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Hunt For Red Herring by CJ DeSilvey It was approximately 11:55 PM and I was starting to pace. It had been quite a while since I had to match wits with Cliff Johnson, a master of the foolish and cerebral. I remember the fun and excitement I had had in the days of yore matching wits with him in Fool’s Errand and Puzzle Gallery. And now a chance to once again, take up the challenge with the First Annual April Fool’s Day Treasure Hunt Errand. As I’ve told many before me, to me, it’s not the prizes that were of utmost importance to me, it’s the challenge! Though, I must admit, prizes are nice too... Midnight rolled around and I reloaded the page to start the hunt. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to be in for. I was expecting riddles, wordplay, crosswords, perhaps a myriad of other things, but not...a hunt?!?! Okay, we start with a hunt through the site, looking for specific images to garner clues. Unexpected, but not unpleasant. I numbered each picture and copied the clue down next to each number. Fortunately, I was familiar enough with the site that I knew more or less where most of the images lurked, except for the last one. I quickly laid the clues out before me: A-VO-OON Thankfully with this sort of puzzle, if you’re lucky, you can actually reverse engineer the last clue, and that’s what I attempted to do. The single letters seemed to be alphabetical, so I assumed the last letter would be G. With a letter pair like VO, you can almost certainly put a vowel before it, so I got EVOLVE from that. Much the same from RC yielding me ARCADE. I figured RO and GGY went together, and a question came up of either FROGGY or GROGGY arose, but I went for the far more usual GROGGY, leaving me F_ _ FFY allowing me to plug in LU for FLUFFY. So when all was said and done I had: A-RC-ADE Leaving me with the problem of BIK???. Biking? I tried it....wrong. Okay, that’s what Mr. Dictionary is for. I searched for a relatively common word. Bik....bik....Ah! Bikini! And after plugging it in, I have a full seven buttons and I’m off and running to next part. I printed out the story and map and looked at what I had. It appears that it was a three part puzzle. First I had to cut out and assemble the map, then plug in the words from the story, and finally find the Moon’s Advice. Now here was what I was expecting from this hunt! I quickly cut out the map pieces and stacked them up according to rank (all the kings together, etc.) A quick read through the rules gave me the basics of the first puzzle. First, all pieces had to be in the same orientation. Okay, no turning or twisting...good! Second, the red line had to form a continuous path in a four by four layout. Here was the first clue: Each corner would have to be a corner piece. And finally, it had to make sense related to the conversation in the story. Another clue: If someone talked to someone else in the story, they would be in adjacent tiles. In reflection on the map puzzle, I was amazed to see how many clues there were to creating it. If you were just to use the order of talking in the story, the puzzle was moderate, but many checks were also added in. Some examples: “Lower your sword!” the King enjoins, peering at one Queen and the another, “Your Flora is Scarlet, I note....” This clue not only informs us the King is between two Queens, but specifically the Queen Of Swords and the Queen Of Wands (who in the picture on the tarot card has a flower in her hand). Another one was after a Page’s comment: “The scandal? Please, no comment,” the Knight insists to the King. “The benefit, now, is moot. Let my brother chase his carp.” Another fabulous clue allowing us to know the Knight and the previous Page were of the same suit (my brother) and to wit it was the Page Of Cups (The text around the Page Of Cups tile is: He dashes for the lost fish). I also had noticed when crafting the map, the rank of each tarot card (King, i.e.) ran along a northwestern diagonal which allowed me to double check my answer. So I now had the map which was:
