Chris Maslanka
As College Enigmatist, Chris Maslanka will be providing clues as to the contents of the time capsule buried at the topping out ceremony. Two clues have been released so far - to see them, please click here.
Being a freelance puzzle-writer and designer is a curious occupation. Like Sherlock Holmes, you shun the humdrum conundrum and yearn for the more stimulating client.
It had already been an interesting year. I had designed a London-based treasure hunt for the Tibet Relief Fund to mark the Dalai Lama's visit, and undertaken an internet based treasure hunt for the BBC, requiring me to travel between locations as disparate as Truro and Newcastle. Such treasure hunts are puzzles, not so much embedded in the page as in a landscape. These were puzzles for flit, hunter-gatherer, ranging in space, flattering but ultimately exhausting to both solver and setter.
When the Master suggested creating a puzzle in association with the St Catherine's time capsule, my mind leapt. The idea appealed at once. It was neat. The puzzle would not demand that the solver rush about, only that he persist. Thinking, after all, is not rooted in any spot. And when we think, does not time seem - for just a short while - to cease its endless ticking-off of us?
I thought of nova et vetera, and how the College was itself a dynamic form of time capsule, embodying a sameness in a sea of change. A window into the past in a present for the future? This would be a puzzle, then, not across space, but across time.
Burying a set of mystery objects is a return to the more concrete meaning of the word cryptic. One clue released per year for 50 years - how close to my preferred rate of working! And what a luxurious opportunity for manticity! No more Sherlockian three-pipe problem, then, but a puzzle guaranteed still to be ticking over - unless medical advances get a move on - long after its poor designer has been timed out.
But enough, Maslanka! What is in the capsule? Well, down to earth reasoning suggests it cannot be a jumbo jet or a cheese. But - in case this isn't enough for you to work it out - here is the first nine of 50 clues - the game's afoot!
1. Two thirds of my number is one and a half times what 1 am.
2. Pooh in 1927, true of us today?
3. Do they belong to longevity?
4. The first 6 000 flowers.
5. A good hiding...
6. Six of one and half a dozen of the other
7. Initially he found like an insect...
8. Bovine comes to river
9. To each his own
