Thread: Patterns in the stolen item locations

Just to add to this, Missy Elliott could be the Missing Zuchinni, because the most popular brand of Zuchinni is Black Beauty, and Missy Elliott has an album called Black Beauty. But speaking of Missy Elliott, someone mentioned anagrams of T.S. Eliot being "toilets". How about, with Missy Elliott (two L's and two T's instead of one L and one T in Elliott) being "missyl toilet", meaning "missile toilet". Something was hidden in the toilet on the sixth floor, which causes it to overflow in the animation. Reminded me of M-80's from when I was a young Vandal. That would have come from floor 11. Floor 11 has lots of rockets.

Stuff on floor one from floor eleven. The bowl of cereal stuff on the tea table. The mantel clock on the fireplace. The old newspaper in the foyer. Seems to me the residents could have borrowed material from other apartments to change the appearance of their own. It certainly looks like the mantel clock on floor one was pushed in front of the glass globe that is now half-hidden behind it. So the mantel clock looks like a new addition to the apartment, and it runs slow, like it says in the animation for Floor eleven: Time certainly seemed to pass slowly here".

Other items on floor one might have come from floor eleven. In any case, Travis himself must have visited floor 11 and retrieved the items himself. He may have left the magnifying glass on the box on floor 11 in his rush, or as an oversight.

How could a missing zuchinni become a portrait of Missy Elliott? Maybe the alchemist knows.

Originally Posted by perchprism

Just to add to this, Missy Elliott could be the Missing Zuchinni, because the most popular brand of Zuchinni is Black Beauty, and Missy Elliott has an album called Black Beauty.

You know, after I recommended that Zucchini/Missy Elliott solution that had come from the HitContests site, it occurred to me that I hadn't followed the links that were offered as proof that Missy Elliott had an album called "Black Beauty." (My bad! As Doc points out, things have to be done in order, including checking links before you recommend them.)

Turns out there is a series of albums under the "Black Beauty" title, with one or two new ones each year, offering selected songs by a wide range of African American artists. Missy has had one or two songs in the collection over the years. With this new background, I decided that the authors of TCWAF probably would not have used Ms. Elliott as the solution for the zucchini mystery. Not only is the title not necessarily associated with her, but it would be rather insulting to African American musicians to equate their "beauty" with a vegetable.

My apologies to Ms. Elliott, and I'm guessing we have to keep looking for the missing zucchini after all. If "black beauty" is part of the solution, though, there is a "black board" on Floor 1 that might be a factor. Or maybe the horse in the Remington statue represents Black Beauty? And I haven't entirely forgotten that google revealed that there was a disease that wiped out the zucchini crop in 1983 called "yellow mosaic". It's a stretch, but maybe we are supposed to put together yellow clues that will spell out zucchini somehow.

Or what about the pendulum on the grandfather clock as a zucchini? If time is truly moving slowly, a zucchini from 1983 might not be rotten yet. I currently favor the notion that the extra dark paisley patch on the rug represents the vegetable from Floor 11 although I don't feel 100% certain.

But speaking of Missy Elliott, someone mentioned anagrams of T.S. Eliot being "toilets". How about, with Missy Elliott (two L's and two T's instead of one L and one T in Elliott) being "missyl toilet", meaning "missile toilet".

I know the T.S. Eliot anagram is old and well known. So a second person-to-toilet anagram is certainly plausible. Here again, though, I wonder whether the authors would have used the name of a living person this way. They are marketing a cheerful book for all ages and (probably) wouldn't want to muddle their image by dissing a celebrity.

I do like your idea of connecting T.S. Eliot with Missy Elliott as a clue. If we subtract his name from hers, the leftover letters are MISYL, as you point out. What kinds of combinations could this make on the periodic table? Could it help us to find a S/H/M number that we need? Or is "SLIMY" a direction to look at the food on Floor 8 or the eel on Floor 10? Or should we do the puzzle over using the full given names of both people?

...the mantel clock looks like a new addition to the apartment, and it runs slow, like it says in the animation for Floor eleven: Time certainly seemed to pass slowly here".

I agree that all clocks need to be examined and reexamined. My guess is that the orb that appears to have been pushed out of place has actually been carefully sited by Scott Teplin to be located at an endpoint for a line or apex of an angle connecting significant items in the apartment. Or perhaps its closeness to the clock means that the two items are to be considered together as a single clue or solution to a clue?

