Usborne Puzzle Adventures: The Curse of the Lost Idol - Part 2
Pagescan Adventures: Let’s Read - Number Two! #2! Part 2!
Previously, on The Curse of the Lost Idol…
Come on, Annie, you know why one of the passengers is missing. They mislaid their precious bauble and are presumably heading back to retrieve it later when the furore has died down. Or they just dropped it in the sandstorm I guess? Probably not, as if they did that they’d likely never find it again. But anyway, enough of that, far more important is a borderline xenophobic presentation of the obligatory bumbling foreign policeman who is far less canny than a plucky orphan straight out of the first world, at least in Annie’s opinion. And smelly, to boot, in the illustrator’s opinion! Although to Ahmed Ablunda’s credit he seems to be doing a pretty decent job at investigating a completely different crime altogether. Nonetheless, like the protagonist of every mystery story ever, she decides to ditch the police and jeopardise the results of any subsequent court case by meddling herself, and bravo, or else we wouldn’t have a story. She even starts her career in perverting the course of justice by stealing from the police.
It’s… not very difficult to decode this one, is it? Like I said above, now and then the puzzles themselves would rely on the very same trick as they used to obscure the clues page, which is probably why they quit obscuring the clues. I bet the clue for this very puzzle probably says something like “If you’re reading this, you’re halfway there!” Probably the toughest part is leafing back several pages to figure out what Annie took out of her bag. Ooh, was it the magnetic toothpick?
I don’t know, it seems to me that if you can figure out the clue, it would be better to hint that you need to turn the page upside down to “decode” this mystery. Anyway, according to page 10, the very first item in Annie’s bag is a pocket mirror, so that’s that. As for what’s written on the paper, why bother transcribing it when I’m going to copy over the answer anyway?
Oh. …Oh gosh heck it, I do need to transcribe it! And by “transcribe it” I mean “edit the image.” Just as a courtesy, though. It’s not like I’m actually using a mirror myself to read these; sure, there’s one just a few steps away, but reading mirror text is not actually very difficult. For that matter, my brother can read upside-down text as easily as right-side-up.
Only about half of these witness statements are very useful. Sam Scoop, “I heard nothing” - wow, you aren’t even a witness, the one thing you did notice is that you perceived nothing whatsoever. Great reporting there! Even though, as I already noted, you’re probably the villain, so you’re probably just a liar. Interesting that the reformed bank robber is not only useful, but actually corroborates somebody else’s account, although I guess that also makes him useless through redundancy… Hey, why did Ablunda throw away his witness statements before interviewing either Annie or Macaroni? Did he get bored with investigating the idol theft and switch to something more interesting?
Those photographs are one contrived as heck tool. Mainly, in my opinion, because Annie’s Instantpic camera from page 19 is not, in fact, one of the tools listed among her possessions on page 10! It comes from nowhere and is never seen! I guess you could say that it was simply not listed except as miscellanea, but still, this feels kinda cheap to me. As is the equally contrived step of everyone’s boots being left casually around the deck for her to spy on in the middle of the night when they should already have been taken for cleaning I guess. Oh well.
This is kind of a nice puzzle. Easy, but nice. The shoes are even consistent with previous illustrations of the characters. Strictly speaking it’s kinda odd of Annie to look at the shoes from a side-angle when she needs the soles to match them up to her photograph, but it still works. There is very little ambiguity in this picture, though. Working out who made each set of prints should not be tasking anyone’s brain very much, although you could argue that the side views can be difficult to interpret - for example, Parsifal’s desert boots clearly just have studs, but a lot of other shoes have similar ridges which must go all the way along the sole. So I guess maybe that’s the element of “difficulty” there. Bad art.
The clue is basically “How to solve the puzzle for people who didn’t actually read the text.”
Anyway, the two trails on the left match the pattern on the side of Sam Scoop’s sneaky sneakers, Pott’s boots are top-right, bottom-right are Boffin’s brogues, and middle right are Macaroni’s… what the heck is a winkle picker. Oh, apparently it’s a type of shoe with a pointed toe, just like that one. Fair enough!
Oh yeah, of course, obviously only the people who went near the plinth could’ve nicked the idol, unless they had the wits to try and erase their shoeprints as they went. …How did they orchestrate the power cut, though? Huh. Anyway, one of Pott, Macaroni, Scoop, and Boffin is the thief, even though Pott and Macaroni are canonically eliminated and I think Boffin should’ve been eliminated too, leaving - gasp - only my favoured suspect, Scoop. What a surprise.
Kinda contrived to say that the idol was too bulky to fit into a bag or shirt without being noticed. I’m not sure I agree. But I do remember, though, that apparently it’s very heavy, so fair enough, no way is somebody carrying that out without it being noticed, in a sleeve or otherwise. They wouldn’t even make it up the ladder.
This puzzle is kind of misleadingly presented. It looks like it’s meant to be a spot-the-difference, but actually you’re meant to compare either one of them to previous pictures of the chamber, on, say, page 18, or 5 - but even there you don’t actually get a full picture of the lit chamber. There’s not really any reason to have two different pictures here at all when they could’ve had a “before” and “after,” although perhaps that would have made things too easy…
Anyway. You’ve been given plenty of clues to solve this one already. Even before this page you might have had a good idea of what happened to the idol - I can’t remember if I worked it out or just remembered it, though. Kind of a cheap, not very complex solution, either, but there it is. That’s right. The big difference that we should all have noticed is…
…SAM SCOOP’S HAIR COLOUR! See, in his introduction on page 15 he had black hair, but now it’s orange! He ground the idol down into powder and hid it in the one place nobody would look - on his own head. Then, he took it back to his cabin to painstakingly reconstruct it yeah let’s look at the clue.
