Posts from — September 2009

“The thing that interested me about painting Masquerade was, how could you make people look at those paintings…and look…and look…and look again. The puzzle–that was the way to do that.”
– Kit Williams

The children’s book Masquerade, published in 1979, tells the story of Jack Hare, commissioned by the Moon to carry a treasure to her love, the Sun. When Jack finally arrives at the Sun, he finds that he has lost the treasure.

The book is more than just a beautifully-illustrated children’s fairy tale – it is one of the most elaborate and elegant puzzles ever created. Kit Williams created the puzzle, the artwork, and the treasure itself – an 18-karat gold amulet encrusted with jewels and shaped like a hare.

The public was told that amulet was buried in a clay casket somewhere in the United Kingdom and that it was buried on public property which could be easily accessed. The book’s publication set off one of the most famous puzzle-solving contests in history – it sold more than one million copies.

In March 1982, Kit Williams announced that Ken Thomas had solved the puzzle, found the hare, and won the contest. (Despite announcement and accompanying news stories and photographs, puzzleheads in denial continued to search and to dig throughout the summer of 1982!)

But Williams had reservations about the find, which eventually proved to be correct. In 1988, the story broke that the real name of Ken Thomas was Dugald Thompson, who was a business associate of a man named John Guard. Guard’s girlfriend at the time was Veronica Robertson – a former live-in girlfriend of Kit Williams. Williams had told Robertson the general location of where he had hidden the treasure and how to find it.

Robertson pointed Guard in the right direction – she, Guard, and Thompson combed the area at night with metal detectors and shovels looking for it. Eventually, Guard drew a sketch of the final “solution” and prodded Thompson into sending it to Williams to verify, which he did. Thompson, disguised as Ken Thomas, went with Williams to unearth the golden hare.

After claiming the prize, Thompson placed the hare in a bank vault. In 1985, the hare was put up as collateral to fund a software company called Haresoft that ultimately went bankrupt. In December 1988, the hare was placed for auction by Sotheby’s where it sold to an anonymous private collector for £31,900 (approx US$60,000) – Williams himself bid on it to win it back but had to drop out at £6,000.

The whereabouts of the hare remained unknown for over 20 years. After hearing a radio interview with Williams, the owner of the hare agreed to be interviewed for a TV program produced by BBC Four in 2009. For the first time since the hare was unearthed, Williams was reunited with the hare (if only temporarily).

Masquerade was the forerunner of the armchair treasure hunt, which includes David Blaine’s Mysterious Stranger.

I have not spoiled any part of the Masquerade puzzles in this blog entry. But many descriptions of the solution exist on the internet. My favorite one is at bunnyears.net, which also includes links to all of the artwork in the book. Enjoy!

“Dear Editor This is the Zodiac Speaking …”

The evening of Friday, December 20, 1968, was the first date of Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday of Benicia, California. The couple planned to attend a Christmas concert at a nearby high school two or three blocks from Jensen’s home. Instead, they visited a friend and stopped at a local restaurant, then drove out Lake Herman Road. At about 10:15 p.m. Faraday parked his mother’s Rambler in a gravel turnout, which was a well-known lovers’ lane.

Shortly after 11 p.m., another car pulled into the turnout and parked beside them. The driver apparently got out with a pistol and ordered them out of the Rambler. Jensen exited first. When Faraday was halfway out, the man shot Faraday in the head. Fleeing, Jensen was gunned down twenty-eight feet from the car with five shots through her back. The man then drove off. Their bodies were found minutes later by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. The sheriff’s department investigated but found no leads.

On July 4, 1969, sometime around midnight, Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau were shot multiple times while parked at a golf course in Vallejo, four miles from where Jensen and Faraday were murdered. At 12:40 am, a man phoned the police department from a phone booth only a few blocks away from the police station and claimed responsibility for the attack as well as for the murders of Jensen and Farady.

On August 1, 1969, nearly identical letters were received by the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner in which the author took credit for the shootings. Each letter also included one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram which the killer claimed contained his identity. The killer demanded they be printed on each paper’s front page or he would “cruse [sic] around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.” The threatened murders did not happen, and all three parts were eventually published.

On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at the San Francisco Examiner with the salutation “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking”. It was the first time the killer had referred to himself with this name. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not been released to the public as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code “they will have me”. On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California, cracked the 408-symbol cryptogram. No name appears in the decoded text.

From September 27 to October 11, 1969, the Zodiac murdered three more people. On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded.