Usborne Puzzle Adventures: The Curse of the Lost Idol - Part 1
Pagescan Adventures: Let’s Read - Number Two! Now with Usborne Puzzle Adventures #2! Because puzzle books are still a lot like video games sort of maybe a bit.
For those of you who didn’t read my LR of The Dark, Dark Knight, I recommend that you do so so that I don’t have to repeat my intro. Usborne Puzzle Adventures are puzzle adventures by Usborne, and they are Usborne’s adventures with puzzles that have puzzles from Usborne in adventure form. They are for children but are sometimes kinda absurdly difficult due to some whimsical idea of the author’s. I feel a lot of nostalgia for them, though, and I suspect so do a lot of other people if they encountered them during their 90s heyday. So when I saw this in a heap of old books in an eleventh-century church, asking to be taken away, how could I resist? I actually used to own this one in an omnibus edition with two other UPAs, but I don’t think I have that any more - at least anywhere I can access - so this isn’t exactly redundant.
This is a much earlier UPA than The Dark, Dark Knight. That was the twenty-third in the series, apparently. This is the second. Very early days here. 1986 early, making it, which I never realised, older than me. Not that the numbering matters. The series employed a number of writers and artists, with Gaby Waters writing here and Graham Round designing and illustrating, so we have to view this as an alternative to the likes of TDDK rather than a true predecessor. Although TDDK lists Gaby Waters as “series editor,” so evidently she went up in the world…
But anyway: Welcome to The Curse of the Lost Idol. The first difference to be observed is that this title doesn’t pull its punches, merely its puns.
So good that the publishers put their name on it twice, because that hot-air balloon logo is going to be so useful to anyone whose eyes just slid over the name “USBORNE” in big red capital letters right there at the top-left. As for the idol itself… wow that thing gave me the creeps when I was a kid. I had a kind of phobia when I was young of idols and totems and things like that. I had the same problem with the idol in Tintin and the Broken Ear. Kinds of idol this did not extend to: Idol singers; idleness. Nowadays all I think when I look on it is “Hey, this cover is misleading - no way is it that big in relation to the background.” I guess it’s hovering spookily in front of the camera. Also, it has six toes, just like I remembered. You probably didn’t notice that, or maybe even wrote it off as a mistake… but there are no mistakes in Usborne Puzzle Adventures. Merely unsolved mysteries. Think of them as a bonus.
Let’s look at the back cover.
The synopsis doesn’t pull its punches here. I like to think - and it may just be nostalgia - that the classic UPAs were willing to be a bit more spooky, a bit less silly. Lost idols and ancient curses rather than silly time-travelling knights and villains who never show up and everyone’s name is a pun. Look at some of those early titles and you may see what I mean. Number 3: Murder on the Midnight Plane. And I had that one, too, it really was murder. I think I recall The Ghost in the Mirror being actually rather bone-chilling, too. Never saw the Advanced Level books, though, so I don’t know whether they were advanced in plot terms or just puzzling terms. But anyway. We’ll see if I’m right about the earlier books being creepier. I’m reading this semi-blind - there’s a lot about The Curse of the Lost Idol I remember, including those six toes, and a photographic memory of the last page and its bizarre puzzle, but most of the book is lost in the fog. Hopefully, therefore, I won’t remember the answers to the puzzles and can work them out legitimately! We will see together if we are smarter than 8-13-year-olds. If we’re as smart as Annie.
The contents page suggests this book is slightly shorter than TDDK, which is a shame, but on the other hand there were literally dozens of these books so it’s hard to complain too much about just one. And there’s a bit more of an intro than there was for TDDK. There, they could assume the premise was pretty well-established, whereas this book is so early it was still an innovation - there are puzzles, and you have to solve them yourself, which is different despite it being more or less what you do in every detective novel ever, just in a less formulaic way. Actually, that’s not entirely true; sometimes the book won’t tell you the answer to a puzzle if you turn over to the next page, it just deals with the consequences of that answer, so okay, fair enough. Still, at least we have hints! Hints written in a secret way. It’s not actually very secret, though, which is probably why they’d stopped bothering by TDDK. Why make the hints harder to read than the answers? But you’ll see that soon.
Hey there Annie. You are looking… rather skeletal. Papery hue despite being under Egypt’s scorching sun. Joints clearly visible under your skin. Maybe you should think about eating something? And about having eyes that actually join up at the top? Gotta say, I’d be pretty embarrassed if a skeleton could solve a mystery I couldn’t, so I’d better keep my brain in top gear and remember that in a story with decent continuity there will be mysteries which aren’t restricted to just the double page I’m looking at! Gasp! These books are kind of like training wheels mystery novels, I guess. They prepare you for books which replace every single picture with a thousand more words, and then some.
Still more intro, or more specifically, backstory, like we had in TDDK and probably every other Usborne Puzzle Adventure. There has to be some story that happens without the protagonist around, since our heroes are generally too good at solving mysteries to let the plot happen at all if they were around to begin with. And yet, much like the protagonists of murder mystery shows, we have to ask: Don’t puzzles and mysteries follow them around like an evil cloud or curse? Is this the curse of the lost idol?
Oh yeah, but there’s a plot! A Pott plot. Apparently experienced(???) Egyptology professors get their best research done by just randomly digging in the desert with only their young slave boys for company. Give the lad a hat, Pott! They needed to dig out that shady cavern just for a break from the burning, cancer-inducing rays of our dear star. Hey, did that stone Eric dropped in ever hit the bottom? And how does a kid like him even get to be an Egyptologist’s assistant, anyway? Err - unsolved bonus mysteries!
Eric sure hopes this isn’t a tomb full of spooky mummies, and that’s why he went wandering around blindly like a moron. Damaging valuable finds, probably. Why did you hire him, Pott? Why not Annie? She’d probably have brought her own torch. There’s something very hilarious about the professor’s astonishment. I guess it’s partly the way his eyes are raised heavenwards. Has he too fallen prostate on the floor before his golden idol? Enraptured by its prodigious extra toe (see, told you!)? Eric keeps his cool and instead gives it finger guns. Sooooo coooool
Hot diggity, and now we’re getting into puzzle territory. Hieroglyphs and codes and ciphers and all that are totally where it is at for Usborne Puzzle Adventures. If you go through one of these books without having to solve some weird unintuitive code then you have been ripped off by some cheap piracy that has no right to exist and probably doesn’t. Actually this is pretty unusual in that we have here a puzzle and our nominal main character Annie hasn’t been so much as mentioned yet. Poor girl. Sidelined in her own book by a guy with a dumb name and his slave lad.