Basically, the challenge is “reread these pages.” Although the really important part is the bottom-right image on page 18…
Yep, that’s right. Without knowing how long the lights would be off for, an opportunistic thief grabbed the idol, and… tossed it on the floor… and buried it with a shovel that was there for no reason… and both picked up the shovel and convincingly buried the idol in the pitch-blackness… even though there should also have been light coming from the chamber entrance.
“But that’s dumb!”
Hell yes, a map. Rrrrr I really like maps so much. But anyway. Moonlit deck quoits? Actually, forget the map, moonlit deck quoits should be the puzzle. Has anyone even played quoits for like ten years? Twenty?
Also, if that dog is so competent, how could she slip past it even going down a mooring rope? And I’m not sure if I’d risk falling into the Nile, personally. You’d probably die, and not of drowning. Crocodiles, remember?
Also I knew that those directions given on the way to the secret location would come in handy! Maybe I remembered this puzzle, dimly? It doesn’t matter. This is a pretty simple page… it’s mostly just the map. I’d wager that the clue is just “turn to page X and reread.” It’s actually a lot like the ship deck map, really - it’s a maze and you have directions, but you don’t know your start point or end point, and it’s slightly more difficult because your directions aren’t on this page either. This could actually be a really baffling one. Top marks.
Page 4 as well? I honestly thought that was random background. Okay, palm trees, two pyramids and an obelisk… we’re set. Actually, I can only see one place with two pyramids, an obelisk, and an oasis nearby, but forget that, we’ll do this properly. Looks like a pretty interesting place to live, actually, apart from all the desert, and the underfunded police force. How do I know that it’s underfunded? Look at the police chief’s HQ down in the bottom-right there. It’s a shack. It doesn’t even have a door…
Anyway. What did Annie pass. Dusty path into desert… refreshment stands… rocky hills in the distance… ruins on left, oasis on right, left turn and then a ruined temple. Okay. There are two sets of refreshment stands up in the north, and one in the south. The rocky hills in the distance could be the ones in either the upper-right or middle-left. It… looks like Annie started from one of the topmost paths on the right-hand side of the river, ignored the first left (to the tombs and burial chambers) and then passed the grand oasis and “more ruins.” Then the left turn was to the “temple (partly ruined,” and the secret location is around there? Although the path past the temple (not ruined) actually looks more convincing to me, but the directions on page 18 specifically mention fallen masonry.
The buried chamber is on a path in the middle of the desert that’s not marked on the map. Ingenious. Good luck, Annie! Hey, there’s a path by the river a lot nearer than where they moored, so Pott must have taken them on a deliberately inefficient route to help obscure the secret…
Notice that the text still doesn’t give away where the idol was hidden, even if the illustration isn’t making the effort. That’s nice! Is she really lifting that idol with one hand and then stuffing it in her bag, though? I thought it was meant to be heavy. Reading down the page, even Annie’s surprised at how light it is. Given that it appears to be glowing, maybe it’s shedding its skin somehow. Okay enough nonsense.
Also, as a bonus, the overheard dialogue from the villains pretty much confirms my theory, but still, for kids this could still be confusing and mysterious? I don’t know? As a kid I was probably happy to work out even really easy mysteries so fair enough - you can make an argument that this is superior to convoluted detective novels where you couldn’t possibly work out who the criminal is even if you do have all the same clues as the detective.
If somebody grabbed your leg on a rope ladder, would you normally let go with one of your hands, thus preventing you from climbing higher, to try and fight them off? Wouldn’t you just kick? But it’s kind of a plot device - I remember this. It’s so that Annie’s hand could get scratched. Maybe Annie should’ve just struck him with the idol, but that might be disrespectful. …Also, does this count as stealing the idol, since she’s the one to remove it from the chamber? Watch out for curses, Annie!
As for how Annie traps the thief… I don’t know, I have a solution in mind that I think qualifies as her being thick, but I don’t think it’s the book’s answer.
It’s another “what’s in the bag of tricks?” puzzle! But, you know… couldn’t you just slip the rope off the top of that boulder? It doesn’t look that well-attached and you wouldn’t even have to touch the knots. Oh well, I guess either way Annie’s potentially dropping the thieves from a great height, injuring or killing them. What tools she uses won’t make a difference.
Should be arrested.
That’s surprisingly insightful of Annie. She’s pursued by crooks, carrying around a priceless cursed idol, alone in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night… anything could happen. Good on her for accepting her fear! Every adventure should have a little fear, I imagine. …Less reasonable is her prima facie acceptance of the existence of ancient gods and their cursey powers. Come on, Annie, this is the modern era! The modern era of 1986.
Fortunately the dog fell asleep too I guess? Oh, maybe the criminals drugged it with poisoned meat or something. That always happens in the stories, just like this one.
What is wrong with the idol? More like what is wrong with the puzzle when you consider that there are some really good, subtle clues here, and then they give the game away with one really blatant one.
Yeah, but it’s not like you can entirely trust a work of The Daily Wheeze’s calibre, though. The cover would be a better source of comparison, actually.
