365 True Things: 72/Frivolity

The past few days, we have been solving diabolical puzzles—two in a series of, so far, four. All for the sake of finding a geocache. Or two.

White border letters and
Mayan zero (see it?)
were part of the key to
solving this puzzle

Not only are these puzzles diabolical; they are also elaborate, requiring much time and painstaking design skills on the maker's part. They are somewhat based on Masquerade by Kit Williams (though blessedly, they aren't that diabolical). They all use books by Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Tom Kitten; The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (here ⇧); The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin; and the most recent arrival, which David is noodling on right now, A Tale of Two Bad Mice.

It has been delightful to revisit Beatrix Potter, whom I used to enjoy as a child. And it's been fun to scratch our heads over the puzzles, which rely on such devices as differently colored or shaped letters, Mayan numbers, and cryptic crosswords. I did contact a previous solver to get me started on Tom Kitten: and that taught us that looking, looking, very closely, at every possible anomaly, can be key. David eventually worked out Mrs. Tittlemouse—which was very sneaky, involving several rather random steps and lots of looking, looking—all by himself. And today, I solved Squirrel Nutkin—which was not nearly as sneaky, but I, too, did it all (well, mostly: David had a couple of important insights) by myself.

Silliness. But satisfying silliness. Fun, too. And we all know that fun is important.

But now, back to work.