The Mystery of the Hidden Presents
Sep. 21st, 2006 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerMolly likes to read mysteries. Her favorites are the Boxcar Children mysteries, but she's read others, as well. She has said wistfully on various occasions that she wishes she had a mystery to solve. So, on her birthday, I hid her presents, and left her a trail of clues.
After dinner, I presented her with a folded note that said inside:
Today my darling daughter's turning six.
I thought she might enjoy a cake to mix.
Or perhaps a giant book of U.S. history?
No! What Molly really wants is a mystery!
A trail of clues and puzzles she can solve
Cryptography and cyphers to involve.
And so her gifts I've put away with care.
She'll find the first clue with the silverware.
(You'll note that when writing for money, I write fiction, not poetry. That's because even with the aid of a rhyming dictionary, my ability to write something with rhyme and meter is pathetic.)
This was not intended to be a difficult clue to solve -- in fact, this wasn't intended as a "clue" so much as "instructions." By "with the silverware," I meant, "in the silverware drawer." However, since it was the end of the meal and the table was still set, Molly immediately started picking up and scrutinizing the knives and forks. She took a quick peek into the silverware drawer, but I'd tucked the next note underneath some of the silverware, because I didn't want her stumbling across it prematurely, and she didn't go digging enough to find it. Some gentle hint-dropping from Ed eventually got her to go back and take a closer look, but it took her about a half hour.
FYI, I picked hiding places for the trail, and made up the clues; Ed didn't know where they were. I figured that if Ed was working from the same clues as Molly, he could help her out without giving the answers away.
Anyway, tucked into the silverware drawer was a very basic number cypher.
20 - 1 - 16 - 16 - 9 - 14 - 7
8 - 5 - 5 - 12 - 19
Molly knew instantly how to solve this one (and I didn't do anything mean like assign 1 to B, 2 to C, etc.) Ed worked it out while looking over her shoulder, but had absolutely no idea what the clue meant, and said as much. I was optimistic that Molly would know what it meant.
And sure enough. She figured out that the words here were TAPPING HEELS, and went straight to her copy of the Nancy Drew novel, The Clue of the Tapping Heels, and looked inside.
The next clue said, "Think ahead 41 days, then visit your brothers."
Ed got that one right off. Molly was initially baffled as to how she was supposed to think ahead 41 days; Ed took the calendar down, and she laboriously counted her way to Halloween. But, she was still baffled because she has no brothers.
Ed said, "Huh. Well, I'm thinking I might dress as a sled dog for Halloween. And that would make my dog slippers my brothers on Halloween...."
A little more gentle leading and it clicked. She was dressing up as a Cootie for Halloween. Therefore, to visit her brothers, she should go look in the Cootie game box. Which is where she found the next clue: a drawing of a cat with three dollar signs inside it. Molly keeps her allowance money in a little purse that looks like a cat's face, and she knew instantly what that clue meant. She ran upstairs and looked inside, and sure enough, there was the next clue.
The next clue said
Mooooooooo+
[drawing of a girl's face]+
[drawing of boots]
She promptly figured out that this meant her cowgirl boots, and looked inside. And found this:
NLOOB,
TL LKVM IFYB.
I figured this would be challenging but not impossible, because she actually used this exact cypher to leave Ed a note back in late July. But, her first assumption was that each word was a scrambled-up real word. (She said this out loud, and I immediately thought, oooooh, I totally should've done a word scramble clue.) She spent a few minutes trying to unscramble them before Ed pointed out that neither TL nor LT was a word, so she was probably barking up the wrong tree.
She still wasn't getting it, so Ed reminded her that she'd signed a note "NLOOB." So N = M, L = O, O = L, and B = Y. She filled those in and got
MOLLY,
_O O__N __BY
More mulling over. I handed her a sheet of paper and suggested she fill in what she knew of the code and see if she saw a pattern. As I'd hoped, as soon as she started writing out the alphabet she filled in the whole thing. (This is a very simple cypher.)
MOLLY,
GO OPEN RUBY.
It took her a minute or two to remember that "Ruby" was the name she gave our new minivan. I took her outside, we opened up the back, and........there were her presents! I carried them inside, she ripped them open, and we had cake.
I'm really glad I took the time to make her the mystery. She had a huge grin on her face the whole time -- this was clearly a fabulous, exciting treat for her.
She told me on the way to the library today that she wished I could make a mystery for her again. Daily, even! I could write her a note in code every day, but a full-scale mystery like this one?
Maybe for her next birthday.
After dinner, I presented her with a folded note that said inside:
Today my darling daughter's turning six.
I thought she might enjoy a cake to mix.
Or perhaps a giant book of U.S. history?
