The Q Files: The Luddite Legacy
Scrabbletales is a new game invented by Mogmother and Optimist on the Run on 19/11/2017. It works like this...
Play a game of Scrabble (proper rules or not...) Record all the words used. Use all the words in a short story.
Mogmother then wondered what to do with her stories once she’d got them... Puzzle caches, of course!
Having created the Boy Named Q series in Shropshire and the first Q Files series in Staffordshire, Mogmother then went on to write another series.
The cache is not at the given co-ordinates. Do not go there, or you will get wet! There is parking near the GZ, though at various times of day the area may be very busy; stealth will be required.
The cache is to be found at:N 52 (AB.CDE) W001 (FB.HAJ) (checksum of all digits: 50.)
The Grand Old Duke of York was born on D Ex2 August (A+C+D+E)-B, C+E, C+A, E and died on F January F-C, B-D, A J. (B-D =H)
(score for name of the park +2, word for Roman garment, 1, word for Italian currency (pre Euro); word for wind instrument x2, word meaning open, word for type of snake; word meaning questionnaire or puzzle -3, word for wind instrument x2, word meaning inexpensive +3, sum of both words using K, word for Roman garment X5)!
[where ‘word’ is mentioned, this refers to words from the original Scrabble game, not extra ones added to make up the story. However, some of the names were too useful to leave out...! Ignore the possibility of Double Word Scores and Triple Letter Scores etcetera: just add up the letters.]
Words: famed mad hex oxen gee fife dotage macs toga ta kit brook sellers zit realise oil burp lire overt quiz jots owe round na asp downy gouty tiny vain cheap ah ne an nub ail (i)
FTF Two Nosy Parkers FTF
Chapter 12
He sent a second voicemail after the first telling Hammurabi not to bother, he’d had his lunch. The badge was an oak tree: he’d unpinned it in the end, to realise it had ROYAL on the back… and the Royal Oak in Richmond Park seemed to be one of the more famed London oaks, so he caught a tube train at Vauxhall for Victoria, where he changed to the District line and found a train going to Richmond.
His fellow-travellers seemed to be a odd lot. Two elderly ladies in identical macs; an elderly man in a coat which looked far from cheap, reading all the jots and tittles of a page of oil prices aloud in a vain attempt to concentrate against a younger man’s telephoned demands that Wayne, whoever he was, should gee up Andy (whoever he was) before the boss put a hex on the whole project… And then the ladies in macs began to argue about which, if any, of the old lire coins had holes in, the oil-price man got up irritably to change seats and knocked his gouty foot against something… and Mac too got up and changed carriages. The gouty gentleman followed him, but on finding a mother with a crying baby, made his way through to the next. Mac stayed put and was pleased he had done so, for after a loud burp the baby was silent and remained so until Richmond where they got out, Mac politely assisting with the pushchair.
It was a long way from the station to the park. He strode through the streets, past sellers of cards, groceries and shoes, along Mount Ararat Road purely because he’d seen the name on the map, and eventually into Richmond Park. Despite the earlier rain there were more people about than he had expected, including a group of women in running kit and some children with quiz sheets, arguing about the identification of a tree with downy leaves. He found another route, crossing a brook and following footpaths; as usual there were puddles surrounded by mud which looked as though a herd of oxen had gone that way, but his boots were waterproof and he persisted.
Richmond Hill, he thought, as he turned towards the Pen Ponds. Which hill was it that the Grand old Duke of York went up and down? Mad George the Third’s son, ne Frederick Augustus, marching with fife and drum… He’d missed out on all that overt military stuff, but he was just as good as the rest of them when it mattered… and it had mattered at new year, with Lichthorpe under siege: a handful of Hammurabi’s friends and the staff holding out against people who were determined to learn what Oswy Mortmain had known about them.
He paused, looked round the landscape and saw a huge tree surrounded by palings. The Royal Oak, clearly in its dotage – but after eight hundred years, it had every right to be. It was hollow, disfigured with various lumps where branches had broken off. Like a zit on a person, Mac thought, with a nub of scar tissue round the site… And it’ll ail for another hundred years or so, till there’s a storm… by which time some of these tiny saplings will be sizeable trees.
‘Would you help me, please?’ a middle-aged woman requested, appearing round the corner of the palings. ‘I’ve gone and dropped an asp- It’s not a real one, it’s a toy, and you’re supposed to photograph it with things as old as the pyramids, and this is a very old tree, and it’s fallen down inside the fence-‘
‘Oh, okay.’ Mac followed her unenthusiastically. ‘Ah, it’s a travel-bug. My mate does geocaching…’ He managed to hook it closer to the fence with a piece of stick, and pulled it through. ‘There you are…’
‘Thanks so much.’ She clutched the rubber snake, which had a metal tag attached. ‘I owe you for that- Coffee? At the café over there-‘
‘Na, na, there’s nae need…’ Mac began, and smiled. ‘I dinna ken what all this is about, but you’re very inventive… Ta for the offer, I suppose I’d better take you up on it or I won’t get the next clue.’
She smiled back. ‘That’s right… and you’ve earned your coffee, coming all the way out here. They said I’d better not explain anything, just hand it over… so what shall we talk about? – You know, I always manage to read ‘shopfitters’ as ‘shoplifters’! And on the way over I was behind a van with words on the back- and I spent ages wondering how many they sold and who to- I mean, would you buy a toga?- and then I read it again and it was land autogas dot com, not Roman at all…’