Case 102

Case 102: Hole-in-One

Celest St. Claire's Notes

Hey,

As I mentioned in my note, I’m sure that my conclusions will match Sullivan’s. That being the case, if you’ve already asked him about these clues, you probably won’t learn anything new here.

If you do choose to use this site, you’ll still need to email Sullivan about the case’s Solution once you’ve figured out where the diamonds are hidden.

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-102 to send him your first email. When you want to tell him where the diamonds are hidden, just include the word Solution in the body of your email.

If you need help making sense out of the putt putt map once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the words Course Map in the body of your email.

If you want to see my thoughts on any of the clues in your case file, just click the corresponding button below.

I’m pretty sure that Sullivan was on the right track when he said that each of the numbers on the scorecard stand for a letter. Even so, we still have to figure out how to translate the numbers into letters. It must have something to do with the alphabet, but I haven’t quite been able to put the pieces together, yet.

I got it! I figured out how to turn each of the numbers into letters!

The numbers are telling us which letter to read alphabetically, so 1 = A, 2 = B, etc.

After writing out each of the letters and eliminating the “X’s,” I got this message:

“Boss, the diamonds are hidden. The map will show you where. First use ninja.”

The map has to be talking about the putt putt map that Sullivan found, right? Even so, I’m not sure what they mean by “first use ninja,” are you?

I guess it doesn’t really matter for now – we’ll probably need to decode Clues 1-4 before we can make much sense out of the map, anyway. For now, you’re probably safe just to write the message down and save it for later.

Remember, if you need help figuring out the map once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the words Course Map in the body of your email. If you haven’t sent him your first email yet, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-102.

So far, I’ve been able to unscramble the handwritten words on the ad. They say, “Use missing letters for second hole.”

Somehow, I don’t think that’s all there is to this message. In fact, I’ve noticed five different words that seem to be missing letters throughout the ad. I think what we really need to do is to figure out what word we can spell from the words’ missing letters.

Don’t worry – I’ve got your back!

The misspelled words on the ad are “cruh,” “togeter,” “specil,” “youself”, and “sy.”

After looking at them a little closer, I think the words are actually supposed to be “crush,” “together,” “special,” “yourself,” and “sky.”

That means the missing letters that we need to use are “s,” “h,” “a,” “r,” and “k,” which spells “shark.”

I don’t know how yet, but that must be one of the pieces we need if we want to figure out where the diamonds are. Even so, I’m pretty sure that we’ll need to solve the other clues before we can really narrow down their location. For now, I’d recommend just writing yourself a note that the second hole we’ll need to look at is “The Shark.”

You’ll probably question my judgement, but I think the line about how “keys will point the way” means it literally.

I’m not sure how yet, but I’m positive that if we can position the keychain on the calendar correctly, it should point to the words we need – probably one at a time. I think that the trick will be to position the keychain according to the placement of the word “Key” that’s on it.

The last thing that I’ve figured out so far is that the order you’ll want to read things is from the top down – not from left to right. In other words, once you find the words that you need, you’ll want to start by reading the one closest to the top and work your way down the page.

The keychain and the key symbols on the calendar work hand-in-hand to give us the message here.

If you sit the keychain on top of each key symbol so that the word “Key” on the keychain is covering the symbol, the keychain’s arrow will point to a word. When you do that for each of the symbols and read the words from the top of the page down, it says:

“Third flag is after clown and before car.”

Looking at the putt putt map, there’s only one hole that comes after “The Clown” and before “The Car” – it’s “The Windmill.”

I’m not sure how that’s going to help us yet, but I’m sure it will once we’ve solved Clues 1-4. In the meantime, you can probably just write yourself a note so that you remember the third hole you’ll want to look at is “The Windmill.”

I haven’t figured out the message yet, but I’m positive that we’re only supposed to use one letter from each hole’s name. I’m also pretty sure that, ultimately, the message is going to consist of three words.

Aside from those things, the only other thing I’m confident about is that the placement of each letter that we’re supposed to use in the word will be the same for each of the words. In fact, I have the feeling that the note at the top of the page is giving us a hint about which letter we need to look at.

I got it!

The word “first” appears a couple of times in the note at the top. In its own clumsy way, it’s telling us to read the first letter in each hole’s name. When you do that, the message says:

“Last is octopus.”

That’s got to be talking about “The Octopus” hole on the putt putt map. I’m pretty sure that, once we’ve figured out all of the holes that we’re supposed to look at on the map, they should tell us where the diamonds are hidden.

Of course, when you’ve figured out where the diamonds are, you can send Sullivan an email to let him know. When you do, be sure to include the word Solution in the body of your email so he knows what you’re talking about. When you do, please tell him to be careful – if the Moretti family catches him stealing the diamonds back, they won’t let him walk away.

It’s been fun working on this case together with you!