But still. Maybe they made a mistake about the diamond in its back and the sapphire on its head. Maybe they mistook how many eyes the cobra had, or erred in which foot had a handy extra toe. But I can’t see any reason why an authentic statue of a Moon God would say on it “MADE IN CAIRO.” In English.
Oh yeah, and the weight thing. Another continuity-based hint. It’s nice to see more of those; I don’t think The Dark, Dark Knight made such a big deal of this. But this is quite carefully-written for its level. And good on Annie for not getting overexcited. When you’re a penniless orphan, you get to be pretty attentive about jewels and authenticity, I suppose. We’ve just recovered some old gimcrack.
Why would the professor leave his door unlocked when he was sleeping? …Wait, why would he leave it unlocked anyway. Anyone could see his incredibly untidy dump of a room. This is an Usborne Puzzle Adventures classic. Some pages you can let the illustrator skimp on, but other times you have them throw so much stuff at the page that the reader quite boggles at it. As a result this is probably actually a pretty good puzzle, although I still think they could have been more subtle. But maybe that’s the ten-years-too-old reader in me.
So. What could Annie have seen that would invalidate all of her detective work and theories? Must be a real game-changer, although you’d have thought the inauthenticity of the idol was also one of those. Which is perhaps your first clue here - your first real clue. That idol was real when Parsifal and Eric found it. So…
No, use your head. If the idol in the chamber is fake, where is the real one?
No point puzzling this one through in text. Can you see it? No, it’s not in Potts’s bed. Wrong design. Kinda cute that he actually sleeps with an ancient Egyptian idol, though. …Cute and creepy. How many of these things has he filched from their rightful inheritors?
But anyway. Amid the wealth of hiding places, I actually think Pott chose the best place for his secret. Hidden in plain sight, of course - but it’s a good visual trick, all things considered.
You sly dog, PPP. Tricking the public is one thing, but the gods? And how long were you going to leave it before selling it on?
Now this is a very fun page! How brave of Annie to confront the villainous professor! And how wise of him, like his diminutive friend, to also know a protagonist when he sees one and explain everything. And to have a plot that doesn’t require pages and pages of exposition, just a single paragraph.
“I told you she was clever,” the little person squeaked and failed to include a full stop at the end of his sentence. Hey, wait a minute, there’s another typo on this page! I had to squint at my copy to see it, but it’s in “she shouted at the Professor, in her fiercest voice.” The comma after “Professor” is actually a full stop which somebody’s turned into a comma. And yet they didn’t notice the missing period farther down the page? Man, my limit is one correction per page only! Get a better proofreader, Waters and Round!
But actually I really like this puzzle because it’s packed full of quite clever red herrings. You can’t just rely on the pictures when matching up the passengers to the evil members of the Doppel Gang. Wait, why does Parsifal have some official police documents? Hahaha, did he also steal the police chief’s files? He and Annie are birds of a feather.
So what’s the clue. Useless as usual, I take it.
Surely scars are totes easy to conceal, though? With make-up of some sort? For that matter, I guess you could also use make-up to increase the sizes of things like noses and chins, although not decraase them. Hmm.
But that’s falling into the trap of looking only at the pictures, when it’s the text that really matters.
For instance, Silas “Spikey” Scarface is clearly meant to be a dead ringer for Terry Trubble. He could have dyed his hair. Changed his shirt. And, I think, concealed his scar. But his nose is definitely the wrong shape, and, more importantly, the text says his left leg is shorter than his right leg, whereas on page 15 we clearly see that Trubble’s legs are of equal length! Unless he was wearing some kind of stilt or peg leg. Okay so you could hide that too. But you see what I mean. He’s a convincing doppelganger for Terry Trubble, but more so a simple member of the Doppel Gang.
The same goes for Eustace Whimpe. On first viewing, he is Luigi Macaroni incarnate. Take away the monocle - draw a scar on your face with make-up, why not. You can even forgive the nose being wrong, it’s not that far off. Except… Eustace Whimpe has a bad cough and a weedy whining voice. Luigi has never coughed, or indeed whined, unlike his video game counterpart, who has somewhat unfairly become the poster boy for whining and generally being treated poorly enough to justify whining. So Whimpe isn’t Macaroni, that’s for sure.
Gloria Goldfinger, though. Somehow the brains of the gang even though she isn’t the leader. The inattentive reader is clearly meant to confuse her pink hair for that of Drusilla P. Culia - who isn’t tall and slim. But what if you were to change Gloria’s hair colour, as her profile states - and bedeck her with jewels? Don’t even change the weighty earrings in her file photograph? Step forward, Devilla de Visp. …Actually, that name is a bit too close to Drusilla’s, too. The writers should’ve thought a bit harder about that.
As for “John Smith” - I like this one. His whole profile’s a joke, really - three very specifically foreign (well, non-English) pseudonyms, but his true name is the most boring and generic English name of the lot. Unless maybe you were expecting a John Doe. And he’s ruthless! Gosh. But he also has a scar on his face, and permanent shadows under his eyes. Maybe they’re black eyes and it’s a sign of his ruthlessness and how he always gets into fights. I wonder if he and Whimpe sometimes disguise themselves as each other? They do look similar. Well, I suppose it’s fitting that the Doppel Gang’s members do indeed include doppelgangers of themselves, as well as of others… oh, but yes, I missed the point. Compare John Smith with the initial introduction of Luigi Macaroni. These two are one and the same. …Which means that Smith has actually changed his hair colour in the text as many times as Gloria Goldfinger has.