But first some plot. Eric, ever the assistant and never the archaeologist, immediately attempts to contaminate and damage that incredibly significant find. His “weedy biceps” sure don’t help. The author certainly seems to feel deep contempt for Eric. I almost feel sorry for him. Hey, wait, is pure gold actually very heavy? I know it’s meant to be malleable… I’ll look it up, and by that I mean look it up on Wikipedia. …Okay, Wikipedia was useless. Everything my tutors have ever warned me of has come true. So instead my source was the authoritative and reliable-sounding SellGoldHQ.com, which tells me that yes, it is very heavy, and can I give them some please.
All highly qualified Egyptologists believe very seriously in apparently very vague ancient curses which don’t tell you what will happen if you fail to meet their conditions. The duplicitously-named Doppel Gang are, disappointingly, rather more sensible in this regard than the world of academia. Also, Pott, doesn’t this amazing find probably belong to the state of Egypt, and it’s not actually your right to do anything with it? Just saying?
“Wow!” “Exactly.” Eric you sure are pretty bad at being an Egyptologist! I guess that’s why he is only the assistant, although it’s also true that he is just a kid, not that that fact makes him a very good assistant. But let’s see if we can be smarter than Eric and decode this… this actually rather well-made puzzle. It’s not just letter-to-letter or word-to-word, it’s actually surprisingly complex for the first puzzle in a book for kids. Bravo Gaby Waters / Graham Round, probably the latter, as the text makes no mention of the specifics of the puzzle at all. But what does it all mean? Can you figure it out multiple question marks?
Tell you what. Let’s take a look at the clue for this page. Written in a secret way!
That’s… not very secret! But I will accept it as a matter of verisimilitude. They couldn’t make the clues harder to work out than the puzzle itself, although the clues are harder to decipher than just the answer. Also I get the feeling that some of these books probably have puzzles that are literally just mirror-writing, which is probably why they stopped mirroring the hints. I was thinking that having image-editing programs made such mirroring kind of trivial anyway, but what, you’re seriously going to scan in the page and edit it rather than just finding a mirror? What kind of house do you live in? But in any case, the clue is just an instruction, really. Instructions that should’ve been obvious, but there’s not much you can do with this puzzle. What you have to do is pretty straightforward, even if it is unusually intricate.
Since I’m doing this semi-blind, I’ll try and provide an in-progress answer:
HERE STANDS IDOL MOON GOD. MANY EVIL MEN WANT STEAL IDOL. FIRST MAN SEES IDOL MUST PROTECT IDOL FROM EVIL MEN. CURSE STRIKES ALL THIEVES AND ANY MAN DISOBEYS THESE WORDS. UGH UGH ME ANGRY. Okay sorry that last bit wasn’t part of the code at all.
Pretty much right on the money. Wait, that’s a moon god? Very golden and non-crescent-y for that, but okay, I’ll take it. Even though my experience of the Moon is chiefly as a blurry white sickle hiding behind the clouds rather than a big golden orb, perched on a weedy-looking guy’s head or otherwise. It’s a very abstract representation. You know, like one of those moe anthropomorphisations. This one at least has its dignity. Aside from being manhandled by Eric.
ENTER OUR HEROINE, WHO I GUESS HAS ONLY ONE OUTFIT. Annie at last, who, like all young lasses of Usborne Puzzle Adventures’s target age group, spends her days reading the newspaper on the street in the company of obese rich men. This is a very cynical book. Hey what gives there is no puzzle on this paoh wait there it is, on the left-hand page. My mistake. Just excuse that outburst. Wow the public sure is pretty excited about lost idols. I mean… really, stopping the presses for it? Ms. Waters, Mr. Round, do you even know what that means? Actually despite my joke earlier this really is a very cynical spread. “Weekly Grumble”? “GOSSIP HEARSAY RUMOUR We print it!”? This is a surprisingly prescient indictment of the tabloid press for twenty-six years ago. They hadn’t even killed Princess Di yet. Doesn’t say a great deal for its reading audience, either, i.e. our heroine. Nice reading choice there Annie. At least you aren’t skimming to the celebrity scandalmongering.
Although there is one celebrity involved: Professor Parsifal Pott! …Parsifal? What does that mean? “Pure fool,” apparently (and ha, that one was Wikipedia!). That is… that is not a very flattering way of treating Pott, but on the other hand, he does hire primary school children as his assistants on incredibly important excavations. And then muscles them out of the entire story to take the credit himself. Classy, Parsifal, classy. You truly deserve that horrible punny headline. Maybe they should’ve mentioned that the idol was found in a pothole?
I’m just so sunk into dissecting the narrative here. Like, is a one-eyed cobra actually a magic symbol? *Googles* This… this is a sexual innuendo. God Hell it Usborne Puzzle Adventures. First a coded reference to a Nazi purge and now this. This is doing nothing for your reputation! Doing nothing for the professor’s reputation is the fact that, yes, he really does seem to believe that the idol is purely his responsibility and property, and he feels perfectly capable of hiding it from the rest of the world except for six lucky riddlers. I mean, look at that riddle. You have a one in three chance of just guessing the answer without even trying to solve it!
So, yes. The riddle. This page’s puzzle. Let’s have a look. The dead gods’ society are quibbling over a golden apple that’s been stolen for no particular reason. Only one of them stole it… and yet two of them are lying about the event? Wha? Presumably one of them is the thief, but what’s the motive of the other one? Just being a jerk? Isn’t that more the preserve of the Greek gods?
I’m going to try and solve it before looking at the hint. Let’s assume everyone’s lying and dissect their statements. Horus says “I DIDN’T,” which, if he’s a liar, means “I DID.” So if he’s one of the two liars, he stole the apple, no doubt. “OSIRIS DID” Anubis says - if he’s a liar, he means “OSIRIS DIDN’T,” in which case Osiris is innocent but possibly still a liar. Osiris says “ANUBIS IS LYING,” which, if it’s a lie, means “ANUBIS IS TELLING THE TRUTH,” so if Osiris is a liar then Osiris took the apple.
But wait. If Osiris is a liar, then Anubis can’t be, which means that the other liar must be Horus. But if Horus is a liar, he took the apple - and if Osiris is a liar, he took the apple. They can’t both be lying. Which means that Anubis is definitely a liar, but the other liar took the apple. But we’ve also established that Osiris and Anubis cannot both be liars. Therefore, Anubis and Horus are the liars, and Horus stole the golden apple!
So what’s the clue, then.
The… the clue itself contains a second, separate hint? Wheels within wheels here. Maybe they should have two hint pages. Or maybe some puzzles are just a lot more complicated than others. But this more or less follows my logic, I think. Let’s look at the answer and find out!
