What if your house was a puzzle cache?

[+LeoGeo]

Fun article in today's New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html

 

It's not literally a Geocaching.com puzzle cache, but I wonder if this family's experience might turn them into cachers?

[Dinoprophet]

That's fantastically awesome! I want a puzzle house.

 

(I'm not clear whether they knew the designer was building in the puzzle or not.)

Edited June 12, 2008 by Dinoprophet

[jholly]

Fun article in today's New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html

 

It's not literally a Geocaching.com puzzle cache, but I wonder if this family's experience might turn them into cachers?

 

I hate it when someone posts a link to an article and you have to sign up for access to the site.

 

Jim

[Dinoprophet]

Fun article in today's New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html

 

It's not literally a Geocaching.com puzzle cache, but I wonder if this family's experience might turn them into cachers?

 

I hate it when someone posts a link to an article and you have to sign up for access to the site.

 

Jim

I didn't have to.

[+sbell111]

Fun article in today's New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html

 

It's not literally a Geocaching.com puzzle cache, but I wonder if this family's experience might turn them into cachers?

 

I hate it when someone posts a link to an article and you have to sign up for access to the site.

 

Jim

I didn't have to.

Nor did I.

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Fun article in today's New York Times:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html

 

It's not literally a Geocaching.com puzzle cache, but I wonder if this family's experience might turn them into cachers?

 

I hate it when someone posts a link to an article and you have to sign up for access to the site.

 

Jim

I was not asked to sign up to access to the site, and in fact, I still have the article pages open on my browser.

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

That's fantastically awesome! I want a puzzle house.

 

(I'm not clear whether they knew the designer was building in the puzzle or not.)

From reading the article, it sounds like they had no idea in advance that the designer had left any puzzle in the house, and rather, it seems that he only told them that he had left a poem tucked away in a wall. And, other than the visitor who spontaneously decrypted the code on the radiator in the 11 year-old's bedroom, it seems that they had no idea of the puzzle thing until a book arrived in a package over a year later from Clough, the architectural designer.

 

P.S. And, of course, there was the cryptic email which Clough sent to the husband during the family's first year in the apartment....

Edited June 12, 2008 by Vinny & Sue Team

[+TMDMom]

How cool is that?!?

 

btw, I didn't have to sign up to read it.

[+Sioneva]

How cool is that?!?

 

btw, I didn't have to sign up to read it.

 

I did. But I really wanted to read it, so...

[CacheNCarryMA]

$8.5 million purchase price.

 

4,300 sq. feet

 

$1.29 million renovation

 

[+Snake & Rooster]

Has anyone else tried the cipher in the child's room? I get what's below, but it doesn't seem quite right.

 

 

caval, the archer's child; curious, bright -- your quicegildpivotsald leaps like a dancer. the key to preserving curiosiity's light is to love the question as much as the answer

[+AndrewRJ]

I hate to say it, but compared to that, I don't thing geocaching would be nearly as interesting.

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

How cool is that?!?

 

btw, I didn't have to sign up to read it.

 

I did. But I really wanted to read it, so...

Oh... well... Sionevil, in your case, you, and you only, were required to log into the site, but only as part of my elaborate and sophisticated worldwide network which allows me to geo-stalk you 24 hours per day! Keep those 2 AM Autovon-sourced calls coming!

[+Too Tall John]

Has anyone else tried the cipher in the child's room? I get what's below, but it doesn't seem quite right.

 

 

caval, the archer's child; curious, bright -- your quicegildpivotsald leaps like a dancer. the key to preserving curiosiity's light is to love the question as much as the answer

I got:

 

cavan, the archer's child; curious, bright--your quicegind pivots and leaps like a dancer. the key to preserving curiousity's light is to love the question as much as the answer.

 

I wonder, are some letters rotated again?

[+Renegade Knight]

$8.5 million purchase price.

 

4,300 sq. feet

 

$1.29 million renovation

 

Some folks have more money than the rest of us. For that kind of money I could have bought my neighborhood, moved my extended family in, and retired so I could spoil the nieces and nephews.

[+Sioneva]

How cool is that?!?

 

btw, I didn't have to sign up to read it.

 

I did. But I really wanted to read it, so...

Oh... well... Sionevil, in your case, you, and you only, were required to log into the site, but only as part of my elaborate and sophisticated worldwide network which allows me to geo-stalk you 24 hours per day! Keep those 2 AM Autovon-sourced calls coming!

