h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*Grins maniacally, and twiddles fingers*

Maybe we'll just make people wait. After all, for those who didn't quite grasp the solution, this is probably becoming quite tedious.

"becoming"?

*jumps up and down*

Well, just a few hours more - I just emailed Lil and I want to give her a chance to post. If she doesn't post by 3 hours after my post, then I will reveal Lord Reflections identity and Affy (and anyone else) can tell us how they figured it out.


*The high-backed chair begins to turn towards the group ... *

*a voice speaks up from behind the group: it is Lil, wearing a mauve sari with an orchid pinned to the shoulder*

I think I know who it is. I had an idea before the Foop, and since then I've been lost in the servants' wing.

Hiya, Lil! Nice to see that you've made it.

*Affy waits expectantly for GL to reveal who it is to see if he's right*

*The chair completes its turn and there are several gasps of surprise and a few wise nods. The person sitting in the chair stands up and speaks to the group.*

Well, Affy, you were the first to guess my identity, so you are the new owner of this mansion and all it contains. Technically, it really belongs to GL who guessed my identity before the game even began, but I'm sure you can work out some sort of sharing arrangement.

I see some of the others also had suspicions it was me. I would be glad to hear how each of you figured that out. I did leave clues, which I will describe, but first I would like to hear your stories.

But before you begin, perhaps you would like to know why I decided to play this game. In fact, I had several reasons:
1) To enjoy myself at other people's expense;
2) To see if 1 could get the Super Heros charged with attempted murder
and, finally;
3) To kill off Stavro, the butler, who knew too much.

Now, please indulge me and tell me how you knew.

*With that Red sits back down in his chair and steeples his fingers.*

*setting down her wine glass*

For me it was a heuristic guess. Just as you can never completely disguise your own handwriting, even in virtual format you can not completely alter your personality. Oh, you can go on for quite a while with an efective mask, but sooner or later some bit of the original entity shows through. It was only just before the Foop that I had perwell made up my mind who was in disguise; if not for that interrupting event I might well have made a move.

I expect the others will have made more logical deductions.

*GL enters from room 009, where he had been viewing the events in room 013*

Well, I had figured it out before it had officially started. It's hard to remember the details now, but the main thing that tipped me off was a reference to Mike A being thrown off the site. At first that made me suspect Lil, but then it just didn't seem completely like Lil. I did some more searching around and I found that Lord R's identity was written over top of a previous, little-used identity. I looked at the 2 or 3 posts made by that person and found that the old ID was 'Prospero' and the posts were somewhat literary. Putting 0.5 and 0.5 together, I confronted Red in another thread, and he admitted it. I should have emailed my suspicions, because I gave away his ID to Uncle Heavy, who was also in that thread.

In any case, it was alot of fun, even knowing whodunnit.

*Affy smiles contentedly*

I thought it was Red. For me, though, it took a bit of thinking.

My first major clue came in the form of The Masque himself. While at the party, I noticed that Stavro and Lord Reflection always referred to The Masque as Lord Blackstone, a title that very few really commonly reffer to him as (the only real evidence that I've found for him being called that at all was in "Lord Blackstone's Magick Shoppe", which is managed by The Masque). My second clue was the maze in NYC's room, which was an inch-by-inch duplicate of the infamous Maze from Zork I: The Great Underground Empire. A very little known fact about Irv/Red is that his RL self had downloaded a copy of Zork I from a website. Since I was convinced that neither GL nor myself was Lord Reflection, this did tend to point towards Irv/Red.

Four more somewhat minor clues solidified my guess that it was really Irv. First, as Lil said, the writing styles seemed uncannily familiar, and reminded me of Irving Washington. Second, the stress on classic literature figures for this story was a trick that he had used very often with The Masque (who has named practically all of his little toys after characters/items from Poe stories: the Raven (his space ship), Montressor the anarchist android, the Pendelum (his water ski), etc). Third, there was the stress on continuity which meant it must have been a familiar face. Finally, during Lord Reflection's first absence, I noticed that Irving Washington and The Masque were both strangely gone.

Anyway, that was my method. We need to do this more often.

For me, the critical clues were the dagger and the references to music and books.