SOOOOO COOOOOL
Ah, sunny Egypt! Yes, of course our heroine won, and of course she’s still wearing exactly the same clothes as before. Why would you ever doubt this? Maybe because you doubt her competence…? You don’t have to pinch yourself that hard to establish that you aren’t dreaming, Annie! Unless you think you’ve been dreaming for the past several weeks of travel! Although admittedly the apparent absence of any parents, guardians, or guides is rather worrying. Is she an orphan or something? Little orphan Annie? A street urchin of no fixed abode? This kinda fits with her enormous bulging bag of useful stuff… these are all of her worldly possessions. She probably had to ask Fattie McLardocle for an envelope to send in her puzzle answer. And who knows what terrible price he exacted from her… could he have dispatched her to steal the idol for him? I mean, I know he’s rich, but just look at the Doppel Gang. The fact that they have a gimmick to their treasure-stealing suggests that they’re after a reputation rather than profit.
And of course, since this is a puzzle adventure, you have to solve puzzles before you can do anything. Solving one puzzle to go on the magical mystery tour isn’t enough - they have to weed out anyone unworthy before they earn the right to gaze upon that gaudy piece of ancient scrap metal. Schools in this world? All puzzles. Their parents probably lock them in their rooms every night and they have to escape every morning like it’s an online Flash game and they’re a Phi Brain trainee. Also, a magnetic toothpick? For the obvious build-a-compass puzzle later, or for characters who routinely digest objects made of metal? Actually, I should question the extra sharp penknife, too. Carry one of those around these days and you’d get arrested. Annie is a shady character! Or she was twenty-six years ago. She’s probably either dead or a career criminal by now.
Even Annie thinks this puzzle isn’t so tough, though, which should spur on the reader. I guess there are only six - well, nine, but three blatantly don’t count - boats to pick from, and a simple process of elimination should make this one fairly easy to decipher. Just go through the instructions, knocking out boats which don’t fit the bill step by step until only one remains. I bet the clue tells you to do the same thing. Let’s check.
Oh, no, it’s mostly defining words that might not be clear. Fair enough. As to the puzzle itself, I… okay, I accidentally saw the answer earlier. But we can still go through the motions of solving this.
So, we have the IBIS, the CHAOS - helpfully nestling across the fold - the NILE QUEEN, PHARAOH CRUISER, ANUBIS and OSIRIS. I bet it’s Osiris, he’s the only one telling the truth! But no. There is a proper way of doing this.
The right boat has more than one funnel so that knocks out the Anubis, although all the rest rather boringly have exactly two. At least fourteen port side windows - Anubis is out again, as are Nile Queen and Ibis. A stern deck - that’s one at the back, and according to the book’s definition, I’m pretty sure that knocks off the Osiris, so it’s down to Pharaoh Cruiser and Chaos. It has a blue stripe but no flag - Pharaoh Cruiser has a flag, so it must be the Chaos. Some of these clues should have been rearranged, if you ask me… the Pharaoh Cruiser is the only one which doesn’t have a blue stripe, so the rest could still have been in the game. Four of them have flags, too. Oh well.
No surprises here. Let’s move on. Onto the only boat whose name isn’t any kind of Egypt reference at all? Wait… Set was the god of evil and chaos, right? As if a ship named the “SS CHAOS” wasn’t inauspicious enough already.
In the negatives column as regards Annie’s intelligence, she’s only just on time, but given that she’s a child alone in Egypt it’s pretty respectable that she reached her location at all, so bravo to her. One thing I’ve just noticed is that none of the puzzle solutions so far have been given away on the following page - for example, on this page there’s no indication that we’re aboard the SS Chaos. It’s good that you can’t cheese the puzzles that way, even though they’re far too simple to need cheesing and you could just look at the answers anyway. But still. As a gesture, I feel it’s in-keeping with the spirit of the project.
Less in-keeping with the spirit of the mystery tour is the fact that apparently everyone else did get a guided tour to their destination and now it’s up to Annie to solve another puzzle from a midget with perfect recall of the entire ship’s structure. There’s only one gangplank, though, so ten to one the moustachioed midget - what’s more suspicious, the attention paid to the moustache or that he’s apparently not one of the contest winners? - planned all this and was lying in wait. Ten to one those directions take Annie around in circles. Geez.
Solving the puzzle shouldn’t be tough, though. It’s an interesting kind of maze, one where not only do you not know the destination, but not your start point, either, which makes the rather simple structure suddenly rather complicated. But it should be obvious how you solve this - as usual, take the instructions step-by-step, and eliminate all the start points that have you running into a wall or a dead end. Of course, depending on where Annie starts, then there will always be a potential first left turn - but you narrow it down. It’s a process of elimination, much like the last puzzle, but rather more convoluted. I like this one. Pretty fair bet that you can cross out a lot of potential locations beforehand, too, though; the meeting isn’t likely to be in a cabin, or a sauna, or the stairs.
Like I said. Also, it is important that the arrow directions don’t matter, as - well, this mainly concerns the lower decks, which may or may not have left turns depending on which way you go…
But let’s solve it. The first corridor on the left is the only corridor on the front and back decks, but only the right-hand corridor on the top deck and the left-hand on the bottom deck. The second passage on the right starts to cut down our options - neither the back deck nor front deck corridors offer a second passage on the right, so that eliminates them and leaves us with the top and bottom decks. At this point it’d kinda help to draw a diagram - I think I see pencil marks on the front deck, actually… but you’ll just have to imagine them. We’re at the second passage on the right from both the top and bottom decks, so we can forget those instructions and just take all the remaining instructions from those two points. Taking the route from the lower deck does have a legitimate right-left-left, but then the “first right” brings you back onto the deck where there is no door on the left, merely the sea. But if you trace your route from the top deck, and interpret “left again” as allowing L-shaped corners where there isn’t a right turn, the instructions take you to the “Long Room,” which seems like the perfect place for a meeting. Let’s see what the answer is.
See, I told you a diagram helped!
Immediately Annie winds up in a room full of suspicious folk, and decides that, what the Hell, let’s make the situation even more precarious by downing an alcoholic drink. You’re only underage once! …Talk about one or two looking distinctly suspicious, though. I think I can guess who they are. Like the unshaven guy dressed in typical robber’s garb. Or the slick-looking fellow with an actual scar on his face. The rest all just look… kinda barmy, actually. Plus maybe one evil reporter in the mix. But we’ve already discussed this book’s views on the newspaper industry.
I think this is the sort of puzzle that Usborne Puzzle Adventures excelled at - giving you characteristics and forcing you to match them to people, or indeed to objects. It’s a similar kind of logic puzzle to the ones we’ve had already, but it kicks it up a notch. There is no one right answer. To compensate, this is one heck of an easy puzzle for which you have more or less no excuse for mistakes. Just so long as you remember that Egyptian servants don’t count! Couldn’t have one of them as a legitimate character in the story!