No! What Molly really wants is a mystery!
A trail of clues and puzzles she can solve
Cryptography and cyphers to involve.
And so her gifts I've put away with care.
She'll find the first clue with the silverware.
(You'll note that when writing for money, I write fiction, not poetry. That's because even with the aid of a rhyming dictionary, my ability to write something with rhyme and meter is pathetic.)
This was not intended to be a difficult clue to solve -- in fact, this wasn't intended as a "clue" so much as "instructions." By "with the silverware," I meant, "in the silverware drawer." However, since it was the end of the meal and the table was still set, Molly immediately started picking up and scrutinizing the knives and forks. She took a quick peek into the silverware drawer, but I'd tucked the next note underneath some of the silverware, because I didn't want her stumbling across it prematurely, and she didn't go digging enough to find it. Some gentle hint-dropping from Ed eventually got her to go back and take a closer look, but it took her about a half hour.
FYI, I picked hiding places for the trail, and made up the clues; Ed didn't know where they were. I figured that if Ed was working from the same clues as Molly, he could help her out without giving the answers away.
Anyway, tucked into the silverware drawer was a very basic number cypher.
20 - 1 - 16 - 16 - 9 - 14 - 7
8 - 5 - 5 - 12 - 19
Molly knew instantly how to solve this one (and I didn't do anything mean like assign 1 to B, 2 to C, etc.) Ed worked it out while looking over her shoulder, but had absolutely no idea what the clue meant, and said as much. I was optimistic that Molly would know what it meant.
And sure enough. She figured out that the words here were TAPPING HEELS, and went straight to her copy of the Nancy Drew novel, The Clue of the Tapping Heels, and looked inside.
The next clue said, "Think ahead 41 days, then visit your brothers."
Ed got that one right off. Molly was initially baffled as to how she was supposed to think ahead 41 days; Ed took the calendar down, and she laboriously counted her way to Halloween. But, she was still baffled because she has no brothers.
Ed said, "Huh. Well, I'm thinking I might dress as a sled dog for Halloween. And that would make my dog slippers my brothers on Halloween...."
A little more gentle leading and it clicked. She was dressing up as a Cootie for Halloween. Therefore, to visit her brothers, she should go look in the Cootie game box. Which is where she found the next clue: a drawing of a cat with three dollar signs inside it. Molly keeps her allowance money in a little purse that looks like a cat's face, and she knew instantly what that clue meant. She ran upstairs and looked inside, and sure enough, there was the next clue.
The next clue said
Mooooooooo+
[drawing of a girl's face]+
[drawing of boots]
She promptly figured out that this meant her cowgirl boots, and looked inside. And found this:
NLOOB,
TL LKVM IFYB.
I figured this would be challenging but not impossible, because she actually used this exact cypher to leave Ed a note back in late July. But, her first assumption was that each word was a scrambled-up real word. (She said this out loud, and I immediately thought, oooooh, I totally should've done a word scramble clue.) She spent a few minutes trying to unscramble them before Ed pointed out that neither TL nor LT was a word, so she was probably barking up the wrong tree.
She still wasn't getting it, so Ed reminded her that she'd signed a note "NLOOB." So N = M, L = O, O = L, and B = Y. She filled those in and got
MOLLY,
_O O__N __BY
More mulling over. I handed her a sheet of paper and suggested she fill in what she knew of the code and see if she saw a pattern. As I'd hoped, as soon as she started writing out the alphabet she filled in the whole thing. (This is a very simple cypher.)
MOLLY,
GO OPEN RUBY.
It took her a minute or two to remember that "Ruby" was the name she gave our new minivan. I took her outside, we opened up the back, and........there were her presents! I carried them inside, she ripped them open, and we had cake.
I'm really glad I took the time to make her the mystery. She had a huge grin on her face the whole time -- this was clearly a fabulous, exciting treat for her.
She told me on the way to the library today that she wished I could make a mystery for her again. Daily, even! I could write her a note in code every day, but a full-scale mystery like this one?
Maybe for her next birthday.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 08:07 pm (UTC)Wyrdsmiths Issue
Date: 2006-09-22 10:30 pm (UTC)I looked around on Blogger but didn't see this as a listed issue. I've never had it happen on my computer on any other site that asks for that sort of verification, either.
I just wanted to let you know. Maybe it is just some weird thing with my PC, but if you are getting less comments than you used to on Wyrdsmiths, maybe the insane-making broken spambot blocker is to blame.
Re: Wyrdsmiths Issue
Date: 2006-09-23 02:48 am (UTC)Re: Wyrdsmiths Issue
Date: 2006-09-23 04:54 am (UTC)