Blackstone's room had the picture of a dagger, which was the weapon that did in Jim. Once I saw the pattern emerge that we were murdering the droids with the weapons indicated in our rooms, I knew Blackstone killed Jim's droid. However, Blackstone was the only murderer who did not receive a note instructing him to commit the murder.

Then I started lurking about Red and Irv's pages, looking for confirmation. Once I realized Irv has a great interest in music and literature, I was fairly certain he was Lord Reflection.

So, Affy, what are you going to do with the place?

*Knocks back the rest of her martini.*

i think id geussed before GL told me actually - i can spot similarities in writing. and it was such a 'red' thing to do. is going to come back?

I didn't really know Irv's style that well; the only adventure we were on together, he was away IRL for the majority of the time I was participating. To be honest, I was a bit "sloppy" at the start of this adventure, and I picked up the whole premise wrongly - while I knew we were looking for the secret of the manor, I didn't realise the secret was supposed to be who built it. I just wasn't looking for that sort of clue... Maybe next time...

and of course its irv. not red as i knew him. a man of many faces indeed

There's one thing that I really want to know, though: hust where did all of those novels come from? I mean, this place is stock with everything from classic comic books to rare Sherlock Holmes novels to the memoirs of Dr. Frankenstein. Collecting those must have taken quite some time....

*Red sits in his chair, looking very pleased.*

Well, you didn't disappoint me. I knew I had assembled some of the best minds on h2g2 and you performed admirably well, all of you. You uncovered most of the clues, but there were a few, mostly obscure ones that you missed.

Witty found the most damning clue - the fact that I killed Jim without being instructed to do so. Affy picked up on the Zork clues and noticed the simultaneous absences of Lord R. and myself. Those absences were unfortunate, and I tried to cover them up by not having the two return at precisely the same time, but they were indeed clues, however inadvertent.

Some of the other clues? Well, here are the ones that I can remember now:


These are verbatim from an email from Irv from November 27th, which I saved


1) Insisting on having a "writting desk" in every room, as a rather lame allusion to the Alice in Wonderland riddle "How is a Raven like a writting desk".

2) Red Herrings in all the Bibles.

This refers to the underlining in red of all occurrences of the word "fish" in the bibles. At one point, Red's name was "Masque of the Red Herring", so these red herrings weren't "red herrings", but were real clues pointing to Red


3) Several allusions to the Beatles song Rocky Raccoon, which not only points to the bibles, but if anyone thought of looking it up, they'd find that the researcher who wrote the article on the Beatles was ... Irving Washington. The song also includes on genuine red herring, in it's allusion to "Lil".

4) A plaque in Lil's room which she forced me to plant by ending a post in "What's under the covers?" The plaque is shaped like a red fish and on it is engraved a French tongue twister which translated reads, roughly, "Fish without drink is poison." This is a rather vague allusion to the fact that the Red Herring is continually drinking red wine. It also points out that I speak some French, and I'm pretty sure that Lil knew that.

5) An actual dead fish in BBW's drawer.

Those are all that I can remember. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

via email


And Affy - yes, those books took a long time to assemble. I spent many hours combing used bookstores, new bookstores and Amazon. It was a real hardship

*wanders along one wall, admiring the gorgeous leather bindings*

Quite a splendid addition to the CLI archive, Affi. Will you be needing a curator for this place?

Affy, are you actually planning to live here, and, if not, is the French maid going spare?

Well, I don't know if I'll ever live here, but I'm definitely going to have to instal a two way teleportation device between here and The Crater so that I can get here without the constant use of my Levi-Coach. I can't speak for the maid's future, really, I don't think that she was included in the deal.

As for all of these books, I'll have to look through them myself. I may very well need a curator. I can hear it now: "The Lord Reflection Memorial Library." Or, maybe not.

*in the servants' quarters, the maid is packing hastily. As her valise nears the full mark she looks around and, seeing that no-one is near, reaches into the pocket of her frilly white apron and transfers a fistful of sparkly stones into the back of the case*

*snapping the case shut, she quickly changes out of the maid's uniform and, with a sigh of relief, dons loose camouflage pants and a black tee shirt*

*the maid-no-more peers round the doorjamb, then heads down the hallway toward the back of the mansion where the mews are situated*