Thus we have our two criminal passengers, presumably, but - actually, I’m not sure when the book mentions this. Let’s have a peek at the answers.
Aha, I thought so! I think it’s one of the better touches of this book that Ablunda actually had a decent reason for mistrusting Annie. In a lot of books, he’d just dismiss her contributions because she’s obviously a dumb orphan kid, but in fact he did have a good reason to mistrust her - he thought she was Doris Dane-Jurass! Another doppelganger.
There is one point the book hasn’t mentioned, though. Does Grabbitt look familiar to anyone else? Turn back to page 8. Apparently power crazy, highly dangerous millionaire gang leaders with their own private castles are big enough cheapskates that they have to read the newspaper over someone else’s shoulder. Hey, maybe that’s where he got the answer to the riddle from to get Goldfinger and Smith on the tour. Spoilers, the book never ever mentions that Grabbitt was there, though, ever. Maybe it was another doppelganger.
And so the contempt for the Egyptian police continues. You’re seriously telling me they didn’t have cars capable of travelling the desert back in 1986? Come on. But I guess it just wouldn’t be a story set in Egypt if there wasn’t a camel in it, and they’ve been curiously absent until now. Maybe the illustrator wanted to draw one just that much. …Wait, camel feet don’t look like that. Mr. Round!
Also that blue pen mark on Annie’s hand is too convincingly biro-coloured. Every time I look at it I think that somebody’s genuinely defaced the page.
Anyway. And so we come to the end of the mystery, one which must be solved entirely using clues from the rest of the book and no clues whatsoever from this one page. And which I basically already answered earlier, but what the heck, let’s look at the clue anyway. Although why you’d need it I’m not sure. There aren’t that many characters left who could’ve done it. But let’s look at the clue anyway.
Who carries a blue pen? Forget “a.” Look at page 15 - he’s got two at once, just in case he loses one. Then page 26. Is that a third in his pocket?
Oh Sam. Sam Sam Sam. How exactly would this make a great story? I mean, okay, keeping the old idol story rolling by faking its theft, sure, but actually involving yourself so directly? The irony is that if he’d just waited a day - or even a minute - then someone else would’ve stolen the statue and he’d have his scoop anyway. But the only big stories he’ll be breaking now are rocks. In PRISON! Harriet too. What an idiot!
Wait, you can see Harriet’s boots in the gloom on page 30? OHHH, she’s kneeling down and those are her boots sideways! A ten-year mystery solved. Hahaha I seriously never realised that before. I always wondered what that shape was. I’m really good at puzzles!
Suddenly a magical gust of cursey god wind blows an enormous boulder into the hole to trap the thieves who were already trapped, entombing them beneath the sands forever and leaving them to die a horrible death of starvation, and thus ends Annie’s Egyptian adventure! What a charming childhood romp. But there’s one last mystery. Just who is the small guy with the wonky moustache who dresses more Egyptian than the Egyptians?
No wait, how about this for a final mystery: Why couldn’t he just reveal himself now all this is over?
No wait, how about this for a final mystery: Why is everything suddenly over? So foiling one possible theft attempt means that nobody else will ever try? But weren’t there two theft attempts here? Surely the idol is going to be in as much danger as ever? How do we know Terry Trubble didn’t want his hands on it too? Clearly the idol needs new security arrangements unless the professor guards it forever. Is he going to? Or is he going to do something else, like hand it over to the Egyptians, and if so, why didn’t he do it at the start?
USBORNE! Oh right, there’s a puzzle here.
Some of these clues are better than others. I mean, the glasses, sure, as well as him having forgotten most of his disguise on page 15. But his squeaky voice was only mentioned once, and then in a context where you might easily think it’s not his normal voice anyway. And what was he in disguise for, anyway? The mystery doesn’t end here!
The mystery does end here.
So… why did he need to be in disguise to snoop? Why would wearing a suspicious disguise help him to snoop anyway? And how are we supposed to know that he knew Annie at school? We never see Annie in school! Or Eric! Why would we assume that he doesn’t live in Egypt since he’s working there? Why would we think he was at school anyway? If he knew Annie so well why did she never recognise him and why did he never reveal his true identity? This is a terrible answer! At once too obvious and too obscure! And there isn’t even a stinger puzzle unanswered question like in The Dark, Dark Knight to keep us going. We just end on this final note of… of illegitimate bafflement. I understand everything. And yet, I am still so confused.
And so the story is over. Although I feel a lot of nostalgia for this book and it’s been great going through it again, I don’t think it was ever my favourite, and not just because it had idols in it. If I dig out any other old Usborne Puzzle Adventures I’ll definitely do a readthrough of them too, though! This has been a blast. It may not be the best but for its level it has a surprisingly good plot and fun puzzles. So good going, Gaby Waters and Graham Round. No wonder there ended up being so many of those. The series had a solid start, and it’s kind of a shame if there’s nothing else like this any more. Video games are awesome but the puzzle book is a pretty great form too, I think! But even video games of this form are dying out. I think it’s sad that puzzles are increasingly diverging from the plotline of whatever they’re associated with. You just solve a puzzle for no reason and then move on. I really prefer the integration of puzzles and narrative, and UPA were by and large pretty great at that. And I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this book, probably anew, as much as I’ve enjoyed reviewing it. And mocking it, admittedly, but in good humour. We make fun because we like them, right?
