Merlin Mystery Solution: Part 1
The Merlin Mystery prize wand
Go to the Merlin Mystery Solution Index.
This is Part 1 of my solution to The Merlin Mystery (“MM”) by Jonathan Gunson and Marten Coombe.
This part looks at the structure of the book and the puzzle that the reader is required to solve.
Structure
MM is made up of 22 double pages telling the story followed by a page titled “The Legend of Merlin’s Wand”. I’ll name double pages as P2 for pages 2 and 3, P4 for pages 4 and 5, etc. “The Legend of Merlin’s Wand” is P46.
Each double page has a border made up of 48 squares all around the outside edge. The squares are clearer on some pages than others. Near the top middle of P4 there’s a large butterfly filling a square. I’ll call that “square zero”, or S0, for reasons that will become clear. Going clockwise, I’ll number the squares S1, S2 etc, all the way round the page until reaching S47, which is the square immediately to the left of the butterfly.
Check out my beautiful picture!
Page structure of the Merlin Mystery
Using this numbering system, I can quickly refer to any square in the book. For example, P34,S34 is the left middle square on the double spread at pages 34 and 35. If you go look, this square contains a white rabbit.
Every page of MM is filled with symbols, both around the border and scattered inside it. The sheer number of symbols is what makes the puzzle both intriguing and impenetrable! Small gold and silver symbols are found inside the border and copper-coloured tiles etched with more symbols go around it. There are also seemingly random objects like planes, cups and clocks (and rabbits!) filling individual border squares.
I’ve put some silver and gold symbols and two random green objects in the image above. These are just things I’ve made up as examples and aren’t really in the book.
The symbols in red in the image are taken directly from the book. They are examples of zodiac symbols that appear through the book, sometimes disguised within a larger object. The Taurus symbol is on P6,S4 (double page 6-7, square 4), for example.
The Puzzle
The puzzle is to identify (a) the Alchemist’s spell and (b) the method of casting it. These are key plot points in the story. To win the competition, these two elements had to be drawn on a piece of paper. This suggests that the solution is made up graphical items rather than words, i.e. the seemingly random objects placed in the border squares are the pieces of the solution.
From this, it can be guessed that solving MM requires identifying a sequence of border squares through the book. This gives a sequence of objects and these objects represent the spell and the method of casting it. The question is therefore: how to find the correct sequence of squares?
The official solution says that MM contains many hints to the correct method. There are several objects throughout the book which start in one square and point towards another. Some of these look 2-dimensional, some 3-dimensional. The two planes shooting each other on the right of P10 is one striking image, the knight’s lance crossing P18 is another.
The best hint, to my mind, is the main image on P38 where the sorcerer and Nimue are firing bolts of lighting across the page. Nimue’s bolt hits Merlin and the sorcerer’s hits an object on the border.
From these clues, people were supposed to realise that lines were supposed to be drawn “in 3D” through the book from a starting square on one page (represented by Nimue), through a symbol on a second page (represented by Merlin), to a final destination square on a third page.
I say “supposed to” because the author says nobody worked out this key part of the puzzle during the 3 years the competition was running. Many of the different elements of the solution were cracked, but putting the individual pieces together eluded everyone.
I think this is a major failing in the creation of the Merlin Mystery as a coherent, solvable puzzle, but I won’t dwell on it. In writing this solution, I will just point out what I think are the clearest hints in the book. Some of these hints are confirmed in the official solution and some are my own thoughts. It’s a cryptic puzzle, so different people will have their own opinions.
End of Part 1
This brings Part 1 of the Merlin Mystery solution to an close.
If you’re unfamiliar with the book, or haven’t looked at it for a while, browse through it before moving on to Part 2. A lot of time is spent flicking back and forth through the book, so it’s worth being familiar with it.
As a first step, find all of the large zodiac symbols in the border squares. I think there are 6 in total. You’re looking for those which occupy most or all of a border square, so ignore the small ones etched into the scattered copper-coloured tiles.
Part 2 will go through all the different symbols that are important to the puzzle.
See you next time!
Thousands of us ended the second millennium “going for the gold”, literally, for three yrs. (The year 2000 was the last year of the 20th Century, not the first of the 21st.) It was three wasted yrs. This depressed me so much that I refused to go over the official solution & I put away the book & a heavy pile of loose leaves with our printed discussions & my tables of data I no longer understand.
The papers & the book remained in a cardboard box for exactly one quarter of a century, until about ten days ago, when something miraculous happened: I came across a copy of the book in surprisingly good condition in the used-book market, wonderful news since mine was worn down & some of us had torn out all the pages to put them side by side expecting that this would finally help us solve the puzzle.
Those 25 yrs. had attenuated my frustration. I decided to visit the official website & study the solution. The site had vanished but a blessed soul had (oddly) let some 15 yrs. go by & then placed his own version of the solution on the Net. The WWF should reward him with part of the M.M. gold & a trip to go see the whales along the Pacific coast of South America.
Now I ‘ll have to spend a long time studying it & comparing it to all my paperwork & see if we had approached the solution.
I was a.k.a. Alembic, who discovered some things & told about it. This ought to be part of a second message, with all that happened at the official discussion forum, & also at another one, belonging to a German woman whose username was Frodo, but which I disliked, it being too Teutonic. It’s unbearably sad to see how we all grew old.
I also thank Mr. Gunson, because at his website the WIX.com link allowed me a few days ago to create a blog to replace the ones that Google destroyed after five yrs. of working hard at them. My main blog had a steady stream of visitors, a daily average of about thirty, tens of thousands in those five yrs., & four websites had links to it, now broken links. They never replied to my complaints.
Let that be a warning about the treacherous character of the arrogant enterprise. ACHTUNG!!! They do some drastic spring cleaning every year, it seems, to reclaim memory space in their “servers” (mainframes).
I don’t use their search motor anymore, out of spite. Several others, such as Duck Duck Go, are equally efficient, but I chose that other one whimsically, because it has a cute little emblem (a duck with a bowtie). They’re all part of the same crowd now, undistinguishable from one another. There’s also Bing & so very many others!
Thanks for your story!
I was given this puzzle book by a friend who had more faith in my puzzling skills,thank you for writing this solution,I never even got close to solving,it has been frustrating and annoying that I couldn’t crack it.but have kept it in the hope of beating it.So when I saw a solution was just confused,fingers crossed your version is better explained.thank you!good job 👍.