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Q: What is the solution to "Masquerade" by Kit Williams?


A: The original book:
"Masquerade" by Kit Williams, Jonathan Cape, London, 1979

The answer book:
"Masquerade The Complete Book with the Answer Explained" by Kit Williams,
    Jonathan Cape, London, 1982

The whole story:
"The Quest for the Golden Hare" by Bamber Gascoigne, Jonathan Cape,
    London, 1983

"Masquerade"  contains fifteen very detailed one- or two-page paintings
rendered in the fantastic style typical of a high quality children's
book, together with a dreamy story containing characters such as Jack
Hare, Tara Tree-tops and the Lady Moon.  Most of the very lifelike
people in the paintings are actual friends of Mr. Williams.  This book
set off a frenzy of solving activity unequalled by any subsequent book,
even though its imitators offered much higher prizes, culminating in
the $500,000 of the book "Treasure" with puzzle by Paul Hoffman (a.k.a.
Dr. Crypton).

The solution to Masquerade is simplicity itself, and is fully in
keeping with the nature of the book: namely, a picture book.  First of
all, the text has nothing to do with it; the pictures alone contain the
answer.  Secondly, the answer is literally pointed to by the pictures.
Each picture is bordered by letters, which is a dead giveaway since the
letters have no reason for being there if they are not part of the
puzzle.  By drawing a line from the eyes of the various creatures in
the pictures, through their longest fingers, biggest toes, etc., and
extending to the bordering letters, this message is found:

CATHERINES LONG FINGER OVER SHADOWS EARTH BURIED YELLOW AMULET MIDDAY
POINTS THE HOUR IN LIGHT OF EQUINOX LOOK YOU.

The first letter from each page spells:
CLOSE BY AMPTHILL

This method of solution is hinted to on the title page with the rhyme:
    To solve the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes,
    And find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.

Armed with this information, it is a simple matter to discover that
there is a statue of Catherine of Aragon in a public park near the
village of Ampthill.  By doing a little amateur astronomy, the exact
spot pointed to by the statue's long finger can be determined without
waiting for the equinox.  Beneath this spot was the treasure, a golden
hare.  The book also contains a number of confirming clues.

"Quest_ chronicles some of the amazingly far-fetched approaches taken
by Masqueraders.  Mr. Gascoigne, a respected author on the arts,
accompanied Mr. Williams the night he buried the treasure.  He also
read the tens of thousands of letters received by Mr. Williams.   The
hare was "found" three years after the book was published by a shadowy
figure with pseudonym Ken Thomas.  Several years later it was
discovered that Mr. "Thomas" was in cahoots with the boyfriend of Kit's
girlfriend while he wrote the book.  The full story is contained in the
London Times story reproduced below.  Two British physicists did
finally solve the puzzle with the help of a hint published by Mr.
Williams in the Sunday Times, but they were a little too late.

After the announcement that the hare was unearthed, many fanatical
Masqueraders tried to prove that their approaches could lead to the
correct solution.  For example, someone discovered that the word
"thill" means a fleck of paint (according to some obscure dictionary),
and he thought he saw an inexplicable fleck of paint in each painting.
He also thought he saw the word "amp" hidden in each painting.  For
example, in one picture a girl is floating in the air above houses.
And a volt (vault) over an ohm (home) is an amp.  Mr. Gascoigne
summarizes his observations thus:

    Tens of thousands of letters from Masqueraders have convinced me that
    the human mind has an equal capacity for pattern-matching and
    self-deception.  While some addicts were busy cooking the riddle,
    others were more single-mindedly continuing their own pursuit of the
    hare quite regardless of the news that it had been found.  Their own
    theories had come to seem so convincing that no exterior evidence could
    refute them. These most determined of Masqueraders may grudgingly have
    accepted that a hare of some sort was dug up at Ampthill, but they
    believed there would be another hare, or a better solution, awaiting
    them at their favourite spot.  Kit would expect them to continue
    undismayed by the much publicised diversion at Ampthill and would be
    looking forward to the day when he would greet them as the real
    discoverers of the real puzzle of Masquerade.  Optimistic expeditions
    were still setting out, with shovels and maps, throughout the summer of
    1982.

