BONUS CLUE 9 ADDED - CONTEST TWO: Solve this puzzle to win a free Fanatic book by Chris Williams
- Thread starter Kagavi
- Start date
This custom autographed Fanatic book is becoming more and more respectable. I may have to insure it for more than $100 when I send it to the winner.
We've already confirmed that the opening lines point to A Dictionary of Color (1930), with the “William’s forest” line reinforcing that it was printed in Pennsylvania.
I’ve gone in a few different directions with “the smell of lavender preceded the prize,” but the “lavender is elderly” clue led me to the same place as @Tony Gunk - the color Old Lavender on Plate 56 in the book.
My thinking is that the plate isn’t necessarily pointing to Burgundy itself as “the prize,” but rather that "the prize" should be read more broadly as wine (given the presence of Burgundy, Port, and similar wine-related colors on or near that plate).
The next line supports this direction through the phrase “mull over.” I’m reading this as a pun on mulling wine. There is a traditional hot drink made by mulled port (or similar wines) with hot water, citrus, sugar, and spices. This drink is called a Negus.
The Negus was invented (or at least popularized) by Colonel Francis Negus, an English army officer and politician. So in this reading, the drink literally “comes from” the Colonel.
My proposed answer for Part One is Negus.
I previously guessed Bishop as a solution to Part Two, because Negus belongs to a family of mulled drinks named after ecclesiastical ranks (Smoking Bishop, Archbishop, Pope, Cardinal, etc.). That didn’t land.
This chain feels reasonably tight to me, as it uses the book’s plates, a pun on "mull," and real historical context.
I already used my single question via private DM to @Kagavi to confirm that the book was correct, so I'm unable to clarify whether I'm on the right track.
Before going further into Part Two, I wanted to check with everyone: does this seem like a reasonable reading of Part One, or is there a flaw in the logic?
I’ve gone in a few different directions with “the smell of lavender preceded the prize,” but the “lavender is elderly” clue led me to the same place as @Tony Gunk - the color Old Lavender on Plate 56 in the book.
My thinking is that the plate isn’t necessarily pointing to Burgundy itself as “the prize,” but rather that "the prize" should be read more broadly as wine (given the presence of Burgundy, Port, and similar wine-related colors on or near that plate).
The next line supports this direction through the phrase “mull over.” I’m reading this as a pun on mulling wine. There is a traditional hot drink made by mulled port (or similar wines) with hot water, citrus, sugar, and spices. This drink is called a Negus.
The Negus was invented (or at least popularized) by Colonel Francis Negus, an English army officer and politician. So in this reading, the drink literally “comes from” the Colonel.
My proposed answer for Part One is Negus.
I previously guessed Bishop as a solution to Part Two, because Negus belongs to a family of mulled drinks named after ecclesiastical ranks (Smoking Bishop, Archbishop, Pope, Cardinal, etc.). That didn’t land.
This chain feels reasonably tight to me, as it uses the book’s plates, a pun on "mull," and real historical context.
I already used my single question via private DM to @Kagavi to confirm that the book was correct, so I'm unable to clarify whether I'm on the right track.
Before going further into Part Two, I wanted to check with everyone: does this seem like a reasonable reading of Part One, or is there a flaw in the logic?
@F5cy - I actually came across Colonel Negus/Negus as well, thinking the same thing about the clues pointing to wine and mulled wine. I definitely think it has merit, but so far had not connected anything to the second part. Other rabbit holes I've been down include investigations of Colonel Berry/Colonel Mulberry (interestingly, this brought up a Mark Twain character Colonel Mulberry Sellers), but alas no smoking gun to finish. Great work so far on all you've done!
This is where I got my "cross licensing" guess. It said he's an inventor in his past so I went looking for the cross symbol related to patents.
Hate to point out that you're maybe pulling a "Williams" here, but did you mean "Imbibe"?
Sorry CW!
Here I thought it was some sneaky part of the puzzle - "whence the d transforms, follow the path and you shall have your answer"
Ok, since the "To Imbibe is to be led astray" clue took out the wine theories, I’m going back to another path I looked at earlier.
On Plate 56, if you move column to column from Old Lavender instead of by row, you hit Flint (Grey). The book’s note for it mentions:
That pointed me toward the Ferguson rifle, the breech-loading flintlock designed by Colonel (later Major) Patrick Ferguson. The dirty Red Coat even had his own experimental unit called Ferguson’s Rifle Corps during the Revolutionary War. He died at the Battle of Kings Mountain on the border of the Carolina colonies.
"Mull over the Colonel’s past" made me look at the name instead: Ferguson means “son of Fergus.” Fergus Mór was the legendary first King of the Scots and founder of Dál Riata, the kingdom that included the Mull of Kintyre.
"Mull over… says your kin." That geographic pun feels very much like the “William’s forest” style of wordplay earlier in the riddle. (Coincidentally, (maybe?) Paul McCartney has owned a farm on the Mull of Kintyre since the ’60s. Wings had a hit song by that same name that was the first single in the UK to sell over 2 million copies.)
I don’t have a solid tie-in to Part Two yet, and this could still be the wrong off-ramp, but it feels worth exploring now that the wine path is closed. Kagavi is having a nice laugh.
Maybe it'll provide someone else with some ideas!
On Plate 56, if you move column to column from Old Lavender instead of by row, you hit Flint (Grey). The book’s note for it mentions:
That pointed me toward the Ferguson rifle, the breech-loading flintlock designed by Colonel (later Major) Patrick Ferguson. The dirty Red Coat even had his own experimental unit called Ferguson’s Rifle Corps during the Revolutionary War. He died at the Battle of Kings Mountain on the border of the Carolina colonies.
"Mull over the Colonel’s past" made me look at the name instead: Ferguson means “son of Fergus.” Fergus Mór was the legendary first King of the Scots and founder of Dál Riata, the kingdom that included the Mull of Kintyre.
"Mull over… says your kin." That geographic pun feels very much like the “William’s forest” style of wordplay earlier in the riddle. (Coincidentally, (maybe?) Paul McCartney has owned a farm on the Mull of Kintyre since the ’60s. Wings had a hit song by that same name that was the first single in the UK to sell over 2 million copies.)
I don’t have a solid tie-in to Part Two yet, and this could still be the wrong off-ramp, but it feels worth exploring now that the wine path is closed. Kagavi is having a nice laugh.
Maybe it'll provide someone else with some ideas!
The † symbol means "see another entry" (a cross-reference to another color name) in the Dictionary of Color by Maerz & Paul.