Previously, on The Curse of the Lost Idol…
Come on, Annie, you know why one of the passengers is missing. They mislaid their precious bauble and are presumably heading back to retrieve it later when the furore has died down. Or they just dropped it in the sandstorm I guess? Probably not, as if they did that they’d likely never find it again. But anyway, enough of that, far more important is a borderline xenophobic presentation of the obligatory bumbling foreign policeman who is far less canny than a plucky orphan straight out of the first world, at least in Annie’s opinion. And smelly, to boot, in the illustrator’s opinion! Although to Ahmed Ablunda’s credit he seems to be doing a pretty decent job at investigating a completely different crime altogether. Nonetheless, like the protagonist of every mystery story ever, she decides to ditch the police and jeopardise the results of any subsequent court case by meddling herself, and bravo, or else we wouldn’t have a story. She even starts her career in perverting the course of justice by stealing from the police.
It’s… not very difficult to decode this one, is it? Like I said above, now and then the puzzles themselves would rely on the very same trick as they used to obscure the clues page, which is probably why they quit obscuring the clues. I bet the clue for this very puzzle probably says something like “If you’re reading this, you’re halfway there!” Probably the toughest part is leafing back several pages to figure out what Annie took out of her bag. Ooh, was it the magnetic toothpick?
I don’t know, it seems to me that if you can figure out the clue, it would be better to hint that you need to turn the page upside down to “decode” this mystery. Anyway, according to page 10, the very first item in Annie’s bag is a pocket mirror, so that’s that. As for what’s written on the paper, why bother transcribing it when I’m going to copy over the answer anyway?
Oh. …Oh gosh heck it, I do need to transcribe it! And by “transcribe it” I mean “edit the image.” Just as a courtesy, though. It’s not like I’m actually using a mirror myself to read these; sure, there’s one just a few steps away, but reading mirror text is not actually very difficult. For that matter, my brother can read upside-down text as easily as right-side-up.
Only about half of these witness statements are very useful. Sam Scoop, “I heard nothing” - wow, you aren’t even a witness, the one thing you did notice is that you perceived nothing whatsoever. Great reporting there! Even though, as I already noted, you’re probably the villain, so you’re probably just a liar. Interesting that the reformed bank robber is not only useful, but actually corroborates somebody else’s account, although I guess that also makes him useless through redundancy… Hey, why did Ablunda throw away his witness statements before interviewing either Annie or Macaroni? Did he get bored with investigating the idol theft and switch to something more interesting?
Those photographs are one contrived as heck tool. Mainly, in my opinion, because Annie’s Instantpic camera from page 19 is not, in fact, one of the tools listed among her possessions on page 10! It comes from nowhere and is never seen! I guess you could say that it was simply not listed except as miscellanea, but still, this feels kinda cheap to me. As is the equally contrived step of everyone’s boots being left casually around the deck for her to spy on in the middle of the night when they should already have been taken for cleaning I guess. Oh well.
This is kind of a nice puzzle. Easy, but nice. The shoes are even consistent with previous illustrations of the characters. Strictly speaking it’s kinda odd of Annie to look at the shoes from a side-angle when she needs the soles to match them up to her photograph, but it still works. There is very little ambiguity in this picture, though. Working out who made each set of prints should not be tasking anyone’s brain very much, although you could argue that the side views can be difficult to interpret - for example, Parsifal’s desert boots clearly just have studs, but a lot of other shoes have similar ridges which must go all the way along the sole. So I guess maybe that’s the element of “difficulty” there. Bad art.
The clue is basically “How to solve the puzzle for people who didn’t actually read the text.”
Anyway, the two trails on the left match the pattern on the side of Sam Scoop’s sneaky sneakers, Pott’s boots are top-right, bottom-right are Boffin’s brogues, and middle right are Macaroni’s… what the heck is a winkle picker. Oh, apparently it’s a type of shoe with a pointed toe, just like that one. Fair enough!
Oh yeah, of course, obviously only the people who went near the plinth could’ve nicked the idol, unless they had the wits to try and erase their shoeprints as they went. …How did they orchestrate the power cut, though? Huh. Anyway, one of Pott, Macaroni, Scoop, and Boffin is the thief, even though Pott and Macaroni are canonically eliminated and I think Boffin should’ve been eliminated too, leaving - gasp - only my favoured suspect, Scoop. What a surprise.
Kinda contrived to say that the idol was too bulky to fit into a bag or shirt without being noticed. I’m not sure I agree. But I do remember, though, that apparently it’s very heavy, so fair enough, no way is somebody carrying that out without it being noticed, in a sleeve or otherwise. They wouldn’t even make it up the ladder.
This puzzle is kind of misleadingly presented. It looks like it’s meant to be a spot-the-difference, but actually you’re meant to compare either one of them to previous pictures of the chamber, on, say, page 18, or 5 - but even there you don’t actually get a full picture of the lit chamber. There’s not really any reason to have two different pictures here at all when they could’ve had a “before” and “after,” although perhaps that would have made things too easy…
Anyway. You’ve been given plenty of clues to solve this one already. Even before this page you might have had a good idea of what happened to the idol - I can’t remember if I worked it out or just remembered it, though. Kind of a cheap, not very complex solution, either, but there it is. That’s right. The big difference that we should all have noticed is…
…SAM SCOOP’S HAIR COLOUR! See, in his introduction on page 15 he had black hair, but now it’s orange! He ground the idol down into powder and hid it in the one place nobody would look - on his own head. Then, he took it back to his cabin to painstakingly reconstruct it yeah let’s look at the clue.
