Puzzle 1

You see a selection of book titles on Mary’s video in which parts of each title are obscured:

The Girl               Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson

I Know What You              Last Summer by Lois Duncan

To                a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Are You There God? It’s               , Margaret by Judy Blume

Each of these is a famous book, the titles of which can be completed as follows:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

The missing words form Mary’s secret message: Who did kill me?

Puzzle 2

You have been given a set of numbers:

1     2     3     6     8     11    12     14     15     16     17

And are faced with this layout of lockers:

1	2	5	6	7	8	9	12	13	14	15
	3					10				16
	4					11				17

You have been told that none of these numbered lockers is the correct one, but that they can be used to deduce which is the correct one. To do so, you must consider the locker layout and shade those that match the given numbers:

1	2	5	6	7	8	9	12	13	14	15
	3					10				16
	4					11				17

This spells out FIVE, so the correct locker is locker 5.

Puzzle 3

This puzzle uses some enigmatic text that is viewed on a wall in the story:

Ballroom. Fly. Cuts. Saint Charles.

You have been given a wordsearch puzzle and told that you can find both ‘Ballroom’ and ‘Cuts’ in the grid – as well as other words. There are four entries for you to find:

The circled words reveal a single square enclosed by all four entries – and that square contains an ‘X’. This is also hinted at in the text, when it says ‘“X” literally marks the spot’.

BUT we can go further…

It has already been established by this point that Mary is associated with lilies, including having a lily tattoo, and in fact you can find six lilies in the grid, spelled as lilium,

the Latin name for the plant. This is the first cipher in the book, in which information that has one surface meaning is in reality hinting at some other meaning.

Not only does this connect the puzzle to Mary, but it also foreshadows a murder later in this chapter…

Puzzle 4

This is a standard logic puzzle. Using the information provided, you can conclude:

Apt	Name	Fact
1	Luke Martinon	Head of the Residents’ Association
2	Frederic Raffin	Always throwing parties
3	Alexandre Dubois	Has all sorts of guests come in and out
4	Philippe Carter	Been away travelling
5	Joseph Leroy	Quite quiet
6	Jean-Paul Smyth	In love with a local girl

Connecting this to the solution to puzzle 3 reveals a warning of who will die in this chapter.

Puzzle 5

We have a number puzzle in which you must solve the clues to work out who has which bib number. As stated, the bib numbers are two digits. They work out as follows:

»	Topher Saltsworth	16	(forced as 16 since we are told all bibs are 2 digits)
»	Frankie Banders	17
»	Archie Sevensan	21
»	James Caudwell	25	(options from clue are 16 & 25, but 16 is taken by Topher)
»	Iko Tsi	42
»	Ralph Banner	63
»	Aurin Glensdole	84	(options from clue are 21, 42, 63, 84, but the rest are taken)
»	Michael Moore	85

Puzzle 6

At the end of Chapter 1, you received a piece of paper that included this text:

85 (2, 3, 6) = 84 X

This is then quoted again at the end of Chapter 2, along with some unexplained conclusions:

‘85…that’s Michael Moore. And 2, 3, 6 from his name…shit. It’s what happened to

84. The now ex 84. You stare at your result. Was he pre-ordained to die?’

If you have solved puzzle 5 correctly, you will know that Michael Moore is bib number 85.

If you then take the letters at positions 2, 3 and 6 from his name (so 2 = I, 3 = C and 6 = E), you spell out ICE (which also happens to be a cipher).

What’s more, in the Chapter 1 puzzle you learned that ‘X’ denoted where someone was murdered.

And, furthermore, in puzzle 5 we learned that the murdered person, Aurin, has bib 84 and room 84.

Putting this together, therefore, you discover that you were notified in advance that the murdered person would be Aurin, and his death would involve ice.

Puzzle 7

You are tasked with solving two sudoku puzzles. These are regular sudoku puzzles, except we are placing 0 to 5 instead of any other number range. No number can repeat within a row, column or bold-lined box. Once solved, the puzzles look like this:

Reading down each grid, you can extract the number sequences 525111 (in the first sudoku) and 134430 (in the second), which indicate the latitude of 52.5111°N and longitude of 13.4430°E.

But, there is a little more to these puzzles than simple sudoku. If you pay attention to the

puzzles themselves, you can observe that they spell out ROPE with their given digits:

This is another cipher, foreshadowing the next death and reappearing later in the book.

