[WitchOfDoubt]

The guests continued to discuss the vampire problem, and eventually reached a conclusion: at least two answers were possible, in keeping with the running themes of the night, depending on how they characterized the vampires' rate of reproduction.

Naturally, old Walter Sexton called foul. "Sphinx's Second and Third," he muttered. "Not a sound riddle. Framing's too vague."

"On the contrary," said Ocean Zweidler, "At noon, the vampires should burn up. That's all the information we need... unless they were Twilight vampires, but those hardly count, do they?"

Batsheva had a caveat. "Could've ridden the subway! Dracula would get the senior discount."

"The riddle tells us that the vampires were flying," replied Ocean, a little coyly. Then, in a moment of terribly Batsheva-like insight, she added. "Of course, they could have had umbrellas to protect them from the sun."

"That's true!" said Batsheva, nodding sagely. In the end, the guests settled on three answers: 256, 4096, and zero, with the third being most likely given Batsheva's nature. Would this vampire lore be relevant later on?

Of course it would.

*******

With a last careful click, Walter Sexton, one of the Club's more traditional puzzle solvers, spun the compass dial to the last position - E. "Rather like solving a crossword," he remarked. "Fill in the missing letters to find the 'ANSWER.'" As he spoke, the safe swung open, revealing yet another safe inside it - a safe within a safe. On that safe was taped a piece of paper - the very page you are reading right now - and on that piece of paper were two stories.

The first story told how Walter opened the safe, but the second was an outrageous lie. According to the bottom half of the page, L. V. had opened the safe using his mother's name from her first marriage, a piece of information that would have been entirely inaccessible to anyone else! How absurd... but was it a clue of some kind? This was the second time that they had found two parallel stories inside a safe, and each time, L. V. had been the victor in the alternate story.

"I imagine that whoever wrote these riddles thinks a great deal of you, Mr. Ford-Seaton," said Walter, drily.

In the second story, what combination did L. V. use to open the safe?

*******

Meet the Pieces (Part 6 of Many)

Kenichi Nakamura
Age: 48
Profession: Programmer

Quote: "People call riddles 'difficult' or 'easy' in a way that sounds like saying 'good' or 'bad.' Lose, lose! Tell me if a riddle's 'clever' or 'crude.' If it's clever and easy, give it to children. If it's clever and difficult, give it to me. If it's crude, give it to nobody."

Background: Born in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, Kenichi Nakamura grew up in a big city on the Boso Peninsula. From a young age, he loved tinkering in his father's electronics store, taking apart radios, soldering wires, and getting the odd shock from a charged capacitor. In his twenties, he attained international fame under the pseudonym "Ken Q." as the author of the acclaimed When they Call series of 'visual novels.' In pursuit of new ideas and puzzles he traveled the world, learning English and swapping hacker jargon with his western peers.

Random Fact: Kenichi Nakamura can solve a difficult Playfair cipher in his head.

Sample Riddle: Mark Ye was looking increasingly impatient with the guests' attempts to solve the riddles. "Mark, are you allowed to try to answer these?" asked Mr. Nakamura.

"Staff and their families are only allowed to answer the Witch's Epigraph, not the safe riddles." recited Mark. "I'm bored."

Kenichi filed the reference to a 'Witch's Epigraph' in his memory for later consideration. "Would you like to have a riddle of your own to solve?" asked Mr. Nakamura.

"Yeah!"

"Okay. There is a frog on that staircase with 39 steps.

First it jumps up 5 steps.
Then it jumps down 2 steps.
Then it jumps up 5 steps.
Then it jumps down 2 steps.
And so it repeats, until it reaches the top. If -"

"25 jumps!" said Mark. "I know this one! It's with a well!"

"... no, not that one. Suppose you see the frog on top of the 38th step, and you know it started on top of one of the first ten steps. Which of those steps could it have started from?"