Well, y'all know what day it is, so it's time for the latest updates on the Blackadder solution...
In an exciting crossover with another cipher mystery, I have established a link between the Blackadder solution and the mystery of the Somerton Man (You are not allowed to view links.
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While Michael Hastings (b. 1942) — false supposed Yorkish heir to the British throne according to the traitorous Tony Robinson (who played Baldrick in
Blackadder and should therefore know better) — only emigrated to Australia in 1960 (“aged 18 to work as a jackaroo on ranches” according to You are not allowed to view links.
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As I pointed out in last year’s Apr. 1 update on the status of the “Blackadder solution”, rather than being crypto-Jacobites Scottish Freemasons were in fact the guardians of the slain Blackadder’s bloodline — the “widow’s son,” offspring of one of the bigamous precontracted marriages he made with the women represented by the crowned figures in the Cancer and Leo folios of the Voynich Manuscript — the Zodiac folios being Blackadder’s equivalent of Don Juan’s catalog of conquests. According to a post by Nick Pelling on his Cipher Mysteries blog (You are not allowed to view links.
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I now believe that Somerton Man was sent to Australia by the Freemasons in 1948 to recruit local members to guard the interests of the Blackadder line against supporters of the viper descended from “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence.” No doubt he was murdered by the opponents of the Blackadder line, the Knights Who Say “NI! (Nequam! Infamis! [Vile/Wicked! Of ill fame!])”
Based on this hypothesis, I offer the following conjectural solution of the Somerton Man code, part of an induction ceremony for new members of the Priory of the Scion (the secret Masonic order dedicated to protecting the Blackadder bloodline):
WRGOABABD
Worshipful Master: “What rare gift offers a base acolyte?”, Blackadder demands!
MLIAOI
Candidate: My life in allegiance offer I.
WTBIMPANETP
Woshipful Master: When the Blackadder is made potentate all naysayers endure their punishment.
MLIABOAIAQC
Candidate: My life, indomitably accomplishing Blackadder’s orders and instructions, always quietly concealed.
ITTMTSAMSTGAB
Worshipful Master: In this truly mighty task some acolytes may stumble, their ghosts awfully banished.
Note that whoever murdered the Somerton Man crossed out the line in the code corresponding to the line "My life in allegiance offer I" in the ceremony. Having realized that the Priory of the Scion was onto them, the Knights Who Say NI! and other supporters of the false Hastings Yorkish claim clearly decided to wait another dozen years for the coast to be clear before sending Michael Hastings to Australia.
This will all be detailed further in my forthcoming book
Holy Sh*t! Holy Grail?. But of course before I write that I have to finish work on the novel I mentioned last year,
The (Duh!) Voynich Code.
Those of you familiar with Dan Brown's
ouvre may remember that there was some speculation that his book
Inferno was going to involve our favorite manuscript based on a puzzle on his home page prior to the publication of the book that when solved read "MS408 Yale Library" (You are not allowed to view links.
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The Secret of Secrets came out and reviews indicated that it was set in Prague a reasonable person would surely have expected the Voynich Mss. to make an appearance -- but no! I can only assume that someone made Brown aware of the imminent (any year now!) appearance of
The (Duh!) Voynich Code, and since game recognizes game he felt he couldn't do a superior fictional treatment of the Voynich Mss.
In the meantime, to tide you over here is an excerpt containing the thrilling conclusion of
The (Duh!) Voynich Code. Warning: if you've been living in a cave since 2003, the following contains a massive spoiler for
The Da Vinci Code...
NOTE: All artwork, literature, science, and historical references in this novel are real. Except for the ones that aren't. If the plot demands that a bathroom in the
Bibliotheque Nationale has a window and bar soap when there is no window, no bar soap, and for that matter no bathroom at all in that particular location, then that is reality's problem, not mine.
....
Bolton Gardner walked down Portobello Road, so distracted that he didn't notice the steady parade of women staring at him as he passed. Friends compared his good looks to Channing Tatum's -- and Channing Tatum in "ripped for an action movie" mode, not Channing Tatum in "rocking a dad bod between projects" mode.
"'Follow in the footsteps of Zeno.' What can that mean?" he muttered.
"But surely this is all over now," Eve Housenip* said. "Luke Klarg, expert on the Priory of the Scion, was exposed as the mastermind behind the murder of my great-uncle, and you have been cleared of suspicion."
(* Eve is the grand-niece of the Bibliotheque Nationale
librarian from the beginning of the novel who had been killed by one of the Knights Who Say NI! and arranged like the Zodiac Man on the floor of the library, but with shattered knees and severed ankles to represent the absence of Capricorn and Aquarius from the Voynich Mss. Zodiac pages)
"No," Bolton replied. "No, we have to follow the clues to the end. '...the footsteps of Zeno' -- Zeno of Elea was famous for his paradoxes, the most famous of which is the following: Achilles is going to have a race against a tortoise, but being a good sport he gives the tortoise a 100 foot head start. So off they go. By the time Achilles has run 100 feet, the tortoise has run another 20. But by the time Achilles has run the additional 20 feet, the tortoise has run another 4. And so on, and so on -- so how can Achilles ever catch up? Is that the answer? That there is no catching up, that this is a pointless, endless chase?"
Eve was only half listening, distracted by an antique map in the window of a store*. "Look at this funny map of the North Pole," she said. "And what is that big island 'Frisland' between Iceland and Greenland?"
(* This map, although not this store: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
Bolton stopped short. "Wait, what was that you just said...Frisland? Of course! That's it! Not Zeno of Elea, but the Zeno
brothers!"
"Who are they?" Eve asked. "Are they like the Property Brothers?"