Thanks for posting your new ideas. I love the smell of a provocative post in the morning!

I think the zucchini is missing. The Black Beauty Album thing might be a stretch, but I don't think it is insulting to black Americans, either. Some folks have told me they don't think Missy Elliott represents the missing zucchini. I'm keeping an open mind on it.

At the same time something was hidden in the toilet on floor 6. Having your name turned into a flusher IS a tad insulting, admittedly, but my guess is there is a rocket or a zucchini hiding in that toilet.

I can say it's a zucchini in that toilet because the zucchini is missing, and something is hiding in the toilet, something that should otherwise be accounted for, else we could never guess what's hiding in that toilet.

We're supposed to take note of how the various apartments have been rearranged to form a code to tell the residents where they've hidden the jewels. The toilet appears to have been moved to the center of the bathroom, out of reach of the toilet paper. It might have been moved because there's a missile in it.

Other items on other floors likewise appear out of place. Or placed in a hurry.

Originally Posted by MayorSara

I do like your idea of connecting T.S. Eliot with Missy Elliott as a clue. If we subtract his name from hers, the leftover letters are MISYL, as you point out. . . . Or should we do the puzzle over using the full given names of both people?

Darn! When I cross off all the common letters from "Melissa Arnette Elliott" and "Thomas Stearns Eliot," the leftover letters are:

ELIELTHOS

I don't see how "HOLE SITE + L" could possibly have relevance for this treasure hunt.

Just trying to look at things in a new way, to see if we can shake loose a new idea for the remaining floors. I can't seem to get this to format neatly, but here's the content, anyway:

Floor/Stolen Item/Found Number
1 / 11? / 4
2 / 4 / 9
3 / 1 / 11
4 / 10 /
5 / 2 / 8
6 / 7 / 5
7 / 6 / 7
8 / 9 / 10
9 / 3
10 / 12 / 2
11 / 8 / 3
12 / 5

I guess I had hoped I would see some simple mathematical relationship: Add or subtract two numbers to reveal the third. I can't see anything consistent, though. Let me know if you see anything.

Sara,

He is Yes.

No pattern in the numbers, and nothing to do with the SHM of the three remaining floors.

Before the three-day gold rush that resulted in successful digs for 8 or 9 of the treasures, I was trying to sort out Floor 8. Aunt Julie at HitContests (AJ on this site?) had mentioned that Floor 8 was such a mess that it could have a "something is rotten in Denmark" theme, suggesting an allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

To make a long story short, I found a lengthy anagram connecting the floor to Hamlet. In keeping with the line from the play, I also found that other anagrams worked better if I sometimes subtracted two B's before asking the wordsmith.org website to show me the possible outcomes.

Much later, I noticed that each floor seems to have one or more "BB" items. Some days after that, I remembered a suggested clue posted at HitContests:

Originally Posted by flannelcat
....the only variety of zucchini I knew off the top of my head was Black Beauty:
Zucchini Black Beauty - Zucchini - Vegetables - Burpee

What if I tried the "not 2B" approach with "Black Beauty"? The solution that caught my interest was "Black Beauty = BB actual key". If "2B or not 2B" leads to an actual key, it may be useful in breaking the impasse on the remaining puzzles.

It's possible that all the BB items in the building are just some of the fun layers that the authors created for kicks as they were writing the book. (They make this point, and also mention that they included "in jokes" in the book, in this interview published 5/25: The Hunt Is On: The TFT Interview with Eli Horowitz and Scott Teplin | Indie Books

Since fresh approaches wouldn't hurt at this point, for what it's worth, here's a list of BB items I noticed in the building. Some of them may be stretching the term a bit; you may find others I didn't see.

13
Brillo Box

12
Bunsen Burner
Black Board
Eyeball Bowl

11
Burpy Bear Box
Bread Box
Bought Bushel
Broken Bulbs
Bells and Bowls?

10
Black Blobs
Bread Board
Brown Bear

9
Bread Board
Butcher Block
Bobby Box (or Booth)
Blue Booth

8
Bunk Beds
Basket Ball
Beach Ball
Balloon Bucket <-- I think this one is important)

7
Bread Board
Blue Booth
Brown Bear
Blue (or big) Balloon
Broken Bicycle
Base Ball
Blue Bottles
Blue Bubble Shoes

6
Bean Bag
Bare Bulb

5
Bare Bed?
Belt Buckle
Brown Bag
Bathtub Boxes?

4
Bed Bracket?
Barbells
Big Bed
Blue Bottles
Big Bag
Bilbo Baggins? <-- The round doors and many rings on this floor make me think there is an allusion to The Lord of the Rings here.