Basically, the challenge is “reread these pages.” Although the really important part is the bottom-right image on page 18…
Yep, that’s right. Without knowing how long the lights would be off for, an opportunistic thief grabbed the idol, and… tossed it on the floor… and buried it with a shovel that was there for no reason… and both picked up the shovel and convincingly buried the idol in the pitch-blackness… even though there should also have been light coming from the chamber entrance.
“But that’s dumb!”
Hell yes, a map. Rrrrr I really like maps so much. But anyway. Moonlit deck quoits? Actually, forget the map, moonlit deck quoits should be the puzzle. Has anyone even played quoits for like ten years? Twenty?
Also, if that dog is so competent, how could she slip past it even going down a mooring rope? And I’m not sure if I’d risk falling into the Nile, personally. You’d probably die, and not of drowning. Crocodiles, remember?
Also I knew that those directions given on the way to the secret location would come in handy! Maybe I remembered this puzzle, dimly? It doesn’t matter. This is a pretty simple page… it’s mostly just the map. I’d wager that the clue is just “turn to page X and reread.” It’s actually a lot like the ship deck map, really - it’s a maze and you have directions, but you don’t know your start point or end point, and it’s slightly more difficult because your directions aren’t on this page either. This could actually be a really baffling one. Top marks.
Page 4 as well? I honestly thought that was random background. Okay, palm trees, two pyramids and an obelisk… we’re set. Actually, I can only see one place with two pyramids, an obelisk, and an oasis nearby, but forget that, we’ll do this properly. Looks like a pretty interesting place to live, actually, apart from all the desert, and the underfunded police force. How do I know that it’s underfunded? Look at the police chief’s HQ down in the bottom-right there. It’s a shack. It doesn’t even have a door…
Anyway. What did Annie pass. Dusty path into desert… refreshment stands… rocky hills in the distance… ruins on left, oasis on right, left turn and then a ruined temple. Okay. There are two sets of refreshment stands up in the north, and one in the south. The rocky hills in the distance could be the ones in either the upper-right or middle-left. It… looks like Annie started from one of the topmost paths on the right-hand side of the river, ignored the first left (to the tombs and burial chambers) and then passed the grand oasis and “more ruins.” Then the left turn was to the “temple (partly ruined,” and the secret location is around there? Although the path past the temple (not ruined) actually looks more convincing to me, but the directions on page 18 specifically mention fallen masonry.
The buried chamber is on a path in the middle of the desert that’s not marked on the map. Ingenious. Good luck, Annie! Hey, there’s a path by the river a lot nearer than where they moored, so Pott must have taken them on a deliberately inefficient route to help obscure the secret…
Notice that the text still doesn’t give away where the idol was hidden, even if the illustration isn’t making the effort. That’s nice! Is she really lifting that idol with one hand and then stuffing it in her bag, though? I thought it was meant to be heavy. Reading down the page, even Annie’s surprised at how light it is. Given that it appears to be glowing, maybe it’s shedding its skin somehow. Okay enough nonsense.
Also, as a bonus, the overheard dialogue from the villains pretty much confirms my theory, but still, for kids this could still be confusing and mysterious? I don’t know? As a kid I was probably happy to work out even really easy mysteries so fair enough - you can make an argument that this is superior to convoluted detective novels where you couldn’t possibly work out who the criminal is even if you do have all the same clues as the detective.
If somebody grabbed your leg on a rope ladder, would you normally let go with one of your hands, thus preventing you from climbing higher, to try and fight them off? Wouldn’t you just kick? But it’s kind of a plot device - I remember this. It’s so that Annie’s hand could get scratched. Maybe Annie should’ve just struck him with the idol, but that might be disrespectful. …Also, does this count as stealing the idol, since she’s the one to remove it from the chamber? Watch out for curses, Annie!
As for how Annie traps the thief… I don’t know, I have a solution in mind that I think qualifies as her being thick, but I don’t think it’s the book’s answer.
It’s another “what’s in the bag of tricks?” puzzle! But, you know… couldn’t you just slip the rope off the top of that boulder? It doesn’t look that well-attached and you wouldn’t even have to touch the knots. Oh well, I guess either way Annie’s potentially dropping the thieves from a great height, injuring or killing them. What tools she uses won’t make a difference.
Should be arrested.
That’s surprisingly insightful of Annie. She’s pursued by crooks, carrying around a priceless cursed idol, alone in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night… anything could happen. Good on her for accepting her fear! Every adventure should have a little fear, I imagine. …Less reasonable is her prima facie acceptance of the existence of ancient gods and their cursey powers. Come on, Annie, this is the modern era! The modern era of 1986.
Fortunately the dog fell asleep too I guess? Oh, maybe the criminals drugged it with poisoned meat or something. That always happens in the stories, just like this one.
What is wrong with the idol? More like what is wrong with the puzzle when you consider that there are some really good, subtle clues here, and then they give the game away with one really blatant one.
Yeah, but it’s not like you can entirely trust a work of The Daily Wheeze’s calibre, though. The cover would be a better source of comparison, actually.
