Has Kit appeared on the radio?

Yes. There is this 1984 radio interview, conducted by Don Swaim for use on CBS Radio, wherein Kit discusses his youth, his early career, the reaction to Masquerade and some teasing hints on his then-new untitled bee book. He was apparently in America on a press tour promoting the new book, and a reference is made to an […]

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What is the master riddle & solution of Masquerade?

I’ve noted the phrase from the “master riddle” on each painting’s page, and here’s what I mean by that. The book’s title page contains the clue, “To solve the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes, and find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.” This suggests that eyes are […]

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What’s up with the barbed letters and the red letters?

November 27, 2011

Each painting features bright red letters around the border of each painting; they’re easy to spot. Many do not immediately notice the border letters with little thorns poking out of their middles. Rearrange the red letters to form one secret word and the barbed letters to form another. These are not related to the master […]

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Where can I buy Kit Williams’ books?

November 27, 2011

Kit’s two puzzle books, Masquerade and The Book Without A Name/Untitled, are currently out of print, but you can find used copies in varying conditions on Amazon, Advanced Book Exchange, Bibliofind, and eBay. The small paperback Masquerade: The Complete Book with the Answer Explained is also out of print, and has now started to climb in value. Intrepid […]

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Where can I buy Kit Williams’ paintings?

November 27, 2011

Kit’s works are still handled by The Portal Gallery in London, although folks have written in to suggest that he rarely displays there any more. “Kit apparently now works only to commission but he also opens up his studio once a year to the public for one week only to display recent works,” says Toby […]

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Where can I buy posters or reproductions of Kit Williams’ paintings?

November 27, 2011

Unfortunately, there are no prints currently available of Kit’s paintings–I think we’d all love to buy poster-sized reproductions of some of Kit’s Masquerade artwork! However, there was a small promotional poster made of measuring roughly 16″ x 18″. These were apparently only released in the UK and sometimes show up on eBay (that’s where I […]

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What was in the 1982 Masquerade calendar?

November 27, 2011

Kate Owen reports that the calendar contains 12 of the book’s paintings and new riddles, but those riddles do not have any bearing on the book’s ultimate solution (in other words, if you missed the calendar, you didn’t miss part of the main hunt). One such riddle, graciously typed in by Kate: There came four […]

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What did Kit have to say after the jewel was found?

November 27, 2011

Most often he expressed relief that the whole ordeal was over, and as you’ll see in the following FAQ entries, a certain amount of regret and sorrow. However, when the Sunday Times printed the solution, Kit wrote the following introduction (supplied to the site by James McLaughlin): THE QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN HARE THAT MADE […]

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Is it true that the man who won Masquerade cheated? What’s that whole controversy about?

November 27, 2011

In short, yes. It’s true in that the person who won didn’t actually solve the book’s master riddle, but instead used ancillary clues and personal information about Kit to determine the burial place. Chris Cole has been kind enough to send me this sad story from the London Times, dated December 11, 1988: HEADLINE: Unmasked: […]

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Did “Ken Thomas” ever speak publicly about finding the jewel?

November 27, 2011

Yes. In addition to a few newspaper interviews and some very brief direct quotes in the May 1982 issue of Smithsonian magazine (download a 7MB PDF version of that article here), Harold Benney says he gave an interview on the UK TV show Omnibus in 1982, much of which Paul Harkin transcribed and sent in: […]

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