Monk-eying with the Calendar (Canterbury) Mystery Cache

Cache 3 in a series on the calendar.

There is no cache at the published coordinates!

The calendar has advanced considerably since the last cache in this series was published (in April 2010). Christchurch has experienced on earthquake or three (one of which took out the Lyttelton timeball station, causing Balls Up to be archived). The SW+T team relocated to Wellington in search of greener unfound caching pastures. So, cache number 4 in the series is well overdue.

The previous cache in the series was about the introduction of the Julian calendar in 45BC. The Julian Calendar is the basis of the calendar we use today (the only subsequent change being a tweak to the leap year rule). Of course at the time the Romans did not regard the year as being 45 BC (not surprising as it was a few decades before C). At that time the Romans named each year based on the pair of consuls for that year.

The year numbering system we use today came about over 500 years after the birth of Jesus. A monk was working on calculations of dates of Easter in future years. The calculation is complex (well duh, that's what happens when you have a lunar-based event in a solar calendar). The calculation requires a year number, and at that time years were numbered from the start of the reign of Diocletian, which started about 240 years before our monk was working on his calculations. Diocletian persecuted Christians, and the monk decided to come up with a way of numbering years that did not perpetuate the memory of Diocletian. He decided to number years from (his estimate) of when Jesus was born. He called this way of numbering years Anno Domini (the year of our lord), or AD for short. The alternative term CE (Common Era) has become common in recent times. An article quoted by Wikipedia states, "B.C.E./C.E. ... do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog than the conventional B.C./A.D."

There is debate about how close the monk got to when Jesus was actually born. THe birth likely happened a few years before AD 1. Still, that's pretty good going given it was over 500 years after the event. It is handy that the year chosen for AD 1 was the year after a leap year (which means leap years are the multiples of 4). I'm not sure whether that was by accident or design (it might have been intentional; the calculation of Easter has to take leap years into account). Had, for example, AD 1 been a leap year then our leap year rule would be years that are 1 year after a multiple of 4 are leap years.

For the next 200 years, AD was simply used as a way of calculating Easter (and not by the general population as a way of identifying the year). A venerable English Monk was responsible for introducing AD to a broader audience, and over a number of centuries its use spread throughout Europe.

Eventually, people wanted to use AD for dating events in the distant past, including things that happened prior to AD 1. The number 0 was not widely known at that time, so it was decided to use 1 BC (Before Christ) as the name for the year before AD 1, and to count backwards from there. BCE (Before Common Era) is the alternative name for BC, and is used in conjunction with CE.

A consequence of the first year being AD 1, is that (technically) each new century and millennium starts on the first of January of a year ending in 1. So, the first millennium was 1st January 0001 to 31st December 31 1000, the second was 1st January 1001 to 31st December 31 2000, and the third millennium started on 1st January 2001. The commonwealth of AUstralia came in to being on 1st January 1901, the first day of the 20th century. In the US, some people celebrated the start of the new century on 1st January 1900, and some 1 year later. The New York Tribune issue of 1st January 1901 had the front page headline "WELCOME TWENTIETH CENTVRY". Interestingly, 100 years later, the start of the 21st century was celebrated by nearly all on 1st January 2000, with just a handful of pedants holding out for 1st January 2001.

To work out where the cache is hidden you will need to answer the questions below. Some of the questions are based on the oldest way of identifying years: regnal years. In this method the year is identified by the current monarch, and the year number of their reign. The examples below are based on regnal years for NZ prime ministers. By way of example, John Key became prime minister on 19th November 2008. So the year Key 1 runs from 19th November 2008 to 18th November 2009. The date 18th November Key 2 is equivalent to 18th November 2010, and 19th November Key 3 is equivalent to 19th November 2010. Dates in the regnal year form maybe be harder to work with, but they are more fun!

• The monk who invented Anno Domini was D___ E___. A = #letters in first name, B = #letters in last name.

• The year in which Anno Domini was invented was CDE.

• The venerable English monk was B___. F = #letters in name.

• In an episode of Seinfeld, a character has booked a venue for a party to celebrate the new millennium (thinking they were making a booking for 31st December 1999). Jerry points out that because the booking was made "for the new millennium" the party will be one year too late. The name the event was given was N___. G = # letters in the word. [When Troodles was solving this, she found two spellings of the word; use the spelling without the double consonant.]

• H = Last digit of AD year number of the date 25th December Spud 4.

• I = Last digit of AD year number of the date 31st January Piggy 8.

• J = Last digit of AD year number of the date 1st October Lamb Burger 1.

The sum of A to J is 47.

The cache is hidden at: 43 DA.B(C+D)J 172 I(E-D).(F/2)GH. It is magnetic, down low, in plain sight, and can be reached without leaving the footpath. Please don't do the cache up too tightly when reassembling!

This is the fourth cache of a series on history of the calendar. The caches in the series are:

1. A week of it!
2. Beware the Ides (and the Nones and the Kalends)
3. Veni, vidi, kalendri
4. Monk-eying with the Calendar
5. Give us our eleven days