But still. Maybe they made a mistake about the diamond in its back and the sapphire on its head. Maybe they mistook how many eyes the cobra had, or erred in which foot had a handy extra toe. But I can’t see any reason why an authentic statue of a Moon God would say on it “MADE IN CAIRO.” In English.
Oh yeah, and the weight thing. Another continuity-based hint. It’s nice to see more of those; I don’t think The Dark, Dark Knight made such a big deal of this. But this is quite carefully-written for its level. And good on Annie for not getting overexcited. When you’re a penniless orphan, you get to be pretty attentive about jewels and authenticity, I suppose. We’ve just recovered some old gimcrack.
Why would the professor leave his door unlocked when he was sleeping? …Wait, why would he leave it unlocked anyway. Anyone could see his incredibly untidy dump of a room. This is an Usborne Puzzle Adventures classic. Some pages you can let the illustrator skimp on, but other times you have them throw so much stuff at the page that the reader quite boggles at it. As a result this is probably actually a pretty good puzzle, although I still think they could have been more subtle. But maybe that’s the ten-years-too-old reader in me.
So. What could Annie have seen that would invalidate all of her detective work and theories? Must be a real game-changer, although you’d have thought the inauthenticity of the idol was also one of those. Which is perhaps your first clue here - your first real clue. That idol was real when Parsifal and Eric found it. So…
No, use your head. If the idol in the chamber is fake, where is the real one?
No point puzzling this one through in text. Can you see it? No, it’s not in Potts’s bed. Wrong design. Kinda cute that he actually sleeps with an ancient Egyptian idol, though. …Cute and creepy. How many of these things has he filched from their rightful inheritors?
But anyway. Amid the wealth of hiding places, I actually think Pott chose the best place for his secret. Hidden in plain sight, of course - but it’s a good visual trick, all things considered.
You sly dog, PPP. Tricking the public is one thing, but the gods? And how long were you going to leave it before selling it on?
Now this is a very fun page! How brave of Annie to confront the villainous professor! And how wise of him, like his diminutive friend, to also know a protagonist when he sees one and explain everything. And to have a plot that doesn’t require pages and pages of exposition, just a single paragraph.
“I told you she was clever,” the little person squeaked and failed to include a full stop at the end of his sentence. Hey, wait a minute, there’s another typo on this page! I had to squint at my copy to see it, but it’s in “she shouted at the Professor, in her fiercest voice.” The comma after “Professor” is actually a full stop which somebody’s turned into a comma. And yet they didn’t notice the missing period farther down the page? Man, my limit is one correction per page only! Get a better proofreader, Waters and Round!
But actually I really like this puzzle because it’s packed full of quite clever red herrings. You can’t just rely on the pictures when matching up the passengers to the evil members of the Doppel Gang. Wait, why does Parsifal have some official police documents? Hahaha, did he also steal the police chief’s files? He and Annie are birds of a feather.
So what’s the clue. Useless as usual, I take it.
Surely scars are totes easy to conceal, though? With make-up of some sort? For that matter, I guess you could also use make-up to increase the sizes of things like noses and chins, although not decraase them. Hmm.
But that’s falling into the trap of looking only at the pictures, when it’s the text that really matters.
For instance, Silas “Spikey” Scarface is clearly meant to be a dead ringer for Terry Trubble. He could have dyed his hair. Changed his shirt. And, I think, concealed his scar. But his nose is definitely the wrong shape, and, more importantly, the text says his left leg is shorter than his right leg, whereas on page 15 we clearly see that Trubble’s legs are of equal length! Unless he was wearing some kind of stilt or peg leg. Okay so you could hide that too. But you see what I mean. He’s a convincing doppelganger for Terry Trubble, but more so a simple member of the Doppel Gang.
The same goes for Eustace Whimpe. On first viewing, he is Luigi Macaroni incarnate. Take away the monocle - draw a scar on your face with make-up, why not. You can even forgive the nose being wrong, it’s not that far off. Except… Eustace Whimpe has a bad cough and a weedy whining voice. Luigi has never coughed, or indeed whined, unlike his video game counterpart, who has somewhat unfairly become the poster boy for whining and generally being treated poorly enough to justify whining. So Whimpe isn’t Macaroni, that’s for sure.
Gloria Goldfinger, though. Somehow the brains of the gang even though she isn’t the leader. The inattentive reader is clearly meant to confuse her pink hair for that of Drusilla P. Culia - who isn’t tall and slim. But what if you were to change Gloria’s hair colour, as her profile states - and bedeck her with jewels? Don’t even change the weighty earrings in her file photograph? Step forward, Devilla de Visp. …Actually, that name is a bit too close to Drusilla’s, too. The writers should’ve thought a bit harder about that.
As for “John Smith” - I like this one. His whole profile’s a joke, really - three very specifically foreign (well, non-English) pseudonyms, but his true name is the most boring and generic English name of the lot. Unless maybe you were expecting a John Doe. And he’s ruthless! Gosh. But he also has a scar on his face, and permanent shadows under his eyes. Maybe they’re black eyes and it’s a sign of his ruthlessness and how he always gets into fights. I wonder if he and Whimpe sometimes disguise themselves as each other? They do look similar. Well, I suppose it’s fitting that the Doppel Gang’s members do indeed include doppelgangers of themselves, as well as of others… oh, but yes, I missed the point. Compare John Smith with the initial introduction of Luigi Macaroni. These two are one and the same. …Which means that Smith has actually changed his hair colour in the text as many times as Gloria Goldfinger has.
