"Aha!" A guest had hit on something. Why not enter 2711, a four-digit number culled from clues in the text? Hmm. Was it a prime number? A quick search on an Internet phone revealed that it certainly was, while most of the other permutations (7112, 1172, 2117 and 1127) weren't.
The colors in Morse code were clearly important as well, but
IROYGBIVU was not the second code.
Quite close... we must be getting quite close... thought Ocean.
Are there any colors on these pages?
Meanwhile, another guest, gruff old Walter Sexton, had already noticed something odd about the Sphinx's Decalogue. "There's a hidden message in those lines," he said. "But it's unfinished."
Puzzles upon puzzles, and they hadn't even gotten in the door yet!
----
Meet the Pieces (Part One of Many)
Ocean Zweidler
Age: 32
Profession: Author
Quote: "My Grandma Margareta made scarecrows all the time. When I was a girl, she showed me the faces she gave them - laughing, smiling, crying... I still remember hearing them! It was Grandma who taught me what a writer does.
My stories are puzzles. A little dry, a little silly, filled with straw people. But I prop them on a stick and put faces on them, and my readers create the rest for themselves."
Background: The daughter of a neuroscientist and a chef, Ocean is the author of the bestselling Vanishing Island series of mystery novels. As a relatively recent initiate to the club, she specializes in folkloric riddles and Victorian letterplay. She also has a working knowledge of both English and German, acquired during her childhood in the town of Bernkastel-Kues.
Random Fact: Once, after receiving a negative review, she anonymously tricked the police into putting a highly inconvenient barricade around the reviewer's house.
Sample Riddle: As Ocean waited for the rest of the guests to finish cracking the first two locks, she pulled out a pencil and penned a simple challenge to the others to kill the time.
On paper or tablets from man or Divine,
I am made of ten parts, and yet only of nine.
