I, like thousands of others worldwide, bought a book on the 7th September
1999 called The Merlin Mystery.

It is an "armchair puzzle" book and was released simultaneously
around the world on the above date.

A website and bulletin board were
provided for "members" to post their thoughts and theories on how to
solve this puzzle and so generate an international mindset.

As you can imagine with this wide spectrum of humankind (and the fact that
book has clues in words AND pictures AND is multi-lingual) the theories on how
the puzzle should be solved are almost inumerable. There are people counting
"goldies" (these are small gold symbols that are dotted around the
pictures and text), people following colours around (there's a rainbow with a
colour missing and a coloured slide puzzle), people translating runes
(although, strictly speaking there should be no translating necessary as this
is "outside information" and the book clearly states "The Answer
is in the Book").

One or two questors have even destroyed their books by various means (water
baths etc.) to see if anything came to light!

A rather nice result of all this fevered activity is that small pockets of
questors have got to know each other really well. Some of those living in the
UK had a weekend away at Tintagel for Easter. Photographs of the weekend were
then posted to one of the Questors Website (the
most techie of the team!). Earlier on in the year the Dutch contingent had a
brainstorming session too and there are rumours that a few of the cousins from
the "other side of the pond" have been getting together in small
numbers. Those that are brave enough have sent photographs of themselves for
inclusion on the website - but only using their "Bulletin Board
Nickname".

The puzzle officially runs until December 31, 2001 or until a questor sends
in a correct solution, whichever arrives the earlier. It seems that each week
brings another "I've posted a Solution" notice to bulletin board and
it has got to the point now where nobody holds their breath awaiting an
announcement anymore.

Apparently on the 1st January, when the first of the posted solutions were
opened, there were 2 that were almost there! And that was out of
THOUSANDS of entries. So I still guess we've got a long way to go!

The bulletin board has developed it's own little language set - if you are a
new questor you are called a Newbie. People taking part in the puzzle
are Questors or Knights/Ladies. The Questors are divided into
those who like to count everything and find obvious paths and those that sit
back and look at the pretty colours and await inspiration (that's me!) and
those that use a thing called FUZZY_HOLISTIC_LOGIC but I'm not really sure what
this is!

Sometimes, for a bit a light relief, the MMers (the collective noun for the
group) start a thread on the bulleting board that turns into an adventure
novel. Each member picks up the story where the last person left it and adds a
little bit more. Within the board the most famous of these was called
"Past the Silvery Gate" - it managed to get about 90+ entries on it.