Thus we have our two criminal passengers, presumably, but - actually, I’m not sure when the book mentions this. Let’s have a peek at the answers.
Aha, I thought so! I think it’s one of the better touches of this book that Ablunda actually had a decent reason for mistrusting Annie. In a lot of books, he’d just dismiss her contributions because she’s obviously a dumb orphan kid, but in fact he did have a good reason to mistrust her - he thought she was Doris Dane-Jurass! Another doppelganger.
There is one point the book hasn’t mentioned, though. Does Grabbitt look familiar to anyone else? Turn back to page 8. Apparently power crazy, highly dangerous millionaire gang leaders with their own private castles are big enough cheapskates that they have to read the newspaper over someone else’s shoulder. Hey, maybe that’s where he got the answer to the riddle from to get Goldfinger and Smith on the tour. Spoilers, the book never ever mentions that Grabbitt was there, though, ever. Maybe it was another doppelganger.
And so the contempt for the Egyptian police continues. You’re seriously telling me they didn’t have cars capable of travelling the desert back in 1986? Come on. But I guess it just wouldn’t be a story set in Egypt if there wasn’t a camel in it, and they’ve been curiously absent until now. Maybe the illustrator wanted to draw one just that much. …Wait, camel feet don’t look like that. Mr. Round!
Also that blue pen mark on Annie’s hand is too convincingly biro-coloured. Every time I look at it I think that somebody’s genuinely defaced the page.
Anyway. And so we come to the end of the mystery, one which must be solved entirely using clues from the rest of the book and no clues whatsoever from this one page. And which I basically already answered earlier, but what the heck, let’s look at the clue anyway. Although why you’d need it I’m not sure. There aren’t that many characters left who could’ve done it. But let’s look at the clue anyway.
Who carries a blue pen? Forget “a.” Look at page 15 - he’s got two at once, just in case he loses one. Then page 26. Is that a third in his pocket?
Oh Sam. Sam Sam Sam. How exactly would this make a great story? I mean, okay, keeping the old idol story rolling by faking its theft, sure, but actually involving yourself so directly? The irony is that if he’d just waited a day - or even a minute - then someone else would’ve stolen the statue and he’d have his scoop anyway. But the only big stories he’ll be breaking now are rocks. In PRISON! Harriet too. What an idiot!
Wait, you can see Harriet’s boots in the gloom on page 30? OHHH, she’s kneeling down and those are her boots sideways! A ten-year mystery solved. Hahaha I seriously never realised that before. I always wondered what that shape was. I’m really good at puzzles!
Suddenly a magical gust of cursey god wind blows an enormous boulder into the hole to trap the thieves who were already trapped, entombing them beneath the sands forever and leaving them to die a horrible death of starvation, and thus ends Annie’s Egyptian adventure! What a charming childhood romp. But there’s one last mystery. Just who is the small guy with the wonky moustache who dresses more Egyptian than the Egyptians?
No wait, how about this for a final mystery: Why couldn’t he just reveal himself now all this is over?
No wait, how about this for a final mystery: Why is everything suddenly over? So foiling one possible theft attempt means that nobody else will ever try? But weren’t there two theft attempts here? Surely the idol is going to be in as much danger as ever? How do we know Terry Trubble didn’t want his hands on it too? Clearly the idol needs new security arrangements unless the professor guards it forever. Is he going to? Or is he going to do something else, like hand it over to the Egyptians, and if so, why didn’t he do it at the start?
USBORNE! Oh right, there’s a puzzle here.
Some of these clues are better than others. I mean, the glasses, sure, as well as him having forgotten most of his disguise on page 15. But his squeaky voice was only mentioned once, and then in a context where you might easily think it’s not his normal voice anyway. And what was he in disguise for, anyway? The mystery doesn’t end here!
The mystery does end here.
So… why did he need to be in disguise to snoop? Why would wearing a suspicious disguise help him to snoop anyway? And how are we supposed to know that he knew Annie at school? We never see Annie in school! Or Eric! Why would we assume that he doesn’t live in Egypt since he’s working there? Why would we think he was at school anyway? If he knew Annie so well why did she never recognise him and why did he never reveal his true identity? This is a terrible answer! At once too obvious and too obscure! And there isn’t even a stinger puzzle unanswered question like in The Dark, Dark Knight to keep us going. We just end on this final note of… of illegitimate bafflement. I understand everything. And yet, I am still so confused.
And so the story is over. Although I feel a lot of nostalgia for this book and it’s been great going through it again, I don’t think it was ever my favourite, and not just because it had idols in it. If I dig out any other old Usborne Puzzle Adventures I’ll definitely do a readthrough of them too, though! This has been a blast. It may not be the best but for its level it has a surprisingly good plot and fun puzzles. So good going, Gaby Waters and Graham Round. No wonder there ended up being so many of those. The series had a solid start, and it’s kind of a shame if there’s nothing else like this any more. Video games are awesome but the puzzle book is a pretty great form too, I think! But even video games of this form are dying out. I think it’s sad that puzzles are increasingly diverging from the plotline of whatever they’re associated with. You just solve a puzzle for no reason and then move on. I really prefer the integration of puzzles and narrative, and UPA were by and large pretty great at that. And I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this book, probably anew, as much as I’ve enjoyed reviewing it. And mocking it, admittedly, but in good humour. We make fun because we like them, right?