Puzzle 8

This is an ordering puzzle. You must use the clues to discover that Pietr was assigned to be in the locations in the following order (from longest ago to most recent):

1. Reception
2. Room 5
3. Room 7
4. Office
5. Prep
6. Room 1
7. Room 3
8. Entrance

This leads you to deduce that Pietr should have been on the door to the club.

But there is more to this puzzle than meets the eye.

If you read the named rooms in solution order, you get this:

» Reception

» Office

» Prep

» Entrance

…where reading down the first letters spells out ROPE. This foreshadows Pietr’s death via a rope, and links back to puzzle 7, which also foreshadowed ROPE – and which is also a cipher, as we see later in the book.

But even that’s not all. If you index the numbers of the numbered rooms Pietr is in (in the order you deduced) into his name, then you also spell out ROPE, as follows:

	P i e t r	H o f f m a n
	1 2 3 4 5	6 7 8 9 10 11 12
» » » »	Room 5: ‘r’ Room 7: ‘o’ Room 1: ‘P’ Room 3: ‘e’

So, there are three ways to discover the ROPE cipher in the last two puzzles.

Puzzle 9

This is a hanjie puzzle, a popular picture logic puzzle. It solves to this simple image that corresponds to a zoomed-in crop of the document:

This is the score of 98% that was ‘written and circled repeatedly’ on Mary’s paper.

Puzzle 10

The simple questions can be answered by earlier parts of the novel:

»	[Mary’s] surname:	Slater	(first page of prologue)
»	[Mary’s] country of birth:	England	(first page of prologue)
»	[Mary’s] year of birth:	1999	(converting from prologue information)

The purpose of this puzzle is to reveal Mary’s password:

SLATER-mit-ENGLAND-99

This password is given in the text, but the observant reader might note that, although ‘mit’ is the German word for ‘with’ (and Mary has been living in Germany), in Englishwe can spell out another word within this password:

slaTER-MIT-England-99

That is, TERMITE. This is a hidden cipher that reappears later in the book.

It also connects to the solution to puzzle 11, which contains a related cipher.

Puzzle 11

This an ordering puzzle. Use the information in the text to work out the order in which Mary contacted each publisher (ordered from earliest to most recent):

1. Stefane Schwartz
2. Heinrich Gruber
3. Otto Schmidt
4. Edward Fischery
5. Karl Klein
6. Hank Browning
7. Christopher Elms

Christopher Elms was the one she saw last, and who killed her dream.

But there is another, hidden layer. Earlier in the book you were given the following publisher information:

REJECTS:

Otto Schmidt             T—–Heinrich Gruber        N—–Hank Browning                   L—–Edward Fischery       H—–

ASK TO READ FULL MS:

Karl Klein                   I—–Stefane Schwartz       A—–

ASK TO MEET:

Christopher Elms     L——

Reordering these into the solution order reveals the following:

»	Stefane Schwartz	A—-–
»	Heinrich Gruber	N—–
»	Otto Schmidt	T—-–
»	Edward Fischery	H—–
»	Karl Klein	I—-–
»	Hank Browning	L—–
»	Christopher Elms	L——

The obscured publisher names spell out ANTHILL. This is another cipher, linked to TERMITE in the solution to puzzle 10 and referencing a feature that appears later in the book.

Puzzle 12

The words can be placed, crossword-style, into the grid as follows:

P

P

V

C

A

S

G

E

L

A

T

O

L

A

C

T

I

C

S

I

I

C

E

I

E

K

E

N

N

E

L

R

D

A

R

N

T

A

S

K

R

T

A

N

G

O

U

O

S

C

A

R

E

I

M

P

E

L

O

H

O

T

E

L

E

D

I

T

C

H

P

O

R

B

U

P

E

A

R

T

A

N

G

O

R

A

R

I

H

E

N

O

I

S

A

D

D

L

E

A

B

L

O

O

M

S

E

R

L

F

S

If you read the numbers associated with each shaded word in the order they are given in the word list, you get this:

»	Abloom	»	Ditch	10	»	Net	»	Peseta
»	Acid	»	Gelato	11	»	Oil	»	Ride	14
»	Angora 11	»	Golf		»	Old        8	»	Saddle
»	Ask	»	Hen	4	»	Operas 14	»	Sierra
»	Banal	»	Hotel		»	Orb        3	»	Super	12
»	Clerk     2	»	Ice	3	»	Oscar    3	»	Tango	4
»	Cot        12	»	Impel		»	Other	»	Voila
»	Curios	»	Kennel		»	Pain
»	Darn	»	Lactic		»	Pear      1

Together, this reads 11, 2, 12, 10, 11, 4, 3, 8, 14, 3, 3, 1, 14, 12, 4. In the story this is an unlock code for a location, but we use it later in another puzzle too.

