Painting #1: One Of Six To Eight

BORDER PHRASE: “I am as cold as earth, and as old as earth, and in the earth am I, one of six to eight.”

BARBED LETTER WORD: GOLDEN

RED LETTER WORD: HARE

WORD FROM THE MASTER RIDDLE: CATHERINE’S

HIDDEN HARE: In the central hill

CLUES & COMMENTS: “One of six to eight” is one of the biggest clues in the book, indicating Catherine of Aragon, the first of six wives of King Henry VIII, near whose monument the jewel was hidden. “In the earth am I” confirms that the treasure is, in fact, buried in the ground somewhere, and not inside a building, vehicle, or other man-made structure.

 

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

Ash October 18, 2016 at 12:14 am

Hi! I have not participated in the Masquerade hunt, but I have read that the solution involved drawing lines from the left eye to longest left “finger” and left eye to longest left “toe” through to the border letters, as well as the same treatment for the right side…My question is this- how can the Master Riddle word here be Catherine’s, when it would appear with what eyes are showing on the 3 mice, only 6 letters could be obtained? do the lines go back through the toe-eye- to a border letter on both sides? or is there another animal here? or if only one eye is showing do they use that for the opposite hand/foot? or do they continue the line even when they reach a letter?? Just wondering how they arrived at the answer- and hoping knowing the methodology might help in another hunt : ) Thank you!

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Lee Jackson April 15, 2017 at 10:31 am

(Reading this sometime after your post date). The Hare here actually has four limbs for four letters but at first glance, you only see one. This is a classic ‘look but look again’ Kit Williams trick

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Julian February 27, 2017 at 12:32 am

Hi Ash, great to know I’m not the only one still interested. I was probably about 10-12 years old when my parents took us for a weekend camping in Wales because Dad thought he’d almost solved it. Close enough to go for a look anyway! Turns out Wales was nowhere near! A while ago I did work through the solution, the clues and the answers, to ‘solve’ it, and it does work, and it does make sense. Re-read everything and I’m sure you’ll get there too. Don’t expect it to help with other hunts though! – A good hunt won’t copy other ideas (apart from ‘hidden treasure’ obviously), and a bad hunt will be found before it’s even published, or suspiciously soon afterwards (‘Piper of Dreams’).

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Annie March 6, 2017 at 11:02 pm

Ash,
The hidden rabbit indicates the remaining 4 letters.

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Stephen March 12, 2017 at 1:16 am

Hi Ash. Don’t forget the hare. You can see his eyes, and all four paws. But you have to look carefully for the pars – keep an eye out for the claws, they will draw your eye in the end. You may not see them in the picture on this page as it is a bit small – check the book of you have it, or look for them on Google.

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Andy August 21, 2020 at 9:23 pm

After years of trying to solve Masquerade as child, I conceded to finding the solution on the internet and hence discovering this website. Although I understand the significance Issac Newton picture and I understand the method of connecting eyes to fingers, feet, claws etc. I cannot see how you get from the first page “using your eyes to…….point to the prize”, to this solution. It makes perfect sense with the hindsight of knowing solution, but how do you get to the point of taking a ruler and drawing lines between eyes and fingers? “Pointing” is the clue I never got….

I think it would be amazing if the BBC made a TV programme with Kit, where Kit goes through the thought processes he went through when creating the concealment of the clues. Frames with words around with lines from letters defining where feet, hands and eyes should be placed. That would be a really interesting TV show!

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jon December 26, 2020 at 8:34 pm

it is easy to say in hindsight but I remember discovering the fact the pictures were pointing to letters from the upside down lady page, it just stood out to me once that they were pointing to letters and other animals maybe doing the same. And one of the other pictures where there was a mouse. I never got left eye to left hand etc… I remember thinking it was only the animals flagged as puppets in the isaac picture that you needed to use. I think the color coding on the rings in the issaac newton picture was supposed to be the clue that each limb had a significance. But knowing it was the longer finger and fattest toe etc… one weakness I think of the book could be the lack of clues to get you to this point. but I guess the author is walking a fine line, it has to be insanely hard because of the amount of analysis that the book will be exposed to.

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Roger Mills October 6, 2020 at 6:48 am

What a fantastically illustrated book this was.I first saw this book on a local news report and a few years later saw it in a book shop when I was 25.
I never did get anywhere with it but I do remember my flat mate with a huge ordinance survey map of Dorset on the sitting room floor and trying to get two of us to go with him to some cliffs 100 miles away on the Dorset coastline at 11pm on a winters night………..thankfully we didn’t go it appears.

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Jennifer Smith March 26, 2022 at 2:01 pm

I started this puzzle a few days ago, and I’m surely “puzzled.” Thanks for your clues. I plan on only resorting back here when I hopelessly stumped.

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