But seriously, this is easy as pie… everyone is given exactly one characteristic, and nobody else matches that characteristic. I seem to recall that Usborne Puzzle Adventures has had versions of this kind of puzzle which tried a lot harder. But I don’t even feel the need to provide an answer. It is self-explanatory. Although I guess you can’t match Annie’s name to her face as she’s off-screen - which she is rather a lot of the time, now that I come to think of it. She’s probably been absent on more pages than she’s been present…
What kind of a clue do we get for this page? What kind do we need?
A bad one. Even children shouldn’t need this one. In all honesty, it’s kind of more funny just enjoying the punny names. And wondering whether it was Professor Pott or an admirer who wrote these notes, considering that they not only described him as “brilliant,” but underlined it. I guess they have a good line on Annie, though. Not sure how they knew a thing about her, though, since she had only just arrived.
You… you really needed to point out that the waiters didn’t count? Seriously? The biggest puzzle here is why they actually have flesh tones on the answers page but are paper-white in reality. Also, where is Luigi Macaroni’s right hand.
BONUS: Can you spot Terry Trubble on the previous two pages as well?
The Internet is ambiguous on the subject of whether the Nile has crocodiles today. Sounds like it still has a few. So yes, Annie, that is the sound of murder mere metres away. Still, though, Annie, if you’re old enough to travel to Egypt without your parents, aren’t you old enough not to believe in monsters? Unless you mean a human monster… she’s surprisingly polite to the weirdo trying to break into her cabin while she’s sleeping. Also that door doesn’t appear to have a lock. Wow, the SS Chaos is just asking for trouble. It’s not just the guy who’s obviously in disguise, either, look at Luigi peering out of the shadows like a YouTube meme waiting for his day in the spotlight.
Also, mystery man, it’s midnight. Quit snacking. And learn to spell. …And get a better typewriter.
I think this is another old Usborne favourite - phonetic writing. That’s not really a puzzle, is it? If you just read it aloud? Or, heck, just think it - I don’t know about you, but whenever I read something, I hear it in my head, so it is literally impossible for me to read this and not instantly know what it’s meant to say, which is kind of odd as Annie thinks that this puzzle isn’t easy where early, trickier ones weren’t so tough.
UGH! Sorry, I just noticed the mystery man’s gargantuan monster hand. Oh, that’s right in the uncanny valley, that is. Ugh. Sorry. Anyway. 100% chance that the clue is just “read it out loud.”
Maybe not, but even the clues think this is an easy puzzle!
At least the mystery man knows that the only person who can be trusted with a warning about curses and crooks is a plucky young orphan with apparently unlimited resources as well as resourcefulness. He knows a protagonist when he sees one. Not hard, in a world with people like Luigi Macaroni in it. Well, come on, maybe he’s actually a private eye or something? …He’s a crook.
Then why didn’t you stop at the refreshment stands, Annie?! Oh, right, penniless orphan. I forgot. Also, the secret location can’t be that secret if there are refreshment stands along the way. Maybe that’s why Pott is rushing the tourists along, so that the refreshment stands go out of business and the path remains secret? Also, who wants to bet that that description of her route - ruins, oasis, fallen masonry - will form part of a puzzle later? If not, it should!
Of course the lights go out. This is a whodunit mystery, of course the lights all go out. It’s tradition. Also, hints. This is one of the disadvantages of text. In a movie, say, you can have a “strange, scraping, digging sound” without it being obvious what it is or that it’s a clue. Here, it’s… well, I don’t think I’m spoiling any puzzles to say that it’s a clue. What I don’t know , though, is whether Drusilla’s enormous sleeves are a clue. She could fit half a dozen idols up there. Haha, I like how Terry Trubble has a blatant “Who, me?” expression. You’ve been here before, Terry, don’t deny it.
Also, there really is no puzzle on this page! I kinda want to make an “Egypped” pun, but that’d be really terrible and also stolen, so I’ll settle with a reference to it that amounts to the same thing. Come on, Usborne! I’m reading this for the puzzles, not the plot! Actually, that’s not true, I really like the plots and wouldn’t bother if it was just disconnected puzzles. But these sure ain’t called “Usborne Plot Adventures.”
Oh, right, and the idol gets stolen. But everyone with a pulse saw that coming. It’s called the “Lost” Idol for a reason. And not just for being lost for three thousand years. A few hours on-screen is way more important than three thousand years off.
Now this is more like it as a puzzle! You have information and it’s actually a bit more difficult to match each piece of information to its partner. Still, Annie, you’ve been around these people a little while, there aren’t many of them, they’re all fairly distinctive… I don’t know, I feel she should have gotten to know them better. I have, and I’ve been reading about them for a lot less time than she’s been spending with them. Also note that the thief stole the idol, but about five seconds later he no longer has it. NICE JOB
But this is an actual puzzle that’s worth solving, really, because while a lot of it’s easy then the answer isn’t quite so clear-cut as it leaves you not with exact answers but with a broader field of possible subjects. That’s great! Although it must be said that - no, I’ll come to that after the clue.
Well, yeah, obviously. If you just ignored the passenger list, you wouldn’t know anything about anyone!
But okay, my thinking about possible suspects, right off the bat, is that the thief and their accomplice are a man and a woman and we have a confirmed man-woman pair of passengers who are already acquainted: Sam Scoop and Harriet Flash. So I think it’s them talking, even though that’s not actually part of the puzzle at all. I’m pretty sure I’m not remembering this, by the way. I don’t know that I’m right. It’s just that it’s not like it’s a difficult deduction.
As for the others. Top left, stuttering - Trubble. Top right, wailing as usual - Drusilla. Bottom-right, urging everyone not to panic - Parsifal. Middle left - Dr. Boffin, curse expert. Lower-middle-right, speaking in Italian - Stereotypeo Waluigi. Upper-middle-right, complaining incessantly - uh… I don’t know? So that leaves… Devilla, Sam Scoop, Harriet Flash? Huh? But that’s three, not four. But Annie only identified the voices of two passengers besides the Prof. and Drusilla, which means she missed one of Trubble, Boffin, and Macaroni, even though they’re really super-obvious. Am I smarter than Annie, or am I missing something?
Oh. I honestly thought Boffin was obvious. Huh. Still, though. I think you have to agree that my suspicions regarding Scoop and Flash are equally legitimate… Come to think of it, that obvious clue that was a mysterious digging sound? It’s right there in his name. Scoop! This is a guy who makes a living out of digging dirt! SCOOP IS THE CULPRIT in my opinion.