But that’s not all, since there are five NATO radio codewords in the clue list above (words you would use to spell out letters over the phone). In order, they are:

»	Golf
»	Hotel
»	Oscar
»	Sierra
»	Tango

These spell out GHOST. This is a cipher, as we later see.

Puzzle 13

This puzzle involves using the 15 numbers from the previous puzzle to reveal a 15-letter name. The narrative tells you this directly, so this is not something you need to guess at. You do, however, have to work out how to do that.

The narrative also tells you that you need all the names you’ve encountered so far, so you must make a list. You then need to arrange this list in alphabetical order of surname, like so:

»	Frankie Banders	»	Leopold Eversis	»	Frederic Raffin
»	Ralph Banner	»	Edward Fischery	»	Topher Saltsworth
»	Elias Barkman	»	Aurin Glensdole	»	Otto Schmidt
»	Hank Browning	»	Heinrich Gruber	»	Aaron Schneider
»	Simon Caldwell	»	Pietr Hoffman	»	Stefane Schwartz
»	Philippe Carter	»	Karl Klein	»	Archie Sevensan
»	James Caudwell	»	Joseph Leroy	»	Jean-Paul Smyth
»	Daniel Cope	»	Kai London	»	Antonio Spelunker
»	Ptolemy Dicrick	»	Luke Martinon	»	Iko Tsi
»	Alexandre Dubois	»	Jonas Meyer	»	Hans Weber
»	Christopher Elms	»	Michael Moore	»	Archibald Windson

If you now apply the numbers to the first 15 names in turn, and take the letter at that index within the name (so 1 means take the first letter, 2 means take the second letter, etc), you get this:

»	Frankie Banders	11	D	»	Ptolemy Dicrick	14	K
»	Ralph Banner	2	A	»	Alexandre Dubois	3	E
»	Elias Barkman	12	N	»	Christopher Elms	3	R
»	Hank Browning	10	I	»	Leopold Eversis	1	L
»	Simon Caldwell	11	E	»	Edward Fischery	14	Y
»	Philippe Carter	4	L	»	Aurin Glensdole	12	O
»	James Caudwell	3	M	»	Heinrich Gruber	4	N
»	Daniel Cope	8	O

This is how you uncover the name DANIEL MOKER-LYON.

Puzzle 14

You are shown six usernames, and for five of them you are given initials:

»	@CarlSeesIt
»	@EverXTech	A O
»	@FeelDude	R ?
»	@LeeAlive	? E
»	@RealAcko	I ?
»	@xoDunchOx	S D

At this point, the only names at the front of the book that remain unused are:

» Carl Sabaan

» Aidan Ogassan

» Rick Dudent

» Leroy Endemon

» Ian Ackingbird

» Stephen Dunchudder

» Voltaire Lett

» Christos Akemoue

» George Funbubion

» Arcturus Ladode

» Petro Fistus

» Marcus Oshubode

» Sharu Khan

» Thommy Cullen

»  Algernon Stephenson

» Marmaduke Huster

You must now match up the initials to their corresponding names. They can be uniquely assigned, and you are given Carl’s name directly in the text. This results in:

»	Carl Sabaan	C S	@CarlSeesIt
»	Aidan Ogassan	A O	@EverXTech
»	Rick Dudent	R D	@FeelDude
»	Leroy Endemon	L E	@LeeAlive
»	Ian Ackingbird	I A	@RealAcko
»	Stephen Dunchudder	S D	@xoDunchOx

But that’s not all. If you keep the usernames in alphabetical order,as above, you may notice that the two columns of initials are (reading down the first) CARLIS and (second) SODEAD. Or, in other words CARL IS SO DEAD. This indicates who is about to die.

And that’s still not all. If you sort the list by the ordering in the solution to puzzle 13, i.e. alphabetically by surname, you get this:

»	Ian Ackingbird	I A	@RealAcko
»	Rick Dudent	R D	@FeelDude
»	Stephen Dunchudder	S D	@xoDunchOx
»	Leroy Endemon	L E	@LeeAlive
»	Aidan Ogassan	A O	@EverXTech
»	Carl Sabaan	C S	@CarlSeesIt

Now, if you read diagonally down and across the usernames, as marked in bold above (letter 1 from the first, letter 2 from the second, etc.), you spell out REDAXE. That is: RED AXE. This is another cipher that appears later in the book.

