
A Puzzle Book That Drove England to Madness - ohjeez
http://hazlitt.net/feature/goes-all-way-queen-puzzle-book-drove-england-madness
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danjc
For some reason this reminds me of the Eternity II puzzle[1]. The creator of
the puzzle had mathematicians confirm how difficult it would be to solve due
to the number of permutations and yet a vast number of people bought it
thinking they would be the ones to solve it (usually by hand)! There was a $2
million prize and it was never solved.

1.[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_II_puzzle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_II_puzzle)

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mtdewcmu
That's kind of a cruel thing to do to people if there's no way to solve it
other than brute force.

~~~
jhdevos
Yeah, the original Eternity puzzle
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle))
was a lot better in that regard - it spiked a whole online community focused
on finding clever ways to find a solution, and was in fact solved within a
year.

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musesum
Images with analysis:
[http://bunnyears.net/kitwilliams/](http://bunnyears.net/kitwilliams/)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Weird, as far as I can tell the website here is looking at understanding
references in the text. For example the poems round the images on page 2 are
"one of six of eight" which might refer to Henry VIII's wives.

Yet in the public domain the solution is known - a brief google lead me to
"draw a line from left eye to left foot and extend to a letter, the letters
forming an anagram of the location.

Really the site seems a historical oddity.

~~~
bhrgunatha
According to Wikipedia the solution is along those lines but more complicated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_%28book%29#Solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_%28book%29#Solution)

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Theodores
Kit Williams is highly collectable in darkest Gloucestershire. The thing is
that you have to know him, have his work already and know him to be allowed to
buy his work.

Some documentaries made by the BBC:

From back in the day:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iU-
qoG9Upg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iU-qoG9Upg)

Retrospective, recent:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIFm0UHtoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIFm0UHtoo)

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pistachiopro
Game designer Brian Moriarty's 2002 Game Developers Conference talk discusses
Masquerade quite a bit and I think does a good job of viscerally conveying its
appeal. The text of the talk is here:
[http://ludix.com/moriarty/psalm46.html](http://ludix.com/moriarty/psalm46.html)
, but I think it's worth listening to the original recording, which you can
get here: [http://number-none.com/blow/media/psalm_46.mp3](http://number-
none.com/blow/media/psalm_46.mp3)

~~~
sleepychu
The backtrack on the original recording is really distracting, anyone got a
source without this?

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CurtHagenlocher
The human brain has mastered pretty much one skill -- pattern recognition --
and it will apply this skill wherever it can, finding answers even where none
exist.

~~~
agumonkey
Can't help but to think about Google Machine Learning 'Art' they showed not
long ago.

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teddyh
I owned a translation of this book as a kid and had no luck (there was no way
of knowing, pre-Internet, that the riddle had already been solved). Many years
later I got the 1982 paperback English edition, which contained the solution
as described by the author. It turns out that the crucial clue had been
mangled by the translators.

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pjungwir
If anyone wants to do something like this but a bit less quixotic, and you
live in Boston, try the annual MIT Mystery Hunt! It only takes a weekend, and
it's in January, so there's not long to wait. Just don't do it alone. Either
form a team or contact them and get assigned to one. It's a great time!

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spchampion2
This reminds me of the treasure supposedly hidden in the American Southwest by
Forrest Fenn. He says it's still out there and has not yet been found.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure)

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scintill76
Hmm, I think this clue is new since I last read about this: In January 2015,
Fenn revealed in a new interview: "I know the treasure chest is wet." Maybe
this means he recently visited the treasure site? Maybe it's worth it to
surveil him in case he goes again.

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miles
There is an hour-long documentary on the book and its author entitled _The Man
Behind the Masquerade_ :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIFm0UHtoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIFm0UHtoo)

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mattbee
See also The Ultimate Alphabet which I pored over for years as a teenager -
e.g. this is "S" which apparently has 1234 words illustrated (the complete
book had 7777 total) -
[http://www.codex99.com/illustration/56.html](http://www.codex99.com/illustration/56.html)

It came with a £10,000 prize for the best effort but I can't find any info
about the winner.

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meandthebean
[http://ken-jennings.com/blog/archives/99](http://ken-
jennings.com/blog/archives/99)

There was a winner.

"MW: Again, I can’t recall who won. Interestingly the winner was the one who
identified the least number of false words. I think there was some scoring
system where an incorrectly identified word attracted a minus penalty. I seem
to remember that the contest was expanded with the paperback edition to
include extra prizes for a younger age group."

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moomin
I owned a copy. It was beautiful. I got as far as finding the rabbit in every
picture, that was it.

~~~
rasur
Same here. Fantastic book though - made up for the disappointment of never
working it out (hey, I was 11.. ;) )

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ourmandave
My sister got that book for her b'day because she's into puzzles.

It didn't come with plane tickets to England so wasn't the best gift idea.

~~~
pavlov
According to Wikipedia, Williams would have accepted remote answers to the
puzzle too:

"To ensure that readers from further afield had an equal chance of winning,
Williams also announced that he would confirm the first precisely correct
answer sent to him by post."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_\(book\))

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dghughes
It reminds me of the modern Web you look at a news article see something you
don't understand maybe a word so you search for the word, then that leads to
the etymology of it and ten hours later you're still going into the rabbit
hole.

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abustamam
If anyone is interested in similar things, check out DASH [0] and Geocaching
(for a puzzle based narrative, check out Geocaching's WherIGo) [1,2]

[0]: [http://playdash.org/](http://playdash.org/) [1]:
[https://www.geocaching.com/play](https://www.geocaching.com/play) [2]:
[http://www.wherigo.com](http://www.wherigo.com)

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ikeboy
There's something similar going on now called Endgame. See
[http://www.endgamegold.com/](http://www.endgamegold.com/)