Also, according to various free online translators, Macaroni’s “Ma che scemo!” means something like “But that’s dumb!” COULDN’T AGREE MORE
To be continued…
For those of you who didn’t read my LR of The Dark, Dark Knight, I recommend that you do so so that I don’t have to repeat my intro. Usborne Puzzle Adventures are puzzle adventures by Usborne, and they are Usborne’s adventures with puzzles that have puzzles from Usborne in adventure form. They are for children but are sometimes kinda absurdly difficult due to some whimsical idea of the author’s. I feel a lot of nostalgia for them, though, and I suspect so do a lot of other people if they encountered them during their 90s heyday. So when I saw this in a heap of old books in an eleventh-century church, asking to be taken away, how could I resist? I actually used to own this one in an omnibus edition with two other UPAs, but I don’t think I have that any more - at least anywhere I can access - so this isn’t exactly redundant.
This is a much earlier UPA than The Dark, Dark Knight. That was the twenty-third in the series, apparently. This is the second. Very early days here. 1986 early, making it, which I never realised, older than me. Not that the numbering matters. The series employed a number of writers and artists, with Gaby Waters writing here and Graham Round designing and illustrating, so we have to view this as an alternative to the likes of TDDK rather than a true predecessor. Although TDDK lists Gaby Waters as “series editor,” so evidently she went up in the world…
But anyway: Welcome to The Curse of the Lost Idol. The first difference to be observed is that this title doesn’t pull its punches, merely its puns.
So good that the publishers put their name on it twice, because that hot-air balloon logo is going to be so useful to anyone whose eyes just slid over the name “USBORNE” in big red capital letters right there at the top-left. As for the idol itself… wow that thing gave me the creeps when I was a kid. I had a kind of phobia when I was young of idols and totems and things like that. I had the same problem with the idol in Tintin and the Broken Ear. Kinds of idol this did not extend to: Idol singers; idleness. Nowadays all I think when I look on it is “Hey, this cover is misleading - no way is it that big in relation to the background.” I guess it’s hovering spookily in front of the camera. Also, it has six toes, just like I remembered. You probably didn’t notice that, or maybe even wrote it off as a mistake… but there are no mistakes in Usborne Puzzle Adventures. Merely unsolved mysteries. Think of them as a bonus.
Let’s look at the back cover.
The synopsis doesn’t pull its punches here. I like to think - and it may just be nostalgia - that the classic UPAs were willing to be a bit more spooky, a bit less silly. Lost idols and ancient curses rather than silly time-travelling knights and villains who never show up and everyone’s name is a pun. Look at some of those early titles and you may see what I mean. Number 3: Murder on the Midnight Plane. And I had that one, too, it really was murder. I think I recall The Ghost in the Mirror being actually rather bone-chilling, too. Never saw the Advanced Level books, though, so I don’t know whether they were advanced in plot terms or just puzzling terms. But anyway. We’ll see if I’m right about the earlier books being creepier. I’m reading this semi-blind - there’s a lot about The Curse of the Lost Idol I remember, including those six toes, and a photographic memory of the last page and its bizarre puzzle, but most of the book is lost in the fog. Hopefully, therefore, I won’t remember the answers to the puzzles and can work them out legitimately! We will see together if we are smarter than 8-13-year-olds. If we’re as smart as Annie.
The contents page suggests this book is slightly shorter than TDDK, which is a shame, but on the other hand there were literally dozens of these books so it’s hard to complain too much about just one. And there’s a bit more of an intro than there was for TDDK. There, they could assume the premise was pretty well-established, whereas this book is so early it was still an innovation - there are puzzles, and you have to solve them yourself, which is different despite it being more or less what you do in every detective novel ever, just in a less formulaic way. Actually, that’s not entirely true; sometimes the book won’t tell you the answer to a puzzle if you turn over to the next page, it just deals with the consequences of that answer, so okay, fair enough. Still, at least we have hints! Hints written in a secret way. It’s not actually very secret, though, which is probably why they’d stopped bothering by TDDK. Why make the hints harder to read than the answers? But you’ll see that soon.
Hey there Annie. You are looking… rather skeletal. Papery hue despite being under Egypt’s scorching sun. Joints clearly visible under your skin. Maybe you should think about eating something? And about having eyes that actually join up at the top? Gotta say, I’d be pretty embarrassed if a skeleton could solve a mystery I couldn’t, so I’d better keep my brain in top gear and remember that in a story with decent continuity there will be mysteries which aren’t restricted to just the double page I’m looking at! Gasp! These books are kind of like training wheels mystery novels, I guess. They prepare you for books which replace every single picture with a thousand more words, and then some.
Still more intro, or more specifically, backstory, like we had in TDDK and probably every other Usborne Puzzle Adventure. There has to be some story that happens without the protagonist around, since our heroes are generally too good at solving mysteries to let the plot happen at all if they were around to begin with. And yet, much like the protagonists of murder mystery shows, we have to ask: Don’t puzzles and mysteries follow them around like an evil cloud or curse? Is this the curse of the lost idol?
Oh yeah, but there’s a plot! A Pott plot. Apparently experienced(???) Egyptology professors get their best research done by just randomly digging in the desert with only their young slave boys for company. Give the lad a hat, Pott! They needed to dig out that shady cavern just for a break from the burning, cancer-inducing rays of our dear star. Hey, did that stone Eric dropped in ever hit the bottom? And how does a kid like him even get to be an Egyptologist’s assistant, anyway? Err - unsolved bonus mysteries!
Eric sure hopes this isn’t a tomb full of spooky mummies, and that’s why he went wandering around blindly like a moron. Damaging valuable finds, probably. Why did you hire him, Pott? Why not Annie? She’d probably have brought her own torch. There’s something very hilarious about the professor’s astonishment. I guess it’s partly the way his eyes are raised heavenwards. Has he too fallen prostate on the floor before his golden idol? Enraptured by its prodigious extra toe (see, told you!)? Eric keeps his cool and instead gives it finger guns. Sooooo coooool
Hot diggity, and now we’re getting into puzzle territory. Hieroglyphs and codes and ciphers and all that are totally where it is at for Usborne Puzzle Adventures. If you go through one of these books without having to solve some weird unintuitive code then you have been ripped off by some cheap piracy that has no right to exist and probably doesn’t. Actually this is pretty unusual in that we have here a puzzle and our nominal main character Annie hasn’t been so much as mentioned yet. Poor girl. Sidelined in her own book by a guy with a dumb name and his slave lad.