 Puzzle 15

You are given partial coordinates for which you need to fill in the blanks:

Latitude: _ _._520N Longitude: _._ _77W

After applying the rules you’ve been given, the solutions are:

» Latitude:            517

» Longitude:        125

From this you can construct the coordinates 51.7520°N, 1.2577°W.

Puzzle 16

The text tells you to compare the menu items with the list of names from the start of the book that you haven’t yet come across. The remaining names are:

»  Algernon Stephenson

» Arcturus Ladode

» Christos Akemoue

» George Funbubion

» Marcus Oshubode

» Marmaduke Huster

» Voltaire Lett

» Petro Fistus

» Sharu Khan

» Thommy Cullen

The five courses are each an anagram of one of the names above (i.e. the same letters in a different order), as follows:

»	Course I:	Olive Tartlet	Voltaire Lett
»	Course II:	Artichoke Mousse	Christos Akemoue
»	Course III:	Beef Bourguignon	George Funbubion
»	Course IV:	Custard Roulade	Arcturus Ladode
»	Course V:	Petits Fours	Petro Fistus

So, this identifies five further potential victims.

Puzzle 17

On the menu we also have these numbers:

4-5-1-20-8 9-19 1-18-15-21-14-4 20-8-5 3-15-18-14-5-18

If you read these as letters, with A=1, B=2, C=3, etc., they become this message:

DEATH IS AROUND THE CORNER

 

This comes from a well-known phrase, ‘death is [just] around the corner’ – albeit one which turns out to have a very literal meaning here.

If you look up a Balliol College map online, as mentioned in the book, you will see that the residential staircases each have Roman numerals to identify them, just like the courses on your menu.

Note that only III is a corner staircase, out of the Roman numerals I, II, III, IV and V.

We can now deduce ‘death is around the corner’ to mean that death is associated with the corner staircase, which is staircase III – and which in turn points to course III. From this we can infer that George Funbubion is the murder victim here.

The Roman numerals are also another cipher, reappearing later in the book.

Puzzle 18

The small puzzle at the end of Chapter 7 has two straightforward crossword-style clues:

» small stream

» WWII singer, Vera

These solve to ‘brook’ and ‘Lynn’ (i.e. singer Vera Lynn), respectively.

If you then apply ‘-N’ as noted in the story, to remove the final N, you end up with BROOKLYN, your next destination.

Puzzle 19

We have five usernames and only five names left:

» @BodesHere6

» @IShareUWin6

» @OMyAllNY4

» @Petsonreg7

» @XMarster6

And:

»  Algernon Stephenson

» Marcus Oshubode

» Marmaduke Huster

» Sharu Khan

» Thommy Cullen

You can use reasonable guesses to assign these, based on finding bits of text in common with their names, and reducing the options at each step to make it easier:

» BodesHere6 can be read as ‘Bode’s here’, i.e. Marcus Oshubode

» IShareUWin6 can be read as ‘I [am] Shar[e]u’ (plus ‘Win’), i.e. Sharu Khan

»  OMyAllNY4 can be read as ‘[Th]OM[m]y’ (plus ‘All NY’), i.e. Thommy Cullen

» Petsonreg7 can be read backwards as Algerno[n] Stephenson

»  XMarster6 contains the start and end of ‘Marmaduke Huster’ (plus ‘X’)

Also, and separately, you can use the numbers as indexes into the usernames (in the order given) to reveal a hidden cipher – and a preview of the ensuing murder:

BodesHere6 = H                  IShareUWin6 = E                 OMyAllNY4 = A

Petsonreg7 = R                    XMarster6 = T

They spell out HEART. This is both a cipher and a clue to how the next person is killed.

Puzzle 20

We can solve the logic deduction puzzle using the clues in the text to reveal:

Area	Person	Feature
1	Marcus Oshubode	Raving dancer
2	Sharu Khan	Bleach blond hair and beard
3	Thommy Cullen	Crucifix tattoo on their neck
4	Algernon Stephenson	Wears two belts
5	Marmaduke Huster	Always wears Tom Ford glasses

The areas correspond to the X-shaped floorplan:

This X both harks back to the X’s earlier in the book, which indicated death (see puzzles 3 and 6), and gives the location for where the next death will occur – at the very heart of the X. But not only is the next victim at the heart, they are also stabbed through the heart.