3
Bulletin Board (over sink)?

2
Bunk Beds

1
Bread Board
Black Board
Brahms Bust

There may be other wordplay motifs - I have reason to think the dome over the cake on Floor 12 is a "cake cover," for instance - which makes the dome on Floor 1 a "coral cover" - but don't have the kind of underpinning that "2B or not 2B" offers for the BB items.

You can run the clues with or without the 2Bs, as Hamlet indicates. Here's an example of what I did with one clue: From "bunsen burner" I got "run ere nuns". (When I have found the word "run" in an anagram, I take it as an instruction to run another anagram using synonyms.) When I tried an anagram of "prior to sisters," I got "rest stop or iris" as one solution. This supported what the successful Junior Deducer digs had discovered: rest stops on both sides of a highway look like an eye, and a treasure is somewhere in the "iris" of that eye. So the BB clues may be instructions about dig solutions or other general clues.

Another example: I ran "eyeball bowl" with its 2Bs, and got "below a belly" (is this a reference to the belt on the lemon?), "belay bellow" (there is a bellows on the fireplace) and "be yellow lab". Is this a reference to Quello's laboratory, or to the nice breed of dog?

It would be great if this "2B or not 2B" approach were an "actual key" that would lead us to the mysterious zucchini and the remaining numbers! Thanks again, Flannelcat, for that key piece of information.

"2B or not 2B

Nice.

If it's not, it certainly would be a great key for some other puzzle...and may already B.

I was thinking why the Bubbles shoes from 7th floor are found on 6th floor and the Unicycle from 6th floor is found on 7th. Seems to me that Jigsy couldn't ride a unicycle in his big clumsy shoes and kicked them off, leaving them under the ratty sofa. I have a lot of experience kicking off my shoes and leaving them places so I hope you all can trust this observation. Jigsy then rode off to the elevator with the Unicycle and then hopped off to eat his lunch and play darts...

This leads me to wonder what Bert was up to. I think Vera and Josie let Bert borrow their Victrola thinking he'd have it stashed in his place, but instead he takes it to 12th floor in order to give private dance lessons to Quello who is crushing on Josie...or Vera...hmm.

Quello dropped his lead bars off at Klobberducks and picked up the giant zucchinni from Ida on his way back up. He needed Bert's help to strap the bulky object to the top of his machine.

Most of the other work was done by Travis. He even uses the Kaulken's hanky to wipe any prints off of Klobberduck's rifle.

I won't bore anyone with my rendition of every detail, it's fun to work out on your own, but it helps in a special way to understand how all the swapping occurred. I'm pretty sure Klobberduck, Munari, and Manzarek don't leave their apartments to swap objects.

Oh, one more thing: Does anyone else think the Jigsy and Krieger are the Kaulken's parents?

We might not be settled on the zucchini.

I was mistaken to think there was a "giant zucchini" ever mentioned. Gus offers a guess "Golden zucchini?" and Ida clarifies, "Nope, just a zucchini. I bought a bushel on sale in 1983. Got an amazing price." I take it to mean she had normal everyday green zucchini. Here response to Gus' singular form mention of a Golden zucchini is also in singular form, but the word zucchini can also be the plural form. She may have been referencing her bushel of zucchini in the plural sense before Gus used the singular.

Again I think the green bushel is what might be mistaken as emeralds in the open drawer of Quello's cabinet. Why this might be important I still don't know, but a couple other things from Ida that felt significant was her face having "turned sour" as a lemons clue and then her demonstration of "diving" as a possible indication that the 12 might be hiding in a garbage can or near a swimming area....or an area where swimming is off limits such as a drinking water reservoir.

Garbage cans in parks that I've seen tend to be shaped like a marshmallow cylinder with a hole in the middle of the lid like a donut. That lid is removed to access a lined or non-lined barrel insert. A park grounds keeper might only ever pull the inner barrel or it's bag out and replace with a fresh bag. They wouldn't necessarily notice an object hiding beneath the lined barrel or adhered to the inner wall between the lined barrel and the outer shell. Something to think about.