But first some plot. Eric, ever the assistant and never the archaeologist, immediately attempts to contaminate and damage that incredibly significant find. His “weedy biceps” sure don’t help. The author certainly seems to feel deep contempt for Eric. I almost feel sorry for him. Hey, wait, is pure gold actually very heavy? I know it’s meant to be malleable… I’ll look it up, and by that I mean look it up on Wikipedia. …Okay, Wikipedia was useless. Everything my tutors have ever warned me of has come true. So instead my source was the authoritative and reliable-sounding SellGoldHQ.com, which tells me that yes, it is very heavy, and can I give them some please.
All highly qualified Egyptologists believe very seriously in apparently very vague ancient curses which don’t tell you what will happen if you fail to meet their conditions. The duplicitously-named Doppel Gang are, disappointingly, rather more sensible in this regard than the world of academia. Also, Pott, doesn’t this amazing find probably belong to the state of Egypt, and it’s not actually your right to do anything with it? Just saying?
“Wow!” “Exactly.” Eric you sure are pretty bad at being an Egyptologist! I guess that’s why he is only the assistant, although it’s also true that he is just a kid, not that that fact makes him a very good assistant. But let’s see if we can be smarter than Eric and decode this… this actually rather well-made puzzle. It’s not just letter-to-letter or word-to-word, it’s actually surprisingly complex for the first puzzle in a book for kids. Bravo Gaby Waters / Graham Round, probably the latter, as the text makes no mention of the specifics of the puzzle at all. But what does it all mean? Can you figure it out multiple question marks?
Tell you what. Let’s take a look at the clue for this page. Written in a secret way!
That’s… not very secret! But I will accept it as a matter of verisimilitude. They couldn’t make the clues harder to work out than the puzzle itself, although the clues are harder to decipher than just the answer. Also I get the feeling that some of these books probably have puzzles that are literally just mirror-writing, which is probably why they stopped mirroring the hints. I was thinking that having image-editing programs made such mirroring kind of trivial anyway, but what, you’re seriously going to scan in the page and edit it rather than just finding a mirror? What kind of house do you live in? But in any case, the clue is just an instruction, really. Instructions that should’ve been obvious, but there’s not much you can do with this puzzle. What you have to do is pretty straightforward, even if it is unusually intricate.
Since I’m doing this semi-blind, I’ll try and provide an in-progress answer:
HERE STANDS IDOL MOON GOD. MANY EVIL MEN WANT STEAL IDOL. FIRST MAN SEES IDOL MUST PROTECT IDOL FROM EVIL MEN. CURSE STRIKES ALL THIEVES AND ANY MAN DISOBEYS THESE WORDS. UGH UGH ME ANGRY. Okay sorry that last bit wasn’t part of the code at all.
Pretty much right on the money. Wait, that’s a moon god? Very golden and non-crescent-y for that, but okay, I’ll take it. Even though my experience of the Moon is chiefly as a blurry white sickle hiding behind the clouds rather than a big golden orb, perched on a weedy-looking guy’s head or otherwise. It’s a very abstract representation. You know, like one of those moe anthropomorphisations. This one at least has its dignity. Aside from being manhandled by Eric.
ENTER OUR HEROINE, WHO I GUESS HAS ONLY ONE OUTFIT. Annie at last, who, like all young lasses of Usborne Puzzle Adventures’s target age group, spends her days reading the newspaper on the street in the company of obese rich men. This is a very cynical book. Hey what gives there is no puzzle on this paoh wait there it is, on the left-hand page. My mistake. Just excuse that outburst. Wow the public sure is pretty excited about lost idols. I mean… really, stopping the presses for it? Ms. Waters, Mr. Round, do you even know what that means? Actually despite my joke earlier this really is a very cynical spread. “Weekly Grumble”? “GOSSIP HEARSAY RUMOUR We print it!”? This is a surprisingly prescient indictment of the tabloid press for twenty-six years ago. They hadn’t even killed Princess Di yet. Doesn’t say a great deal for its reading audience, either, i.e. our heroine. Nice reading choice there Annie. At least you aren’t skimming to the celebrity scandalmongering.
Although there is one celebrity involved: Professor Parsifal Pott! …Parsifal? What does that mean? “Pure fool,” apparently (and ha, that one was Wikipedia!). That is… that is not a very flattering way of treating Pott, but on the other hand, he does hire primary school children as his assistants on incredibly important excavations. And then muscles them out of the entire story to take the credit himself. Classy, Parsifal, classy. You truly deserve that horrible punny headline. Maybe they should’ve mentioned that the idol was found in a pothole?
I’m just so sunk into dissecting the narrative here. Like, is a one-eyed cobra actually a magic symbol? *Googles* This… this is a sexual innuendo. God Hell it Usborne Puzzle Adventures. First a coded reference to a Nazi purge and now this. This is doing nothing for your reputation! Doing nothing for the professor’s reputation is the fact that, yes, he really does seem to believe that the idol is purely his responsibility and property, and he feels perfectly capable of hiding it from the rest of the world except for six lucky riddlers. I mean, look at that riddle. You have a one in three chance of just guessing the answer without even trying to solve it!
So, yes. The riddle. This page’s puzzle. Let’s have a look. The dead gods’ society are quibbling over a golden apple that’s been stolen for no particular reason. Only one of them stole it… and yet two of them are lying about the event? Wha? Presumably one of them is the thief, but what’s the motive of the other one? Just being a jerk? Isn’t that more the preserve of the Greek gods?
I’m going to try and solve it before looking at the hint. Let’s assume everyone’s lying and dissect their statements. Horus says “I DIDN’T,” which, if he’s a liar, means “I DID.” So if he’s one of the two liars, he stole the apple, no doubt. “OSIRIS DID” Anubis says - if he’s a liar, he means “OSIRIS DIDN’T,” in which case Osiris is innocent but possibly still a liar. Osiris says “ANUBIS IS LYING,” which, if it’s a lie, means “ANUBIS IS TELLING THE TRUTH,” so if Osiris is a liar then Osiris took the apple.
But wait. If Osiris is a liar, then Anubis can’t be, which means that the other liar must be Horus. But if Horus is a liar, he took the apple - and if Osiris is a liar, he took the apple. They can’t both be lying. Which means that Anubis is definitely a liar, but the other liar took the apple. But we’ve also established that Osiris and Anubis cannot both be liars. Therefore, Anubis and Horus are the liars, and Horus stole the golden apple!
So what’s the clue, then.
The… the clue itself contains a second, separate hint? Wheels within wheels here. Maybe they should have two hint pages. Or maybe some puzzles are just a lot more complicated than others. But this more or less follows my logic, I think. Let’s look at the answer and find out!