-----

December 11 1988, Sunday
HEADLINE: Unmasked: the Masquerade 'con'; Kit Williams
BYLINE: BARRIE PENROSE and JOHN DAVISON

KIT WILLIAMS, author of Masquerade, the best-selling treasure hunt
book, last night conceded for the first time that he had been 'conned',
along with the thousands of enthusiasts who had chased its prize, an
elusive golden hare.

The hare, set with five precious stones, sold for Pounds 31,900 at
Sotheby's last week, six years after it was found in a Bedfordshire
park by a shadowy businessman calling himself Ken Thomas. The discovery
brought to an end two-and-a-half years of frantic activity that saw the
book sell more than 1m copies and readers scour its pages, and the
British countryside, for clues.

Williams says that he has always had reservations about the find. Now
new evidence, obtained by The Sunday Times, has convinced him that
there was a complex plot to find the hare involving a former girlfriend
of his, late-night digs with metal detectors, and even militant animal
rights groups.

'This tarnishes Masquerade and I'm shocked by what has emerged, '
Williams said last night. 'I feel a deep sense of responsibility to all
those many people who were genuinely looking for it. Although I didn't
know it, it was a skeleton in my cupboard and I'm relieved it has come
out.'

The plot revolves around Veronica Robertson, the girlfriend with whom
Williams was living when he thought up the idea for Masquerade, had it
published and saw the first flood of letters pour in from
treasure-hunters.

While admitting to questioning Williams over some of the 30,000
letters, she denies that she ever knew, or wanted to know, where the
hare was hidden.

But The Sunday Times has discovered that less than a year after leaving
Williams she was out searching Ampthill Park, where it was buried, in
the dead of night with metal detectors.

The man who organised those trips was John Guard, with whom she was
then living.  At the time, it has emerged, he was the business partner
of Dugald Thompson, the real name of 'Ken Thomas' who was later to find
the hare.

Robertson said last week that from the first time she met Guard he was
interested in her connection with Williams, and that he introduced her
to Thompson so that he could question her about the jewel's
whereabouts. She now concedes that it was she who pointed Thompson
towards Ampthill, where she had often visited Williams in the early
1970s.

At the same time Guard had persuaded her to join him in looking for the
hare, with the suggestion that the takings could be given to militant
animal rights groups, of which she was an active supporter.

Soon afterwards Guard enlisted the help of Eric Compton, 60, and his
son Richard, metal detector enthusiasts, on the first of seven searches
at Ampthill.

'We got there about midnight and worked until daylight, ' said Compton,
a civil servant. 'They told me the hare would be sent to a store in
Texas and the money would go to animal rights.'

He confirms that Robertson was there, but did not say anything. She
took with her a copy of the hare's casket, given to her as a present by
Williams.

Compton also said that Guard had offered him Pounds 1,000 to do all the
television interviews after the hare was found; but, worried about his
reputation, he pulled out.

Robertson will only say that she 'cannot remember' if she went on the
dig: 'I don't say they're liars. But my mind is now blank.' She does,
however, admit that when the hare was found it was Guard who told her
that 'Ken Thomas' was Thompson.

'It was mind-boggling. I was very worried that the link might be made,
' said Robertson. She has written to Williams, apologising for the
embarrassment he will suffer.

When approached last week, Guard initially denied knowing Thompson at
all, but after being shown company documents that carried both their
names he changed his story, saying that he had never searched for the
hare.

In 1982, however, he told the Bedfordshire on Sunday newspaper, using
the name 'Mike', that he knew where the hare was and would find it.

Thompson, who after his discovery appeared on television and in The
Sunday Times heavily disguised, denies Guard's involvement with the
find, saying that only his girlfriend had helped him dig. 'At no time
did I know he had been looking or digging for the hare up there.'

But in 1982 he told The Sunday Times that he found the hare helped by
another man, whom he refused to name.

Thompson's story then was that he had been pointed to Ampthill by
reading that Williams had once lived nearby. He was attracted to the
exact spot, he said, when his dog 'ran off to have a wee' a few yards
from a stone cross, which held the vital clue.

Thompson used the hare as security to set up a computer-game company
which met financial problems. Last week's sale was on behalf of the
liquidator.

Williams said: 'I never really believed that he had solved the puzzle,
but I had no proof. This new evidence convinces me.

