Masquerade is a picture book, written and illustrated by Kit Williams, published in August 1979, which triggered a treasure hunt by hiding clues to the location of a gem gold rabbit, created and hidden in somewhere in England by Williams. The book is an inspiration for the genre of books known today as a treasure hunt.
Video Masquerade (book)
Messages
Challenged by Tom Maschler, from British publishing company Jonathan Cape, to "do something never before" with a picture book, Williams began in the 1970s to create a book of painting that the reader would carefully study instead of flipping and discard. The purpose of his book, the treasure hunt, became a means to achieve this goal. Masquerade shows 15 detailed paintings illustrating the story of a rabbit named Jack Hare, who tries to bring the treasure from the Moon (described as a woman) to his love object, the Sun (a man). When he reached the Sun, Jack found that he had lost the treasure, and the reader stayed to find his location.
Along with bookmaking, Williams created a rabbit of gold and 18 carat jewelry (75%), in the form of a large filigree pendant on a segmented chain. He seals the rabbit inside a crate made of ceramic, rabbit-shaped (both to protect gifts from the ground, and to thwart attempts to find treasures with metal detectors). The coffin reads the legend "I am the keeper of the masquerade of gems, who wait safely in me for you or eternity".
Kit Williams then said:
If I spend two years on 16 paintings for Masquerade I want them to mean something. I remember how, as a child, I had found a "treasure hunt" where the puzzles were not as exciting and not as valuable to discover. So I decided to make a treasure, gold, bury it on the ground and paint a real riddle to lead people to it. The key was Catherine from Aragon's Cross at Ampthill, near Bedford, casting a shadow like a watch pointer to the sun.
On August 7, 1979, Williams and celebrity Bamber Gascoigne witnesses secretly buried the rabbit casket at Ampthill Park. Williams publicly announced that his upcoming book contains all the instructions needed to decode the precise treasure location in Britain to "within inches." At that time, the only additional clue he gave was that the rabbit was buried in a public property that could be easily accessed. To ensure that readers from far further have equal chances to win, Williams also announces that he will confirm the first correct answer sent to him by post.
The modified version of the book also appears in Italian, with buried treasures in Italy. It was re-created and translated by Joan Arnold and Lilli Denon under the name of Il Testoro in Masquerade (Emme Edizioni).
Maps Masquerade (book)
Search
This book sells hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, many in the UK, but also in Australia, South Africa, West Germany, Japan (where the book is called ????? kamenbutoukai), France and the United States. Seekers often dig into public and private property that act on the premonition. A UK site called "Haresfield Beacon" is a popular site for searchers, and Williams pays a sign fee telling the searchers that the rabbit is not hidden there. The real-life locations reproduced in the paintings are sought after by treasure hunters, including Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
In March 1982, Kit Williams received a sketch he recognized as the first true solution sent to him. Williams immediately called the sender, "Ken Thomas", a pseudonym Dugald Thompson, and instructed him to dig a rabbit. He realized that Thompson had not solved the puzzle in the intended manner, but appeared at that moment to make a mistake in guessing the lucky ones. Shortly after Thompson was officially awarded the prize, Williams received the exact solution sent by two physics teachers, Mike Barker from William Hulme Grammar School and John Rousseau from Rossall School. Barker and Rousseau seem to have found the prize itself while digging in Ampthill, but not paying attention to it in the clay box; Thompson found it in the pile of dirt they left behind.
Bamber Gascoigne, had been asked by Williams to watch the burial of a rabbit and document the contest from start to finish, doing so in his book Quest for the Golden Hare. Gascoigne summarizes his experience as follows:
Tens of thousands of letters from Masqueraders have convinced me that the human mind has the same capacity for pattern matching and self-deception. While some addicts are busy cooking the puzzle, others are more determined to continue chasing their rabbits regardless of the news that it has been found. Their own theory seems so convincing that there is no exterior evidence to deny it. The most determined of Masqueraders may have reluctantly accepted that such rabbits were dug in Ampthill, but they believed there would be other rabbits, or better solutions, awaiting them at their favorite spots. Kit will expect them to continue unshakable by the much-publicized diversion at Ampthill and will look forward to the day when he will welcome them as the real discoverers of the real puzzle Masquerade . An optimistic expedition still began, with shovels and maps, throughout the summer of 1982.
Solution
Masquerade Puzzle is very complicated. The answer is hidden in fifteen illustrations painted. In each painting, the line must be drawn from each left eye of a creature depicted through the longest digit in his left hand, and out into one of the letters on the page's border. Then from the left eye through the longest digit on the left leg; right eye through the longest digit in the right hand; and finally the right eye through the longest digit on the right foot. This is only done for the eyes and digits seen in the painting. The letters shown by these lines can be made to form words, either by treating them as anagrams or by applying the order of animals and numbers suggested by Isaac Newton's painting (pictured). Following this method reveals fifteen short words or phrases, which together form a nineteen word message:
C ATHERINE'S L ONG FINGER O VER S HADOWS E ARTH B DIIKAT Y ELLOW A MULET M IDDAY P OINTS T HE H KAMI Saya N L JANGAN EQUINOX L OOK ANDA
The acrostics of these words and phrases read "CLOSEBYAMPTHILL". Correctly interpreted, the message tells the reader that the treasure is buried near the cross-shaped monument to the Catherine of Aragon in Ampthill Park, in the right place touched by the tip of the monument's shadow during the day on the autumn or autumn equinox.