SOOOOO COOOOOL
Ah, sunny Egypt! Yes, of course our heroine won, and of course she’s still wearing exactly the same clothes as before. Why would you ever doubt this? Maybe because you doubt her competence…? You don’t have to pinch yourself that hard to establish that you aren’t dreaming, Annie! Unless you think you’ve been dreaming for the past several weeks of travel! Although admittedly the apparent absence of any parents, guardians, or guides is rather worrying. Is she an orphan or something? Little orphan Annie? A street urchin of no fixed abode? This kinda fits with her enormous bulging bag of useful stuff… these are all of her worldly possessions. She probably had to ask Fattie McLardocle for an envelope to send in her puzzle answer. And who knows what terrible price he exacted from her… could he have dispatched her to steal the idol for him? I mean, I know he’s rich, but just look at the Doppel Gang. The fact that they have a gimmick to their treasure-stealing suggests that they’re after a reputation rather than profit.
And of course, since this is a puzzle adventure, you have to solve puzzles before you can do anything. Solving one puzzle to go on the magical mystery tour isn’t enough - they have to weed out anyone unworthy before they earn the right to gaze upon that gaudy piece of ancient scrap metal. Schools in this world? All puzzles. Their parents probably lock them in their rooms every night and they have to escape every morning like it’s an online Flash game and they’re a Phi Brain trainee. Also, a magnetic toothpick? For the obvious build-a-compass puzzle later, or for characters who routinely digest objects made of metal? Actually, I should question the extra sharp penknife, too. Carry one of those around these days and you’d get arrested. Annie is a shady character! Or she was twenty-six years ago. She’s probably either dead or a career criminal by now.
Even Annie thinks this puzzle isn’t so tough, though, which should spur on the reader. I guess there are only six - well, nine, but three blatantly don’t count - boats to pick from, and a simple process of elimination should make this one fairly easy to decipher. Just go through the instructions, knocking out boats which don’t fit the bill step by step until only one remains. I bet the clue tells you to do the same thing. Let’s check.
Oh, no, it’s mostly defining words that might not be clear. Fair enough. As to the puzzle itself, I… okay, I accidentally saw the answer earlier. But we can still go through the motions of solving this.
So, we have the IBIS, the CHAOS - helpfully nestling across the fold - the NILE QUEEN, PHARAOH CRUISER, ANUBIS and OSIRIS. I bet it’s Osiris, he’s the only one telling the truth! But no. There is a proper way of doing this.
The right boat has more than one funnel so that knocks out the Anubis, although all the rest rather boringly have exactly two. At least fourteen port side windows - Anubis is out again, as are Nile Queen and Ibis. A stern deck - that’s one at the back, and according to the book’s definition, I’m pretty sure that knocks off the Osiris, so it’s down to Pharaoh Cruiser and Chaos. It has a blue stripe but no flag - Pharaoh Cruiser has a flag, so it must be the Chaos. Some of these clues should have been rearranged, if you ask me… the Pharaoh Cruiser is the only one which doesn’t have a blue stripe, so the rest could still have been in the game. Four of them have flags, too. Oh well.
No surprises here. Let’s move on. Onto the only boat whose name isn’t any kind of Egypt reference at all? Wait… Set was the god of evil and chaos, right? As if a ship named the “SS CHAOS” wasn’t inauspicious enough already.
In the negatives column as regards Annie’s intelligence, she’s only just on time, but given that she’s a child alone in Egypt it’s pretty respectable that she reached her location at all, so bravo to her. One thing I’ve just noticed is that none of the puzzle solutions so far have been given away on the following page - for example, on this page there’s no indication that we’re aboard the SS Chaos. It’s good that you can’t cheese the puzzles that way, even though they’re far too simple to need cheesing and you could just look at the answers anyway. But still. As a gesture, I feel it’s in-keeping with the spirit of the project.
Less in-keeping with the spirit of the mystery tour is the fact that apparently everyone else did get a guided tour to their destination and now it’s up to Annie to solve another puzzle from a midget with perfect recall of the entire ship’s structure. There’s only one gangplank, though, so ten to one the moustachioed midget - what’s more suspicious, the attention paid to the moustache or that he’s apparently not one of the contest winners? - planned all this and was lying in wait. Ten to one those directions take Annie around in circles. Geez.
Solving the puzzle shouldn’t be tough, though. It’s an interesting kind of maze, one where not only do you not know the destination, but not your start point, either, which makes the rather simple structure suddenly rather complicated. But it should be obvious how you solve this - as usual, take the instructions step-by-step, and eliminate all the start points that have you running into a wall or a dead end. Of course, depending on where Annie starts, then there will always be a potential first left turn - but you narrow it down. It’s a process of elimination, much like the last puzzle, but rather more convoluted. I like this one. Pretty fair bet that you can cross out a lot of potential locations beforehand, too, though; the meeting isn’t likely to be in a cabin, or a sauna, or the stairs.
Like I said. Also, it is important that the arrow directions don’t matter, as - well, this mainly concerns the lower decks, which may or may not have left turns depending on which way you go…
But let’s solve it. The first corridor on the left is the only corridor on the front and back decks, but only the right-hand corridor on the top deck and the left-hand on the bottom deck. The second passage on the right starts to cut down our options - neither the back deck nor front deck corridors offer a second passage on the right, so that eliminates them and leaves us with the top and bottom decks. At this point it’d kinda help to draw a diagram - I think I see pencil marks on the front deck, actually… but you’ll just have to imagine them. We’re at the second passage on the right from both the top and bottom decks, so we can forget those instructions and just take all the remaining instructions from those two points. Taking the route from the lower deck does have a legitimate right-left-left, but then the “first right” brings you back onto the deck where there is no door on the left, merely the sea. But if you trace your route from the top deck, and interpret “left again” as allowing L-shaped corners where there isn’t a right turn, the instructions take you to the “Long Room,” which seems like the perfect place for a meeting. Let’s see what the answer is.
See, I told you a diagram helped!
Immediately Annie winds up in a room full of suspicious folk, and decides that, what the Hell, let’s make the situation even more precarious by downing an alcoholic drink. You’re only underage once! …Talk about one or two looking distinctly suspicious, though. I think I can guess who they are. Like the unshaven guy dressed in typical robber’s garb. Or the slick-looking fellow with an actual scar on his face. The rest all just look… kinda barmy, actually. Plus maybe one evil reporter in the mix. But we’ve already discussed this book’s views on the newspaper industry.
I think this is the sort of puzzle that Usborne Puzzle Adventures excelled at - giving you characteristics and forcing you to match them to people, or indeed to objects. It’s a similar kind of logic puzzle to the ones we’ve had already, but it kicks it up a notch. There is no one right answer. To compensate, this is one heck of an easy puzzle for which you have more or less no excuse for mistakes. Just so long as you remember that Egyptian servants don’t count! Couldn’t have one of them as a legitimate character in the story!
