The Merlin Mystery: Solution Index

Merlin Mystery cover
The Merlin Mystery

The Merlin Mystery by Jonathan Gunson and Marten Coombe is an intriguing but insanely difficult puzzle. Despite a 3 year time limit for solving it, and an international joint effort, nobody succeeded in claiming the reward.

An official solution was published shortly after the closing date but wasn’t very clearly written. Worse it immediately gives away the final solution rather than leading people through the puzzle step by step. This spoils it in my view.

I have written my own solution which I think explains it better and goes through the puzzle in a more reasonable sequence. The solution fills a baker’s dozen of posts and I will be issuing one part each week. Hopefully, this will give readers a chance to test out their own puzzling skills and maybe solve the rest of it for themselves as pieces of the solution are revealed.

This guide is absolutely free to read on my website. But if you make a £1 donation via PayPal, I will email you a 57 page PDF of the full thing. Thank you!

Part 1: Structure and Puzzle Summary – published 30 September 2016

Part 2: Symbols: Alchemy, Zodiac, Cadency and the rest – published 7 October 2016

Part 2a: Symbols cribsheet – published 7 October 2016

Part 3: The Solids and their Mini Puzzles – published 14 October 2016

Part 4: The Pyramid Puzzle: Nimue, the Witch of the Zodiac – published 21 October 2016

Part 5: The Cone Puzzle: Mastering Alchemy – published 28 October 2016

Part 6: The Cube Puzzle: Merlin, the Wizard of Alchemy – published 4 November 2016

Part 7: The Sphere Puzzle: Cadency Symbols – published 11 November 2016

Part 8: The Cylinder Puzzle: Owls Hoot at the Moon – published 18 November 2016

Part 9: The Cuboid Puzzle: Coppery tiles and Riding Knights – published 25 November 2016

Part 10: The Diabolo Puzzle: A Simple Finale – published 2 December 2016

Part 11: A collection of 75 objects – published 9 December 2016

Part 12: Interpreting the objects – published 16 December 2016

Part 13: The final solution! – published 23 December 2016

To follow the solution, you’ll need your own copy of the Merlin Mystery (MM). I am deliberately not including many scans of the original book in order to avoid copyright infringement. Copies can usually be picked up quite cheaply on Amazon.

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