"I'll tell you once we're on our way to Scotland. We'll have plenty of time for an exposition dump on the train," he replied. They rushed to King's Cross Station, and after disentangling themselves from a gaggle of strange children (all of whom had owls for some reason) they bought tickets for the next train to Edinburgh's Waverley station. Once settled in, Bolton explained:
"The Zeno brothers, Nicolo and Antonio, were 14th century Venetian noblemen. They became famous after a descendant, Nicolo Zeno the Younger, published a map and series of letters describing a voyage the brothers had made in the 1390's. In 1380 Nicolo had gone on a voyage from Venice to England. He found himself stranded on an island between England and Iceland called Frisland, where he was rescued by a prince named 'Zichmni.' Nicolo invited Antonio to come join him, and at Zichmni's direction the brothers attacked first the island of 'Estlanda' and then the island of 'Islanda.' Nicolo made a voyage to Greenland, then returned to Frisland, where a group of fishermen missing for 26 years had returned with tales of unknown lands named 'Estotiland' and 'Drogeo' in the far west. Zichmni set out with a fleet led by Antonio to search for those lands, and after various adventures they landed at the southern tip of 'Engrouelanda,' which Zichmni stayed to explore while Antonio returned to Frisland.
"Now, in 1784 a companion of Captain Cook named John Forster made an argument for identifying 'Zichmni' with Henry Sinclair, 1st earl of the Orkneys, and since then claims have been made for Henry Sinclair having voyaged to the Americas -- in fact, in Halfway Cove in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia there is a historical marker commemorating Sinclair landing there in 1398*."
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"But what does that have to do with Scotland?" Eve asked on behalf of the reader.
"Henry Sinclair was the grandfather of Sir William Sinclair, who founded Rossyln Chapel in 1446. And one of the carvings in the arch above a window in the south aisle of Rosslyn Chapel depicts maize* -- a New World plant supposedly unknown in Scotland in the mid-15th century! Now remenber, Edmund Blackadder was the Duke of Edinburgh, and would undoubtedly have known about Rosslyn Chapel and Henry Sinclair's voyage to Nova Scotia -- which explains the sunflower in the Voynich Manuscript!"
(* Actually, it's probably a stylized Arum Lily -- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
[Further details of the trip to Rossyln are omitted here, as are the details of Eve's reunion with her long-lost brother and great-aunt. With mystery solved, and Eve safely in the hands of the Priory of the Scion (which it turns out was led by her great-uncle the librarian), Bolton leaves for home...]
As Bolton walked away from the chapel he heard footsteps approaching rapidly from behind. Thinking it was Eve coming to stop him from leaving, he turned around, heart racing.
"Oh no," Bolton thought. "Not
him again..."
"Dude!" Robert Langdon said with a silly grin on his face. "You'll never guess what I just found out! You see my new girlfriend over there? Well, it turns out that she's a direct descendant of--"
"J**** Freaking C*****!" Bolton yelled. "What is this, like, the...fifth?...time we've run into each other in the last 24 hours? Are you stalking me or something?"
"Geez...be that way. I was going to invite you to come work with me at Harvard, but never mind," Langdon said, walking off in a huff.
Bolton found his way to the train station, then settled back in his seat for the lonely trip back to London. It would be a relief to get back to his office in the Department of Symbolologyism at the University of Northern South Dakota at De Smet and put the insanity of the last 24 hours behind him. As the train headed south he idly listened to a news story from the BBC:
"Archaeologists excavating the planned location of a new Sainsbury's near Alnwick Castle have found what they describe as a medieval cesspit containing, quote, 'a truly spectacular amount of late 15th century British peasant excrement.' We spoke to the head of the dig, Oxford professor Cheswick Pickelbottom..."
Interviewer: Tell me, what do you hope to learn from digging up all this, well, excrement?
Prof. Pickelbottom: We expect this to provide us with a great deal of information about the diet and overall health of the local population. You'd be surprised what you can learn from excrement.
Interviewer: And have you been taking part in the excavation personally?
Prof. Pickelbottom: Oh, no, no, no...No, my
graduate students are doing all the actual excavating.
Interviewer: We spoke to your grad students. Several of them described you as a visionary with a real dedication to casting light on the details of the lives of ordinary people in 15th century England...
Prof. Pickelelbottom: That's very flattering.
Interviewer: ...the rest of them, however, described you as, quote, "a complete and total freak with a bizarre obsession with poop."
Prof. Pickelbottom: Well, you know what they say -- sometimes two things can both be true.
Interviewer: And what's the most interesting thing you've found so far?
Prof. Pickelbottom: Actually, we've uncovered a bit of a mystery. We found the skeletal remains of a badly mutilated man dressed in the remains of very expensive clothing and an enormous codpiece. On the bones of one finger was a gold ring inset with an enamel serpent of some sort.
At that Bolton jerked awake from the half-dozing state he had been in. He consulted the train schedule he had picked up in Edinburgh, got off at the next station...
[...and made his way to the dig site.]
It all made sense...a late 15th century cesspit -- and Edmund had been stripped of all his titles by his father other than Lord Warden of the Royal Privies*. The minions of Henry VII who disposed of the remains of Edmund had a cruel sense of humor. Having reached the edge of the excavation, Bolton asked for a moment of privacy. The bemused grad student escorting him humored him and left him to his thoughts. Once alone, Bolton closed his eyes in silent contemplation -- and then dropped to his knees to offer a prayer at the graveside of the last true Plantagenet king of England.
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Until next April 1st...
So now, the wage of sin is paid.
The blade is stuck, the black steed grazes.
The only sound across the glade,
is Edmund pushing up the daisies.
Black Adder. Black Adder. A shame about the plan.
Black Adder. Black Adder. Farewell, you horrid man.