But seriously, this is easy as pie… everyone is given exactly one characteristic, and nobody else matches that characteristic. I seem to recall that Usborne Puzzle Adventures has had versions of this kind of puzzle which tried a lot harder. But I don’t even feel the need to provide an answer. It is self-explanatory. Although I guess you can’t match Annie’s name to her face as she’s off-screen - which she is rather a lot of the time, now that I come to think of it. She’s probably been absent on more pages than she’s been present…
What kind of a clue do we get for this page? What kind do we need?
A bad one. Even children shouldn’t need this one. In all honesty, it’s kind of more funny just enjoying the punny names. And wondering whether it was Professor Pott or an admirer who wrote these notes, considering that they not only described him as “brilliant,” but underlined it. I guess they have a good line on Annie, though. Not sure how they knew a thing about her, though, since she had only just arrived.
You… you really needed to point out that the waiters didn’t count? Seriously? The biggest puzzle here is why they actually have flesh tones on the answers page but are paper-white in reality. Also, where is Luigi Macaroni’s right hand.
BONUS: Can you spot Terry Trubble on the previous two pages as well?
The Internet is ambiguous on the subject of whether the Nile has crocodiles today. Sounds like it still has a few. So yes, Annie, that is the sound of murder mere metres away. Still, though, Annie, if you’re old enough to travel to Egypt without your parents, aren’t you old enough not to believe in monsters? Unless you mean a human monster… she’s surprisingly polite to the weirdo trying to break into her cabin while she’s sleeping. Also that door doesn’t appear to have a lock. Wow, the SS Chaos is just asking for trouble. It’s not just the guy who’s obviously in disguise, either, look at Luigi peering out of the shadows like a YouTube meme waiting for his day in the spotlight.
Also, mystery man, it’s midnight. Quit snacking. And learn to spell. …And get a better typewriter.
I think this is another old Usborne favourite - phonetic writing. That’s not really a puzzle, is it? If you just read it aloud? Or, heck, just think it - I don’t know about you, but whenever I read something, I hear it in my head, so it is literally impossible for me to read this and not instantly know what it’s meant to say, which is kind of odd as Annie thinks that this puzzle isn’t easy where early, trickier ones weren’t so tough.
UGH! Sorry, I just noticed the mystery man’s gargantuan monster hand. Oh, that’s right in the uncanny valley, that is. Ugh. Sorry. Anyway. 100% chance that the clue is just “read it out loud.”
Maybe not, but even the clues think this is an easy puzzle!
At least the mystery man knows that the only person who can be trusted with a warning about curses and crooks is a plucky young orphan with apparently unlimited resources as well as resourcefulness. He knows a protagonist when he sees one. Not hard, in a world with people like Luigi Macaroni in it. Well, come on, maybe he’s actually a private eye or something? …He’s a crook.
Then why didn’t you stop at the refreshment stands, Annie?! Oh, right, penniless orphan. I forgot. Also, the secret location can’t be that secret if there are refreshment stands along the way. Maybe that’s why Pott is rushing the tourists along, so that the refreshment stands go out of business and the path remains secret? Also, who wants to bet that that description of her route - ruins, oasis, fallen masonry - will form part of a puzzle later? If not, it should!
Of course the lights go out. This is a whodunit mystery, of course the lights all go out. It’s tradition. Also, hints. This is one of the disadvantages of text. In a movie, say, you can have a “strange, scraping, digging sound” without it being obvious what it is or that it’s a clue. Here, it’s… well, I don’t think I’m spoiling any puzzles to say that it’s a clue. What I don’t know , though, is whether Drusilla’s enormous sleeves are a clue. She could fit half a dozen idols up there. Haha, I like how Terry Trubble has a blatant “Who, me?” expression. You’ve been here before, Terry, don’t deny it.
Also, there really is no puzzle on this page! I kinda want to make an “Egypped” pun, but that’d be really terrible and also stolen, so I’ll settle with a reference to it that amounts to the same thing. Come on, Usborne! I’m reading this for the puzzles, not the plot! Actually, that’s not true, I really like the plots and wouldn’t bother if it was just disconnected puzzles. But these sure ain’t called “Usborne Plot Adventures.”
Oh, right, and the idol gets stolen. But everyone with a pulse saw that coming. It’s called the “Lost” Idol for a reason. And not just for being lost for three thousand years. A few hours on-screen is way more important than three thousand years off.
Now this is more like it as a puzzle! You have information and it’s actually a bit more difficult to match each piece of information to its partner. Still, Annie, you’ve been around these people a little while, there aren’t many of them, they’re all fairly distinctive… I don’t know, I feel she should have gotten to know them better. I have, and I’ve been reading about them for a lot less time than she’s been spending with them. Also note that the thief stole the idol, but about five seconds later he no longer has it. NICE JOB
But this is an actual puzzle that’s worth solving, really, because while a lot of it’s easy then the answer isn’t quite so clear-cut as it leaves you not with exact answers but with a broader field of possible subjects. That’s great! Although it must be said that - no, I’ll come to that after the clue.
Well, yeah, obviously. If you just ignored the passenger list, you wouldn’t know anything about anyone!
But okay, my thinking about possible suspects, right off the bat, is that the thief and their accomplice are a man and a woman and we have a confirmed man-woman pair of passengers who are already acquainted: Sam Scoop and Harriet Flash. So I think it’s them talking, even though that’s not actually part of the puzzle at all. I’m pretty sure I’m not remembering this, by the way. I don’t know that I’m right. It’s just that it’s not like it’s a difficult deduction.
As for the others. Top left, stuttering - Trubble. Top right, wailing as usual - Drusilla. Bottom-right, urging everyone not to panic - Parsifal. Middle left - Dr. Boffin, curse expert. Lower-middle-right, speaking in Italian - Stereotypeo Waluigi. Upper-middle-right, complaining incessantly - uh… I don’t know? So that leaves… Devilla, Sam Scoop, Harriet Flash? Huh? But that’s three, not four. But Annie only identified the voices of two passengers besides the Prof. and Drusilla, which means she missed one of Trubble, Boffin, and Macaroni, even though they’re really super-obvious. Am I smarter than Annie, or am I missing something?
Oh. I honestly thought Boffin was obvious. Huh. Still, though. I think you have to agree that my suspicions regarding Scoop and Flash are equally legitimate… Come to think of it, that obvious clue that was a mysterious digging sound? It’s right there in his name. Scoop! This is a guy who makes a living out of digging dirt! SCOOP IS THE CULPRIT in my opinion.
Also, according to various free online translators, Macaroni’s “Ma che scemo!” means something like “But that’s dumb!” COULDN’T AGREE MORE
To be continued…