Justin

Andrea Blumberg

I made a series of puzzles over the years for my friend Justin, loosely based on the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde. This was the third one, and incorporated not only himself as "Special Reserve Agent Justin Case," but added three new characters: his wife, Laura Marshall, "The Especially Severe Agent Marshall Law," and two of our friends who'd helped out on the previous year's puzzle, Angeles Fernandez and Sascha Timm, "The European Reverse Agents Zed and Mitt." Each of them got a puzzle to solve, and then their combined answers were required to solve the final puzzle.

Here's the story that sets the scene:

Special Reserve Agent Justin Case tossed down the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" triumphantly. He had done it. He had read the book, saved the world and History, and fulfilled a favour to his fictional friend, Thursday Next. He relaxed back into his leather-upholstered chair and raised a celebratory glass of his favourite malt whisky to his lips.

But before he tasted a drop, the emergency klaxon sounded, causing him to startle and douse his neatly-pressed duds with Bruichladdich. He slopped the glass down onto the antique wooden end table, and, slapping ineffectually at the wet spot on his clothing, tripped over the edge of the carpet and banged into the doorframe on his way to the kitchen, towards the Secret Communication Device, which was cleverly disguised as a toaster.

He pressed the Cancel button, and his Directives popped up, branded into the surface of a piece of toast. He grabbed the toast, and then dropped it onto the counter, sucking his burnt fingers as he read:

Goliath agent Eli Zarges has new dastardly plan. Invented Anagramophone.

Plans to turn Scotland into Salt 'n Cod in effort to outcompete Norwegian market.

Assemble team of expert agents. Stop Zarges!!

The Mastermind

Strategies began to whir through Case's braincase as he disposed of his Directives with butter and a thick layer of Marmite. He made a few short calls to his crack field operatives, gathered his gear, and dashed out into the night; the abandoned glass of whisky slowly eating a ring into the surface of the table.

The team came together in the shadows behind Goliath Headquarters: Special Reserve Agent Justin Case, the two European Reverse Agents Zed and Mitt, and a new and promising cadet, the Especially Severe Agent Marshall Law. She looked soft and gentle, but it was rumoured that she had achieved a singlehanded coup d'état of a small country. And she never took sugar in her tea.

They slipped into the building and threaded their way through the maze of corridors and down several stairways to the basement. As they neared the heart of the building Case stopped them with a raised hand, and pointed out a poster on the wall that had obviously been subjected to an anagrammatic blast. It said "Eat More Stoat. For Strength, Joy and Nutrition. (From the Stoat Marketing Board)." Case gestured – slightly queasily – to the door next to the poster and Zed knelt down to pick the lock.

They found themselves in a room with floor to ceiling shelves holding bottles with various labels: "Change Person" "Change Vehicle" "Change Building" "Change Money" "Change Breakfast Food," etc. Sitting on the floor in front of the bottles was a large, Victorian-style gramophone: it had an elaborately painted wooden box, on top of which was mounted a bright, gold-leafed, scalloped horn.

"The Anagramophone" Justin whispered with respect and revulsion. He was from Scotland and didn't appreciate the thought of it becoming a heap of salty, stinking fish. The agents moved closer to examine the device.

Marshall Law pointed to a cork in the top of the painted box. "I think," she said, in a soft whisper, "that those bottles contain the concentrated agents of change. It seems likely that they get poured into the Anagramophone, which then amplifies and directs their effect."

They were letting this idea percolate through when Zed called out in a hushed voice: "Look! There's a bottle missing!" The label on the shelf under the missing bottle said, 'Change Map.' "That must be what they're planning to use on Scotland," she said.

They searched the room quickly and thoroughly, but the bottle was not to be found. They did, however, discover a full-length mirror with a secret door hidden behind it. Passing eagerly through the door they found themselves in what was undoubtedly Eli Zarges' private office.

"We need to find the location of that missing bottle of Change Map" Justin urged them. "Then we have to neutralize the rest of the bottles and destroy the Anagramophone."

The team fanned out and got to work. The bottle was nowhere in the office, but the information as to its whereabouts, if it was to be found anywhere, would be found here. Mitt sat down immediately at the computer terminal and tickled its keyboard until it begged for mercy and coughed up what it knew about where the bottle was hidden. Zarges was cagey, though, and the computer only had partial information. After printing out a copy of this information, Mitt found and erased all the files relating to the Anagramophone technology. Once they destroyed the device itself, no one would be able to build another one.

Zed stared thoughtfully at the choice of art adorning the walls, and used her piercing psychological discernment to figure out another clue to the bottle's whereabouts. Law lifted a sheet of musical notation off of a stand in the corner and recognised it immediately as a code, which she proceeded to break. And Case went to the bookcase and scanned the titles for clues. He was taken aback to find a Fforde book on the shelf. He snapped it open to search for any sign of Thursday and whatever help she could offer. Luckily she came through, as always, and he jotted down some notes to create a crib sheet of her advice.

"Now to destroy the Codifier!" Case commanded, and they bundled swiftly back through the secret door. They were on a roll, and the solution to the next problem was not long in coming.

"Aha!" Mitt cried as he lifted a bottle marked "Change Instruments of Evil" off the shelf.

"Well spotted!" Case commended, as he took the bottle and uncorked the Anagramophone. "Stand back" he warned the others, and they pressed themselves into the far corner of the small room. Case upended the bottle into the Anagramophone, aimed its horn in precisely the right direction, cranked the handle on the box, and stepped smartly to the corner to join the others.