'They knew roughly where the hare was, they were willing to pay two men
Pounds 1,000 to find it. They had worked out who would be the front man
with the press, and they knew where they would dispose of it in the
USA.

'I have tried to think why Veronica would get involved, as she was not
interested in money. The only thing she would do it for would be animal
rights groups. It now seems that someone masterminded the plot. It did
not happen by accident.'

-----

Here is the story of how this masquerade was unearthed:

It wasn't the Sunday Times which uncovered the truth about how the Masquerade hare was found,
but a local paper, Bedfordshire on Sunday, and more specifically, me, Frank Branston, the then
editor, and now Mayor of Bedford. My family controls Bedfordshire on Sunday, widely known as BoS.

John Guard, the associate of Dugald Thompson alias Ken Thomas, alleged finder of the hare, worked for
me as a sales rep. One day he came into my office and asked what I would do about it if he found the hare.
I said, of course, that I would run it as a story. After a bit of chat I asked him if he had found it. He said he
knew where it was. Asked how he knew, he said: 'You know my girl friend Ronnie (Veronica) Roberts
used to be Kit Williams girlfriend, she's told me enough to work it out.' I asked why he didn't get it, then,
and he said the actual point was marked by the position of a shadow at dawn on the summer solstice.

Had it not been for the Roberts connection (which I knew to be true) I would have dismissed it as fantasy.
A couple of times thereafter I asked if he had found the hare but he screwed up his face and said it was more
difficult than it seemed.

A year or so later, the hare was found allegedly by a dog. Guard was, by this time, no longer working for me.
I tracked him down and asked him if he had got the hare and he said: 'No. what a bummer.'

There were enough clues in the Sunday Times report to indicate that Ken Thomas was local and he used a
Bedford solicitor. I tried to find out his name from them without success and tried the name of John Guard on
Simon Freeman, the Sunday Times reporter who wrote the 'hare discovered' story and whom I knew slightly,
but drew a blank. I gave up, but didn't forget the story.

Years later, in 1988, I think, I read a paragraph in The Observer that the hare was about to be sold to cover
the debts of a company called Haresoft which had been set up to exploit the hare in a videogame but which had
gone bust. The next day I got the company details of Haresoft and found the name Dugald Thompson living in
Bolnhurst, a village north of Bedford. Listed amongst his other directorships (maybe the only one) was a company
called Clayprint. This I knew to be a company set up by Guard. Bingo==== the connection was made.
====

I got a reporter to go and see Thompson at the same time as I went to see Guard. He didn't exactly admit it, nor
did he exactly deny it at first, but eventually he said that Kit Williams had visited Ronnie Roberts, who was by then
living in Bedford, the night he and Bamber Gascoigne had buried the hare and told her about it. Guard had persuaded
Ronnie to give him the information on the basis that he would give any money he made to animal charities (both he
and Ronnie Roberts were fanatical vegetarians and anti-animal exploitation). Guard said: 'In the end, the only people
to make any money out of it were the banks.' The reporter who went to see Thompson did not get much out of him
but I felt we had enough. We led on the story under the suitable heading 'Masquerade.' The Sunday Times bought
the story but reneged on its promise to credit BoS with breaking it.

A week after we published, a local metal detector hobbyist called to tell me how John Guard had taken him several
times to the cross to try and unearth the cross but had failed (Kit Williams had encased it in clay to defeat metal
detectors).

A few years later, Guard died of drink and drugs in the flat where I had interviewed him. He was a weird chap with
a chequered history, but I maintained a certain affection for him.

My guess is that Guard had failed to unearth the hare. He told me he used to regularly inspect the site, and I think
one day he saw diggings made by the two academics who actually discovered the solution and realised people were
getting close, so hatched the idea with Dugald Thompson of sending to Kit Williams a sketch plan of the solution.
As we know, Williams, who received sackfuls of 'solutions' was delighted and there was an official unearthing.
Guard could not appear as the discoverer because people knew of his connection with Ronnie Roberts, and
Thompson used a false name because his connection with Guard was well-enough known for the truth to have
come out, as it eventually did in the manner detailed here.

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For additional information, see: http://www.bunnyears.net/kitwilliams/masq.html.
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