularly devilish in using music in a completely different way to the columns. There was a clue in the name of the file: Endeavour. Which was the first name of Inspector Morse. And this was a peculiar version of Morse. Now the tune I was laboriously picking out on my piano there was the Bach Lute Suite Bouree, which Simon R cracked as being a possible meaning to the sequence of numbers from Moray’s trail, and which Mr Grandison feels must be an important melody. The sharp-eared may have realised I was playing the tune in two different octaves. One high, one low. If you take the high as DOT and the low as DASH and the little drumbeats as the SPACE, then you’ll find a message asking you to email me the first name of the composer of the tune: Johann Sebastian Bach.

Phew!

The following were chosen by the Magic Dice:

Bonnie P

Sinead N

Marc M

Steve M

Linda B

Sinead in addition joins the Hunters’ Club.

She is joined there by the following for their accounts from within the Masque:

Zoe L

‘Nathan’

Lisa (can you email me so we have a contact for you?)

Leslie

Muz

And lastly, a very notable omission to the Hunters’ Club was pointed out to me by Pippa J (who if she is not already in the Club as I suspect will be made a member for this unprompted action).

Step forward, Silent Servant. You should have been made a Hunter yonks ago but almost because you were so diligent, I completely overlooked you. Apologies and welcome.

New puzzles by tonight!

Allons-y!

Phil

ps

Winners, I will email you later regarding tickets, but thought I should get the announcement out now.

Mr Grandison has a video message for everyone, which can be seen by clicking here.

In addition, as you will see, the second section of the code inherited by Sonia from Moray. Some of you had been sent this 24 hours sooner, those who had emailed Mr Grandison directly from the penultimate wave of puzzles, if you were wondering about this thread.

And last, but certainly not least! Mr Grandison announces that he himself will be attending the Masque on the 15th March, and that he requests two of you to accompany him as his special guides.

How to decide which two? Well, I think you can guess that there may be a special puzzle set to decide! That should be with you tomorrow, as part of what I realise must be one of my final sets. It'll be a good one! 

best

Phil 

Hi there

Sorry these are a little later than I usually manage. I was called away suddenly by Mr Grandison yesterday in order to... well, that announcement is coming!

The puzzles for this week can be found here. The deadline for both is Friday at noon.

I'm hoping there will be another special puzzle released in the next couple of days, with a very special prize. Keep peeled to this journal for the latest news!

best

Phil

Many, many solutions submitted this week for the puzzle wave. And my cheeks are still glowing from your generous praise for the second one, which I was secretly quite proud of.  Perhaps I’ll take Sonia’s crown yet!

For the first columnar transposition, the key was the notes of ‘Patrie’ in the Marseillaise, which as you can see here are ADBG. Using that with the transposition led you to here http://musicalposer.blogspot.com/ where you were asked to identify a piece of music. It was of course the overture to Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and placing the title after snipurl asked you to email me the name of Wagner’s first wife, Christine Wilhemine Wagner or ‘Minna’. Phew.

The second creative one… If you google the emboldened Morphy, you’ll find he was a genius chess player of the 19th century. That the letters were in a 8 x 8 grid might suggest a chessboard. Taking that row and the row with 1849 suggestively to its right gives you ‘Morphy vs Rousseau 1849’. There were many games that these two played but the spectacular miniature that can be seen here was the one in mind. Playing out Morphy’s moves on the puzzle board spells out ‘AFTERSNIPURLGUILE’, and adding that particular word as instructed asks you to email me the name of the checkmating piece in that game, the (White) Queen.

There was also an opportunity there to email Mr Grandison directly for the second part of Moray’s sheet of code. Mr Grandison extends his apologies for the delay in replying to those of you who mailed, but there are a number of announcements he wishes to make first which should be upcoming here this weekend.

Anyway, the magic dice have been busy and here are the winners…

John M (also joins Hunters’ Club)
Simon R
Ranil T (also joins Hunters’ Club)
Christopher J
Nick H
David S


Each gets the opportunity of a pair of tickets. Please note that although tickets must still generally be paid for… as of now, existing members of the Hunters’ Club whom I know have entered more than twice through our back-door may be eligible for a limited number of cheaper tickets, absolutely at my discretion.

For their accounts of their experiences inside MOTRD, the following have been approved for entry into the Hunters’ Club by Mr Grandison:
Leslie
Izzie Newbie
J O N Deans (an account which gave Mr Grandison great pleasure when I read it to him)
Charlotte R (Mr Grandison did worry about encouraging your lasciviousness here)
Hellodean (ditto)

Mr Grandison and I were both most impressed with Rosie’s translation of the sequence of numbers into the melody of the bourree of Bach’s Lute Suite.  Should this turn out to be as significant as it appears, Rosie will be eligible for a double-share.

More puzzles over the weekend! Your solving brilliance is raising the bar! 

p.s. 

The first page from the golden book in the library can be seen here. Not that I think there's anything more to be found from it, just for completeness' sake!

I've just posted them here.

 
The deadline is noon on Friday 29 February.

Very good luck! 