There was a belching noise, and an almost visible pulse of energy shot out of the horn, bounced off the full-length mirror and slammed back into the "Anagramophone and Bottles." The very atoms seemed to dissociate themselves from each other, shuffle about in the air, and reform into a Dragon, a Banana, and some Hot Pet Moles.

Suddenly the door to the hall burst open, and there stood a huge man: tall, wide, broad, and fat (but not very deep). The stench of evil wafting off his bulky frame declared that this could be none other than Zarges himself.

The Goliath operative was brandishing a megaphone in one hand and a small bottle of effervescent liquid with a label of "Change SpecOps" in the other.

"Nice try, secret agents" he snarled, narrowing his beady eyes; the only thing about him that was small. "But I still have the prototype here in my hand, the Microgramophone. And I have this bottle which will spell your downfall if you don't do what I say. As for the final bottle, the one that will fishify Scotland...I have hidden it where you will never find it!" He laughed a booming, evil laugh.

"Now hand over your SpecOps Badges and I will Anagrammitise them into some Cod Bags (so that I can pack up all of that lovely cod) and a double dose of ESP, so I'll know precisely when to get the best market price for it. "

Zarges took one step towards them, which brought him into the middle of the room. They handed over their badges grimly, not knowing what they might be turned into if they declined. Zarges pocketed the badges, and lifted the Microgramophone in their direction.

"Now say 'Gobo dye'" he sneered, which turned into a yowl as he found himself nose to nose with a curious Dragon. Zarges recoiled, slipped on the Banana, and fell backwards into a very large, very hot hole that had been dug by the Moles. The Dragon leaned in after him, and there was a crunching noise as both the Microgramophone and the bottle disappeared down its gullet. It pulled its head back out of the hole and let loose a belch that caught fire and warmed the small room. The agents didn't wait to see if Zarges was going to be the main course or themselves dessert. They charged headlong out of the building and didn't stop until they reached Case's digs.

After they had recovered from their ordeal with the procedurally mandated rations of whisky and fine chocolates, they pooled the information they had gathered in Zarges' office. The four of them, comparing and compiling their notes, were able to educe the exact location of the final bottle, the last remnent of Zarges' evil plan. They hopped into the Casemobile, and went off to destroy it in whatever way possible. They had a suspicion that hydrochloric acid might do the trick, and each of them had a personal supply....

Here are the four puzzles:

Angeles got a rebus telling where to look for the bottle of Change Map, once they discovered what the location was.

Laura, a fellow harpist, got a "musical cryptogram." Each measure below contains a single chord, either in block form, or split up into melody notes. Different chords represent different letters of the alphabet; for instance, an A major chord is an "S" whereas an A minor chord is an "N."

The answer to this puzzle told them what they needed to take with them on their quest.

Even if you don't know music, you should be able to solve it, since all the information is given below, about which notes belong to which chords, and where they fall on the staff.

NOTE NAMES

Treble clef:

Lines: E, G, B, D, F

Spaces: F, A, C, E

Bass clef:

Lines: G, B, D, F, A

Spaces: A, C, E, G

CHORD NAMES

A Maj – A C# E

Bb Maj – Bb D F

C Maj – C E G

D Maj – D F# A

E Maj – E G# B

Eb Maj – Eb G Bb

F Maj – F A C

G Maj – G B D

a min – a c e

b min – b d f#

c min – c eb g

d min – d f a

e min – e g b

f# min – f# a c#

g min – g bb d

TRANSLATION TABLE

Chord name English letter

A Maj S

Bb Maj U

C Maj B

D Maj I

E Maj T

Eb Maj F

F Maj Y

G Maj R

a min N

b min &n bsp; P

c min G

d min W

e min O

f# min H

g min C

Sascha got a "hyperlink maze" with the instructions: "When you find the File, you must use it in combination with the information discovered by Justin Case in order to uncover the ultimate solution (ie. the location of the bottle of Change Map)." He had to follow the hyperlinks in the right order to find a hidden file at the very end.

Here is the beginning of the link maze: (ignore anything that says "DS Store"): Start

And here's the file that Sascha found waiting at the end of the maze:

Justin got a copy of the Thursday Next book, Something Rotten, with various words throughout the book underlined (evidence of Thursday "helping" him, from within the book). He had to anagram those words and enter them into the crossword grid below (the numbers were the page numbers of where each word was found).

Looking back on it, I'm surprised that I made a puzzle of just anagramming 30 words; it doesn't seem like a very interesting puzzle to me now. But I guess because it fit in thematically and was a part of a larger puzzle (and because I knew Justin was good at anagrams and liked doing them [though possibly not so much after he was done!]) I decided to go with it.

Look at the grid.

Find 86 and 98.

Within the above-specified framework, and given that A is (1,1) and U is (8,7), write down the following letters:

(1,2)

(3,3)

(3,7)

(1,5)

(6,5)

(7,4)

(9,6)

There should be 5 consonants and 2 vowels.

One letter will appear twice.

If you put the letters in the correct order, it will spell out the name of your destination.

Solution:

Taking Sascha's information with the completed grid gave this:

One final anagram (of those 7 letters) gave them "Shandon," the name of the house Justin and Laura lived in when they first moved to the Isle of Lewis. When they got to Shandon, the answer to Angeles' puzzle steered them towards the hiding place:

And the answer to Laura's puzzle told them:

Because, of course, the bottle of "Change Map" was in fact a bottle of "Champagne," and their personal supplies of hydrochloric acid with which they would destroy it were carried around in their stomachs.