This is the fourth of the five cards we picked up in the last group of Enigma Emporium's first season of puzzle postcards, now called Predator or Prey. It's been a slow holiday season, so we were hoping for a bit of a challenge, but this, at least, didn't start out that way.
On the front is a picture of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, complete with a very obvious DUBAI in the windows, and a series of quotes from various plays. On the back, we have a skull, fragmented, with names of key characters from Hamlet, minus a letter, in each fragment. We also have a Shakespeare stamp with the numbers 3.18.90 and a series of #-#-# which are presumably related to some of the plays or quotes on the front. Possibly Hamlet with the skull? Alas poor Yoric... I start solving even as I'm setting up the post.
From the windows, our mysterious friend is in DUBAI, in the United Arab Emirates. The missing letters from the names spell I ROBBED GARDNER MUSEUM. That was harder than it needed to be as my brain kept supplying the missing letters... Thanks, 11th grade English :) Apparently, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a real museum in Boston, which suffered a theft in 1990 and is still offering a reward for their return. Neat.
I work on the assumption that the book codes are from Hamlet. I remember my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Z, having us watch different film versions to understand how different directors interpreted Hamlet's madness, and whether he actually loved Ophelia or not. Some things stick, apparently. Also showing us clips that demonstrated that, having listened to a reading of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, most listeners focused not on the Lily Maid of Astolat, dying in a boat, but on Lancelot, musing a little pace. Ingrained sexism at its finest... Sigh. Good times.
Back to the book codes. Line-Word-Letter fails at the second one - there is no 14th word on the 10th line of Hamlet...
As I'm banging my head on the back, my puzzling partner is solving the front. It turns out that the names of the plays from which the quotes come, spell out PAT O'TOOL. Apparently our erstwhile art thief living the life in Dubai.
I go down a rabbit hole on the Lady of Shalott and possible locations for Camelot while my puzzling partner continues the real work.
Having naught else to go on, we stick with Hamlet. There are 5 Acts, with a total of 20 scenes - the last number couldn't be Act, but could be Scene. It could be Word-Line-Scene? Also doesn't work. Letter-Line-Scene would have the first two letters be HH, so guessing that's a no as well.
The stamp has 3.18.90 on it, with no known play associated with that date, unless perhaps Richard III being in process. The Ides of March, a la Julius Caesar, are the 15th of March, not the 18th. All the 18th from 3.18.90 kept pulling up was his Sonnets... but I was suuuure it was Hamlet. Eventually we gave up and got a clue. Yup. Sonnets. But not for the stamp. Because that would have 18 lines and all of the sonnets are 14 lines. Still no clue.
With Much Thanks to the Folger Shakespeare Library, we worked through the text of the note: I Live Like A King Here. I Will Never Return And Never Be A Prisoner. Tell The World My Story.
And then it hits us. The date of the Gardner Heist was March 18th, 1990. *sigh*
So, there you have it, Pat O'Tool robbed the Gardner Museum on March 18th, 1990, and fled to Dubai. He lives there in kingly fashion and will not return.
Thanks to The Enigma Emporium for another fun and exciting evening. I wish returning the stolen goods to the real museum was as easy, as I can think of a few things to do with a $10 million reward. The cats could eat tuna for the rest of their days, among other things :)
First, though, we must devolve into a discussion on whether the thief went straight to Dubai, or whether there were other stops first. Dubai in 1990 wasn't much to look at, living like a king is doubtful. Perhaps they sold the art to the emirs and lived with them, rather than Dubai proper? An Irish Gangster in the Emirates' Court? We may be overthinking...
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