Talk:The Bee on the Comb

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No longer an orphan[edit]

I've added links to this page from Kit Williams, Masquerade (book), Treasure hunt (game), and the fiction section of Bee.

Additional bit[edit]

I wrote an explanation of the puzzle (below), but it can't really go in until there's an independent source for the same facts.--twl_corinthian (talk) 15:49, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Puzzle[edit]

Each of the book's illustrations includes a hidden animal (in addition to the animals and insects that are depicted clearly). In order of appearance, the hidden animals are: parrot, fish, goose, crab, mouse, horse, kangaroo, wren, elephant, moth, whale, muntjac, armadillo, ram and lamb. The last letters of the animals' names form the phrase thebeeonthecomb, or The Bee on the Comb, which is the book's title, as well as being a description of an object in the story.

This puzzle is significantly less complex and obscure than that of Masquerade; however, solving the puzzle was not the only requirement for claiming the treasure. Readers also had to express the answer without using the written word, and their entry would be subject to Kit Williams' judging.

Several red herrings are also placed throughout the book:

Two hybrid animals appear in the first painting: a mouse-horse and a cat-toad, suggesting the words "Morse code". A Morse code message is hidden in the border of the seventh painting, but even when decoded it does not directly help with the solution.
Most of the paintings depict several bees. The numbers of bees correspond to letter of the alphabet; one bee means "A", two bees means "B" and so on. (If a painting includes no bees, it indicates a space in the message.) The resulting message is "BEES-ONLY-STING", intended to indicate to the reader that he or she is on the wrong trail.