Dear me. A few of you have finding the columnar transpositions easy but fiddly. I do want to hang onto my trademark but I might mix it up a little in the next puzzles, which should be posted later today.

For the Columns Puzzle: the year 1843 was the year of Grieg's birth, Southey's death, and of course when Poe published 'The Gold-Bug'. 1843 was our key, so dividing the ciphertext into 4 columns and labelling them with the key digits in exactly the same way as if it were a keyword, revealed a message asking you to send me the prime factors of the key. And those are 19 and 97.

For the Creative Puzzle: googling that extract of cipher text would lead you to Treasure Island, and its opening passage, the first 26 words in fact. Using each word to represent the corresponding letter of the alphabet, so the first word of Treasure Island 'Squire' is A, the fourth word 'Livesey' is D, etc. asks you to place the name of the dresser in the Palais, Lotte, after snipurl to lead you to the first part of the sheet of Moray's code. Which, if you go to snipurl.com/lotte, you will see to be a string of numbers. I asked you there to send me the first perfect square of those numbers, which is either 1 or 9 depending on how mathematically pedantic you are. I'm not...

There were very many correct solutions and quite a few nearly there but felled by the maths at the end. But my magic dice chose the following as winners.

Mark B
Recluse82
Joe T
Peter A
Hartspring
Chris J

In addition, tickets go to Linda B and Sari G-R for their recent brilliant advances in the Hunt, and Mr Grandison has also decided that they should each receive a double part of the treasure we find as starred Hunters.

Mark B joins the rest in the Hunters' Club.

As do the following for their accounts of experience inside the Masque.

Lucy Glowpike
Will P
Nick H
Sam J
Misha's Shadow
Tom E D

OK. I'm getting excited. I think we're close! New puzzles at the double.

best

Phil

Now that I'm getting the hang of this site, I've written a new front page and summaries of where we're up to in the Hunt. If you find anything unclear, please drop me a line and I'll tidy it up!

They're out here.

Gosh, what a lot of entries! I'm glad I had my magic dice to choose the winners.

Before announcing them, here is how to solve it:

The clue you got by going to snipurl.com/hellier - and I am very sorry for the forename snip which is nothing to do with me [blushing not to have checked] - was a drawing of the Parthenon in Athens. So Athens was the key and the columns of the Parthenon was a clue to the cipher. Which is a columnar transposition cipher, which you might want to read about in wikipedia before going any further.

Now knowing the key makes it quite simple to decode. You count the number of letters (168) in the cipher text and divide that by the number of letters in the key (6), getting 28. So you write the cipher text down in six columns of 28. You then label the columns left to right with the alphabetised key (AEHNST) and then rearrange them to spell the key again (ATHENS). You can then read the message across from left to right.

I'll let the curious do that for themselves. What it revealed was me asking you to email me the name of the cipher (Columnar Transposition). I didn't realise that finding my hunting email address would also be a hurdle. It's pharperlee splat googlemail.com for future reference.

Maybe this wasn't so easy. I'm about to stick my neck out and set another one as my easy for this week along with my first hard puzzle, which will probably turn out to be easy. Bah.

And the winners? My magic dice pulled out the following:
David Stewart
Charlie Fish
Alex Bowley
Steven Parsons
Pippa Johnson

I'll email you all about tickets and Hunters Club for Charlie, Steven and Alex - David and Pippa being old hands of course.

Talking of the Hunters, Mr Grandison has passed on that the following should join for their sterling reports on the forum inside the Masque:

Alex Bowley (again!)
Sarah-Jayne
Tom Stone
Nathan E

And he joins everyone in congratulating Linda B in her exceptional work in cracking the Music Box Cipher!

Alright, this is me signing off. It's been a strange one taking over from my friend - big shout out to Sonia! - but it's been good thanks to all your support.

All the best

Phil

...can be found on the new puzzle blog here. The deadline is noon next Friday. Best of luck to you all.

Dear all,
 
To those you do not know me, my name is Phil Harper, a code-breaker and treasure hunter like yourselves. Owing to the departure of my good friend Sonia Delfont, Mr Rupert Grandison has hired me to carry on her duties, which I might add she conducted with grace, diligence and an air of appropriate mystery. I'm sure you'll all join me in wishing her well in what must be a most confusing time. I must admit to being rather shocked when I received the call. To hear the voice of a man who I'd merely thought of as an anonymous, faceless figure, asking me to replace my dear friend.

However, the show, or rather the hunt, must go on. Things will go on as normal, I will set puzzles on behalf of Rupert Grandison to find the most dedicated and astute of you and any of you who make a significant contribution to our hunt will receive one part of whatever treasure we find and join The Hunter's Club. I only hope I measure up to the very high standards that Sonia laid down. I look forward to our correspondence.
 
The hunt continues and more puzzles will be coming your way very soon!
 
Phil Harper
(now posting as goldbug)
on behalf of
Rupert Grandison
 

Friends, hunters, and associates -

I understand there has been some tension brewing recently among the group regarding myself, Sonia and the matter of her true identity and inheritance. Sonia’s refusal to respond to my contact made her stance fairly clear even before her resignation yesterday. In the circumstances, I thank her for her graciousness in releasing to me a copy of her inheritance so that we can all recover mine own inheritance. I will impress to you all, as I already have, repeatedly, to Sonia, that her anger constitutes a punishment for my allowing her to learn the truth, a punishment I accept and deserve.