 

Oh, but I am wearing my tinfoil underwear! I was promised it would mess with your signal! *heavy sigh* It is /impossible/ to get high quality these days...

 

Hey, would you build me a puzzle house, Vinny, m'luv? You told me you'd do /anything/ to stop me calling, after all.

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

I wonder if the family has ever wondered about the blank junction box cover that doesn't really seem like it belongs there. ;-)

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

How cool is that?!?

 

btw, I didn't have to sign up to read it.

 

I did. But I really wanted to read it, so...

Oh... well... Sionevil, in your case, you, and you only, were required to log into the site, but only as part of my elaborate and sophisticated worldwide network which allows me to geo-stalk you 24 hours per day! Keep those 2 AM Autovon-sourced calls coming!

 

Oh, but I am wearing my tinfoil underwear! I was promised it would mess with your signal! *heavy sigh* It is /impossible/ to get high quality these days...

 

Hey, would you build me a puzzle house, Vinny, m'luv? You told me you'd do /anything/ to stop me calling, after all.

Sionevil, I would be HAPPY to build you such a puzzle house, BUT for the following two factors:

• Sue asked me the same thing before you did, so she is first
  
• I seem to be $0.9 million short of the $9.8 million which was spent by the couple in the article, and thus I can build such a house for neither of you
  

However, Sionevil, what is REALLY galling to me is that every time I try to go to the courts and procure a restraining order against you, the court is then informed by DoD that they ARE NOT ALLOWED to issue a restraining order against you because you are a ranking 5-star general, the commander of two Air Force bases, and one of the top ranking commanders in NORAD, and thus restraining orders are verboten because they could limit your "mobility". AAARRRGGGH!

Edited June 12, 2008 by Vinny & Sue Team

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Has anyone else tried the cipher in the child's room? I get what's below, but it doesn't seem quite right.

 

 

caval, the archer's child; curious, bright -- your quicegildpivotsald leaps like a dancer. the key to preserving curiosiity's light is to love the question as much as the answer

I got:

 

cavan, the archer's child; curious, bright--your quicegind pivots and leaps like a dancer. the key to preserving curiousity's light is to love the question as much as the answer.

 

I wonder, are some letters rotated again?

Sue, who is known locally as the Puzzle Queen, took a stab at this, and here is what she reports:

It is a simple substitution cipher, decoded by shifting back 3 letters in the alphabet - EXCEPT, to make sense out of all of the words, for 4 of the letters only you need to shift 3 letters FORWARD in the alphabet instead of backward. I'm guessing this is intentional by the designer and is some sort of clue for the other things hidden in the apartment.

 

"Cavan, the archer's child; curious, bright--your quick mind pivots and leaps like a dancer. The key to preserving curiousity's light is to love the question as much as the answer."

 

Without the forward instead of backward shift on 4 of the letters, the decode reads "curioum" instead of "curious", and "quice gind" instead of "quick mind".

 

Perhaps this will be of assistance to someone!

[+gravechaser]

I, too, got the subscription page but it also said you could set your browser to accept their cookies. I added them to my "allow" list and now I have read the article.

 

REALLY COOL HOUSE! I want one!

[+TeamAtlas]

Wow, that is awesome. My kinda place! I too was astounded by the pricetag. You know what I could do with that 10M? That's a lot of swag! LOL

 

Seriously it seems like something out of a movie... those are some very lucky kids, to get to live in a puzzle-house! Too cool.

[CacheNCarryMA]

Here's another NYT article about a puzzling house owned by Doug Carlston, CEO and founder of Broderbund software (makers of the game "MYST")

[+Sioneva]

Here's another NYT article about a puzzling house owned by Doug Carlston, CEO and founder of Broderbund software (makers of the game "MYST")

 

When I was a kid, and even more today, I always dreamed of having a house with secret passages and rooms. The House of Seven Gables in MA was always cool because it had one - I never went there for the museum stuff.

 

MAN, I want this house! Do they give tours? That'd be worth a trip just in itself!

[Dinoprophet]

This is bizarre: They're making a movie based on the article.

[CacheNCarryMA]

This is bizarre: They're making a movie based on the article.

 

 

What's next? The video game based on the movie based on the newspaper article?

[+Sioneva]

This is bizarre: They're making a movie based on the article.

 

 

What's next? The video game based on the movie based on the newspaper article?

 

Yes. And then there will be a Saturday morning cartoon.

 

Sounds like a movie I'd like to see!