Many additional instructions and "confirmations" are spread throughout the book. For example, in a painting depicting the Sun and the Moon dancing around the Earth, the two hands of the two figures touch each other, pointing to the spring date of the equinoxes.
Scandal
On December 11, 1988, The Sunday Times printed a story accusing the contest winner of the Masquerade contest as fraud. "Ken Thomas" is revealed as a pseudonym of Dugald Thompson, and Thompson's business partner, John Guard, is the girlfriend of Veronica Robertson, a former girlfriend of Live-in from Kit Williams. The guards allegedly convinced Robertson to help him because both were said to be animal rights activists and the Guards promised to donate all the profits to animal rights.
The Sunday Times alleges that while living with Williams, Robertson has learned the approximate physical location of a rabbit, while remaining unaware of the exact solution to the master's puzzle. After allegedly finding out from Robertson that the rabbit was in Ampthill, Guard and two assistants were said to have begun searching using metal detectors. After searching for some fruitless time, they drew a rough sketch from the scene, which Thompson then sent to Williams as "Thomas", and this was what Williams recognized as the first true answer.
Williams was surprised to find the scandal and was quoted as saying:
It marred Masquerade and I was surprised at what had arisen. I feel a deep sense of responsibility for everyone who really looks for it. Although I did not know it, it was a skeleton in my closet and I was relieved it had come out.
Thompson founded a software company called "Haresoft", and offered gems as a gift for a new contest that took the form of a computer game, Hareraiser . The company and its game (which many believe can not be solved with only meaningless texts and images), unsuccessfully, does not produce a winner. When the company was liquidated in 1988, the rabbit was sold at Sotheby's London on behalf of the liquidator, Peat Marwick.
Legacy
The rabbit was auctioned at Sotheby in December 1988, selling for £ 31,900 to anonymous buyers. Williams himself went there to bid, but stopped at Ã, Â £ 6,000.
The existence of the treasures remained unknown for more than 20 years, until it was revealed in 2009. The BBC Radio 4 program, The Grand Masquerade , aired July 14, 2009, tells the story of creation and the solution of the confusing. Williams was interviewed and presenter John O'Farrell claimed that this was the first time Williams had spoken of the scandal for 20 years. During the interview, Williams expressed a desire to see the rabbit again. Hearing this, his current grandson - an anonymous buyer "based in the Far East" - arranged for Williams to reunite with his work. It was featured in a television documentary, The Man Behind the Masquerade, which was broadcast on BBC Four on December 2, 2009.
The rabbit is on display at V & amp; A Museum, London, as part of a retrospective of "British Design 1948-2012" in 2012.
Masquerade pioneered the entire genre of secret puzzles known as treasure hunts. It spawned a series of books and games from other publishers that tried to imitate its success, including the Locks to the Kingdom (Pavilion Books, 1982), The Piper Of Dreams (Hodder) & amp; Stoughton, 1982), The Secret (Bantam Books, 1982), The Golden Key (William Maclellan, 1982), Treasure: Finding Horse Gold (Intravision, 1984) and The Merlin Mystery (Warner Books, 1998). Kit Williams himself also created a second treasure hunting book, The Bee on the Comb (1984).
Similar hunting continues to be published in various formats. Many hunts then utilize technologies that were not available when Masquerade was published, such as the web-based tribute of Menagerie , the Treasure Quest CD-ROM, and Text4Treasure , which using SMS messages. Others, such as the Army Of Zero and West By Sea: Treasure Hunting Spanning the World (Expeditionaire, 2016) follow the use of Masquerade's physical media for the main puzzle, but provide guidance online additions.
In 2001, the arrival of a portable and accurate GPS receiver set off the evolution of a new form of treasure hunt called Geocaching, where anyone can hide a hidden physical box or covert container containing a notebook. They then leave instructions on where they left the "cache" on the Geocaching.com website for others to find the treasure, signed the notebook and recorded their findings. This development allows anyone to follow in the footsteps of the Williams Kit and hide their own treasures for others to find and enable others to search for these treasures. To mark this heritage there is geocache in the original Masquerade hideout location.
References
Select bibliography
- Kit Williams, Masquerade , London: Jonathan Cape, 1979 (ISBNÃ, 0-8052-3747-X)
- The Williams Kit, Masquerade: Complete Book with the Explained Answers , London: Jonathan Cape, 1982 [paperback] (ISBNÃ, 0-89480-369-7)
- Bamber Gascoigne,
, London: Jonathan Cape, 1983 (ISBNÃ, 0-224-02116-8)
External links
- Description by page from solution
- Additional details about scandal
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments