Journal

The Announcement!

Gold-Bug — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:09:06 +0000

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.

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]

Announcement about tomorrow -

Gold-Bug — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:45:29 +0000

- 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!

By the way

Gold-Bug — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:32:06 +0000

Does anyone know the significance of this piece of music?

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

The Fifth Wave -

Gold-Bug — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:50:33 +0000

- 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.

Hunters and Solvers

Gold-Bug — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:30:27 +0000

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

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

An important announcement

Gold-Bug — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:20:10 +0000

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

The fourth wave of my puzzles

Gold-Bug — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:26:04 +0000

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

(more) solutions, Hunters and news!

Gold-Bug — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:29:13 +0000

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!

New puzzles!

Gold-Bug — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:43:48 +0000

I've just posted them here.

The deadline is noon on Friday 29 February.

Very good luck!

Solutions and Hunters

Gold-Bug — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:04:05 +0000

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