You are explicitly given these five names so you have confirmation of who is left. That then leaves Daniel Moker-Lyon – so if you didn’t solve the earlier puzzle 13 that revealed his name, you can now directly infer the solution to that with nothing more than a pencil and the act of crossing out names.

In any case, because area 3 is the heart of the X, we anticipate (or deduce after the event) that this means that Thommy Cullen will be killed.

Puzzle 21

You have made a new list of the eight people targeted for murder and their associated rules:

1. Jean-Paul Smyth         Remove any name with 3+ identical vowels
2. Aurin Glensdole          Remove any name with 10+ consonants
3. Pietr Hoffman              Remove any name containing U
4. Christopher Elms        Remove any name with 4+ consecutive consonants
5. Daniel Moker-Lyon     Remove any name containing Y
6. Carl Sabaan                 Remove anyone whose first name is longer than their surname
7. George Funbubion     Remove anyone who has a first name or surname of 5 letters or fewer
8. Thommy Cullen           Remove anyone who has their first name later in the alphabet than their surname

Taken in order, these rules progressively eliminate the names from Mary’s full list as follows:

1. Archie Sevensan, Elias Barkman, Leopold Eversis, Carl Sabaan, Aidan Ogassan, Leroy Endemon, Ian Ackingbird, Stephen Dunchudder, Algernon Stephenson
2. Topher Saltsworth, Christopher Elms, Stefane Schwartz, Edward Fischery, Archibald Windson, Ptolemy Dicrick
3. Luke Martinon, Alexandre Dubois, Jean-Paul Smyth, James Caudwell, Aurin Glensdole, Heinrich Gruber, Antonio Spelunker, Rick Dudent, Christos Akemoue, George Funbubion, Arcturus Ladode, Petro Fistus, Marcus Oshubode, Sharu Khan, Thommy Cullen, Marmaduke Huster
4. Aaron Schneider, Otto Schmidt
5. Joseph Leroy, Jonas Meyer, Daniel Moker-Lyon
6. Frederic Raffin, Philippe Carter, Michael Moore, Daniel Cope, Voltaire Lett
7. Kai London, Iko Tsi, Ralph Banner, Hans Weber, Pietr Hoffman, Karl Klein, Hank Browning, Simon Caldwell
8. Frankie Banders

This leaves exactly no one, since it cuts all 50 people from the list.

Puzzle 22

You are told not to circle (i.e. use the associated rule of) the person who was not murdered after Jude died instead. This person is Daniel Moker-Lyon.

So now we apply these seven rules:

1. Jean-Paul Smyth         Remove any name with 3+ identical vowels
2. Aurin Glensdole          Remove any name with 10+ consonants
3. Pietr Hoffman              Remove any name containing U
4. Christopher Elms        Remove any name with 4+ consecutive consonants
5. Carl Sabaan                 Remove anyone whose first name is longer than their surname
6. George Funbubion     Remove anyone who has a first name or surname of 5 letters or fewer
7. Thommy Cullen           Remove anyone who has their first name later in the alphabet than their surname

Taken in order, these rules progressively eliminate the names from Mary’s full list as follows:

1. Archie Sevensan, Elias Barkman, Leopold Eversis, Carl Sabaan, Aidan Ogassan, Leroy Endemon, Ian Ackingbird, Stephen Dunchudder, Algernon Stephenson
2. Topher Saltsworth, Christopher Elms, Stefane Schwartz, Edward Fischery, Archibald Windson, Ptolemy Dicrick
3. Luke Martinon, Alexandre Dubois, Jean-Paul Smyth, James Caudwell, Aurin Glensdole, Heinrich Gruber, Antonio Spelunker, Rick Dudent,

Christos Akemoue, George Funbubion, Arcturus Ladode, Petro Fistus, Marcus Oshubode, Sharu Khan, Thommy Cullen, Marmaduke Huster

• Aaron Schneider, Otto Schmidt
• Frederic Raffin, Philippe Carter, Joseph Leroy, Michael Moore, Daniel Cope, Voltaire Lett
• Kai London, Iko Tsi, Ralph Banner, Jonas Meyer, Hans Weber, Pietr Hoffman, Karl Klein, Hank Browning, Simon Caldwell
• Frankie Banders

This now leaves exactly one name: Daniel Moker-Lyon. The alias created to manipulate you, to distract you from the person who was in fact the murderer themselves…

because…

Daniel Moker-Lyon is an anagram of NO ONE KILLED MARY.