Case 108

Case 108: Bad Romance

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 who the deranged fan is.

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-108 to send him your first email. When you want to tell him the fan’s name, just include the word Solution in the body of your email.

If you need help making sense out of the letter to Rosalyn once you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the phrase Strange Letter 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 figured out what pattern we need to use here. If a word is longer than 2 letters, its interior letters should be swapped with the interior letters of the word directly beside it. I’m also pretty sure that each word will only swap with another once.

It looks like I was right about swapping the interior letters of one word with the interior letters of the word beside it.

Here’s an example of what I mean: the words “hrainee tavd” are side-by-side in the original message. That means you need to swap the “raine” from the first word for “av” in the second word. When you do that, you get the words “have trained.”

If you follow that pattern for the rest of the message, it says:

“I have trained for vampire life. Enclosed are the teeth I’ve kept secret.”

Ew! Didn’t Sully send you the teeth they included? I don’t know what “vampire training” is, but I doubt either of us want to know!

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked. Isn’t there a picture of a computer mouse beside the word “vampire?” I’m pretty sure there’s also a picture of a computer mouse on the letter Rosalyn received. Do you think that means we need to write the word “vampire” beside the computer mouse symbol on the letter?

If my hunch is right, that means we’ll probably need to use the other clues to find the words that belong beside each of the symbols on the letter. When we do that, the letter should be able to help us find the fan’s name.

Don’t forget, if you need help making sense out of the letter after you’ve solved Clues 1-4, you can send Sullivan a message with the phrase Strange Letter in the body of your email. If you haven’t sent him your first email yet, you can do so at SleuthKings.com/Case-108.

I’ve been able to figure out a few of the numbers so far. The top number is 63, and the number below it (and to the left of 29) is 34.

If I’m reading the strange message on the casting call sheet correctly, once the pyramid is filled in, we’ll want to read the words associated with each number from the smallest number to the largest one.

Here’s what the pyramid should look like once it’s all filled out:

When we read the words in order from the smallest number to the largest, the message says:

“I will end Ian’s game. He can’t take you away.”

As weird as the message is, I don’t think finding it is all we need to do. There’s an area with several blank spaces where the message can be written, right? When you fill the spaces in, you’ll see that several of the letters have Internet symbols below them. If you read only those letters, they spell the word “Wendigo.”

A wendigo is some kind of monster, right? More importantly, isn’t there an Internet symbol on the letter Rosalyn received? I bet that we need to write the word “wendigo” beside it.

The message on the poster that’s addressed to Rosalyn says that the fan wishes her heart could rest on top of their blood, right? As creepy as that is, I think there’s more to it.

You’ve noticed the random letters all over the poster, haven’t you? The third row spells the word “blood,” which seems strangely appropriate here. I think what we’re looking for is either the word “heart” or a picture of one that we can place on top of the word “blood” on the poster.

I’m pretty sure that, when we find the “heart” we’re looking for, there will also be some random letters near it. Even if the word “blood” is covered, if we can position the other letters correctly, they should help us make sense out of the message here.

Good news! I found the heart – it’s on the back of the fan’s letter to Rosalyn. See? There’s a picture of a heart with the letters “AIXET” above it and “T?TDE” below it.

If you fold the letter into thirds and place the heart over the word “blood” on the poster, these letters are visible:

W M A X E

H X D R T

A I X E T

T ? T D E

X R H X R

A E E L S

Starting from the left column first, the message says, “What am I? Read the red letters.” Then, if we read the poster’s red letters, we see the word “Phoenix.”

That’s pretty random, but I guess we’ll go with it for now. More importantly, there’s a folder symbol beside the question “My dear Rosalyn, do you want to know what I am?” That symbol appears on the front of the letter Rosalyn received, too. I’m pretty sure we need to write the word “phoenix” beside the folder symbol on the letter.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the number of like-symbols in each grouping varies. Like Sully mentioned in the Clue Analysis, the symbols are also beside four of the words in the card’s message, too.

After looking at this for a while, I’ve realized that the symbol groupings are pointing us toward something in the words they’re associated with. If we can figure out what they’re telling us to look at, we should be able to put together the fan’s real message.

I got it! The symbol groupings are telling us which letter to look at in their associated word.

For example, the first symbol grouping is three muscular arms, which means we need to look at the third letter in the word “might,” which is “G.”

If we do that for each of the symbol groupings, we get the message:

“Goblins tell me to kill Ian.”

If this person is talking to goblins, they’ve got bigger problems than we thought! Wait a second – the word “goblins” is beside a picture of a tear, isn’t it? There’s a picture of a tear on the letter Rosalyn received, too. I bet we need to write “goblins” beside the tear symbol on the letter.

Of course, once you’ve figured out the fan’s name, 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.

Good luck!