It is not my way to be deceitful; not my nature, but imagine this: some ancient, blind, wheelchair-bound old man writes to young Sonia unsolicited, not only with a proposal of help in a treasure-hunt plucked from the fictions of Mr Poe, but with the information that she is the direct descendant of a main character of a true story. Nothing could have prepared you for this sudden and quite horrible discovery Sonia, but I promise you as I did previously, that by this old man’s judgment, this was the only proper way you could know, as your ancestor himself intended.

I digress. This note was intended primarily as thanks to Ms Delfont for her work so far, which has been exemplary and quite brilliant. You’ve done well in assembling this team, young Sonia, and leading them and teaching them. I’m sorry that you had to react the way you did to recent developments; but I couldn’t have been ready for the enthusiasm and brilliance you’ve shown up until this point. Your performance, communication, intelligence, all have been exemplary. The Hunters who have earned their title will carry on your good work, Sonia. I know you’ve prepared them well for the final chapters, and you should be proud; it’s a shame you won’t be with them for what’s next, but you’ve assembled an eager and talented group to help conclude what I regard as the most important part of my life. And one of the most important of yours. I’ve no doubt you’ll keep an eye on us, and I can only hold onto the hope that we’ve not heard the last from you. Good luck Sonia, with wherever you choose to take your young life next. I continue to consider myself in your debt.

My hunters and associates. I hope you are ready to work under new management – you’ll forgive me for not telling you more on this straight away – and for new stages I imagine to unravel in the coming weeks. The departed Sonia, I imagine, will keep watch over your progress. That will be a comfort.

With kind regards to all,

[dictated by]
Rupert Grandison

My friends -
as I have very much begun to think of you all -
I have to announce that I am
leaving the employ of Mr Grandison and this treasure hunt.
My recent inheritance - see the forum thread about my birthday for details -
even though a great advance in the hunt for the
treasure, has proved a shock and my
health has not been robust recently. I have been
especially shaken to discover I am the heir to
William Moray, it feels (almost) like I am a new person -
or at least I feel it's important I have some time now to
really rest and
discover what I want to do with my life. Mr
Grandison has been of course most
understanding and I hope you continue with his hunt for the Gold-Bug.
I have given him a copy of the sheet of code that I inherited, which surely will
lead you to find the treasure that Moray stole from the Grandison family.
Even though I won't be involved directly, I am sure
that this won't be the last
occasion we have together in this mystery and
hopefully we will
even discover the
last resting-place of Moray's treasure and right the wrong done.
Please do keep in touch and the very best of luck.

Sonia




DWQHCID AQMDRSGGX QO DTDM…!

The easier conundrum was a substitution cipher using the keyword BANQUO, which led you to a page of the first folio of Macbeth and to send the final word of a line that has been humming around my head since recent events: 'who'd have thought the old man to have had so much blood in HIM'.

The harder conundrum was a Playfair cipher, as the name of its inventor Wheatstone suggested in my line ripping off Eliot beneath. The painting was by Guercino, his take on 'Et In Arcadia Ego' also immortalised by Poussin, and that Latin phrase was beneath the skull in the bottom half of the painting and acted as the key to the Playfair, which asked you to add the name of the painter after snipurl to find another page of Moray's letter, which can be seen here, and to send the third word 'RETREAT'.

Correct solutions drawn out of the invisible hat were from Bonnie, Lyndsay G, David B, Annette C, Robbie C and Karen S. They've all been mailed about tickets for MOTRD and entrance into the Hunters' Club.

In addition, Mr Grandison requested that Recluse82, Dom W and Sari G-R joined the Hunters' Club for their accounts from inside Masque Of The Red Death.

A lot's happened to me recently - as you can discover reading these forums if you don't know already - and there is some more news. I'll be posting that very soon.

Very very many of you still emailed in the correct solution, which can be seen here.  Well done.

Drawing names out of the Delfont hat left as winners:
Simon Rose
Linda Bloomingfield
Ellen Stelter
Joe Tobin

You all gain Hunters' Club membership and the chance of tickets for MOTRD.  I'll have emailed you about that.  The rest of you, I wish you could all have won.. but as consolation, another set of puzzles is already waiting for you, an easier one here and a harder one here (which leads to another part of the letter from Moray).

Mr Grandison also asked that the following be added to the Hunters' Club because of their postings:
Baxter Willis
The Flagrant Plagiarist
White Lipped Boy

If you think you deserve to be added, it will be our oversight that you haven't been.  Email me if so!

Well, the next time I am here, I'll be 25.  Looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow night down the Late.

I am turning 25 next week and I am having drinks at the Red Death Late next Friday 25 January from 10pm.  If any of you would like to come down, email me and I should be able to get you onto the guest-list I have... yay! I thought it might be nice for all of you who have been hunting to meet each other.. and to toast me at midnight, of course:)

Sonia