I also knew the story started with the underlined King Of Swords. This fact would come in very handy in part two. After quickly taping up my map, I went about the task of dropping in the words. Again a few clear rules. The first, enter all words clockwise and in order. Second, no word may be split by the path. This actually made a few entries relatively easy. I started with the corner path pieces and searched each paragraph for a seven letter word or words that would total seven letters. Since no word may cross the path, that seven letter corner had to be entirely self contained in a single or multiple words. For example, the Knight Of Wands paragraph yields the words Odds, About, Step, When, Arrive, and Careful. With Careful being the only seven letter combination, I plugged that in the corner piece and then just layered the other words in order from that point. The straight pieces and one or two corner pieces, however, were not so easy. Each straight line tile has two possible choices, as it bisected into two fifteen letter blocks, and in the case of the Page Of Pentacles and Knight Of Cups, three choices. The best I could do now is plug in all the choices around the edges and hope the message would become clear in the end. Finally, it was time to try and decipher the Moon’s Advice. One final cryptic clue: “With the map assembled and the words aligned, from midnight, proceed clockwise amidst those who are outside and heed only those that might steal.” Oi!!!! I started with a few decisions. First, “from midnight” must mean to start from the very center top of the map. Second, “those who are outside” must mean only the outside track. Third, I should only pay attention the letters in the off-colored ringed boxes or else why put them in? With this knowledge, I copied all the letters down for the message and got....garbage. First try, it couldn’t be that easy.... Nor the second....nor the third.... Some two hours passed as I tried all sorts of wacky combinations. I tried those cards that actually would steal by their text like the Queen Of Pentacles (She takes all and gives not.). I tried only the Swords suit cards (Thinking the “might steal” was not “perchance purloin” and was actually “power through metal” in a bit of wordplay). I even went so far as to consider the thought that the words plugged in were nothing more that window dressing and that the outside boxes would “steal” the letters from the inside surrounding the tarot card (It was a April’s Fools Hunt after all, and I wouldn’t put it past Cliff Johnson to be that sneaky...) Nope....more garbage.... Time was ticking and I was pacing. I was muttering that the whole key was in “might steal” and was starting to make rude comments about Cliff Johnson’s parentage. It was time to step back and study the puzzle again. One thing a had not noticed before was that there was exactly twenty-two letters surrounding each tarot card on the inside. While there was still a possibility that these phrases were still just fluff and window dressing, with exactly the same number of letters on each card, I was starting to doubt it. And time after time, my eyes kept drifting back to the Knight Of Wands tile. The boxed letters were as follows: D S B E W E A R E It was almost spelling out BEWARE. Almost. If it weren’t for the extra E. As 4:00 AM started to roll around, something just clicked. I flipped back a few pages of notes and studied the aborted attempt where I had had the boxes “steal” the letters from the inside. It had struck me as odd then that same letters had popped up so often in a meaningless sequence. “Oh no, he DIDN’T!,” I moaned as I tried a new idea. I copied down the letters on the inside that corresponded the boxes on the outside, with the letters that were in the boxes. This got me: D
S B E W E A R E Then I crossed out in letter on the bottom that was not in the word “steal” it’s corresponding letter outside. D
S B E W A R E Beware....as I had guessed. A quick trip around the outside path yielded sense with a few prudent choices amongst the multiple letters. Seeing words like “Swords” pop up meant I should probably stick to a tarot suit theme. Starting the top, I moved to the first complete word and got the message: Beware the blade swords Confident and smug in my cerebralness, I e-mailed in my solution hoping I would be first and snatch the prize, and then went to bed. Next day I went to my e-mail and checked it and was in for a rude awakening....I was wrong.... An e-mail from Cliff Johnson proclaiming that I was “Oh so close, but started at one o’clock....” What?!?!?! I couldn’t have missed it.... I went and searched through the map and answer and went “Where was my mistake?” I thought I had started at midnight..... After looking at my answer for a few minutes, it had dawned on me....punctuation. I had started at high midnight on the card....one space too far which had caused me to start on the next word. Starting back one block yields: Wands, beware the
blade Which, of course, is the right answer. So all in all, I finished eighth. A respectable finish. And I had conquered the new enigma which was some consolation in itself. And there’s always next year.... But now I have to wait till October for the next game..... How long is that again? |
The Puzzle — The Winners — The Solution — The Deconstruction — The Map — The Closeup Clues
