Oh, yeah. Now, I look at it carefully, she does appear to be a) holding onto Sente's side in a proprietorial fashion and b) her face and body are rather more elongated than the girls' - thus, making it appear that she's somewhat older than they are. I suppose it looks a bit ambiguous because: a) Violet and Scarlett could have had a very much older sister and b) she seems to be a lot younger looking than Sente - but that could be explained through the fact that he had a younger wife, had a very good looking wife who aged well etc.
They are undeniably a fairly happy family group as depicted here, so maybe, yeah, there is some deep tragedy in the background to Violet and Scarlett's lives...
The hair colour issue is fair enough - one of the girls appears to be dark haired, and the other is light haired. The dark - haired one must be Violet, and the light - haired one Scarlett (although the picture makes it look like she has blond hair, rather than red). The 'mother' figure also has blond hair, and Sente is dark. It's quite right that the genetics wouldn't condition inheritance that blindly, but maybe there is meant to be an allegorical implication that Violet is more 'like' her father and Scarlett more like her 'mother'???
I would assume that the picture may have been taken at a date well prior to the date at which the puzzle is 'set'. By that, I mean, that the puzzle talks about Violet's youth, and it looks like the main depiction on the card is meant to represent that period in Violet's life (precisely the night she fell asleep dreaming of Fibonacci numbers, in fact). The family photo was probably several years before this: the girls look (proportion wise) like they are still little kids; Violet doesn't yet seem to have adopted glasses [unless she just took them off for the photo!] and Scarlett might have had blond hair because it hadn't yet shaded into red [that happens - I was blond when I was was young, and am now brown/red haired], so maybe this was taken when they were, say, three or so, and Violet's dream happened when she was in her early teens??
I forget if we know how old Violet and Scarlett are now, exactly (is Sacrlett 18?) - I tend to assume Violet's older, although I may be wrong on that. Again, I'm not sure whether we know or not how many years separate them...
Admittedly, all this is further idle spec. on the basis of a drawing seen remotely at second - hand - one might as easily conclude there was something peculiar about the Kiteway family because they would seem (from the photo) to have been devoid of noses!
But in the absence of much further puzzle solving to do...

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 8:35 am