[BrianEnigma]

So I see a couple of possibilities:
* Sente added the secret message to the invitation himself.
* Someone in the chain of command before mailing (the random dude in the mailroom stuffing the envelopes?) added the message.
* The person receiving the invitation added the text--possibly as notes to carry around the night of the party.
* The person who added the message may be The Advisor--possibly coordinating everyone's positions.

This is some pretty cool stuff!

[appleTRON]

Big news!

Upon examination under a blacklight, I found the following text on the upper left corner of Sente's invitation:

Quote:

Electric splash BB, 21 to 24 4: C, V, K, Q 20, V to 24

Um ... I'm sorry, but aren't C, V, K & Q the initials of the cube theives?!?!?! And doesn't 21 and 24 sound like Gatehouse numbers?

[SPEC] Could this be the plans to heist the cube? [/SPEC]

[oliverkeers13]

I think you got it Bri, seems to fit the whole thing!

[BrianEnigma]

Here's my take on the whole deal. Caveat: it has been a while since I have done "two trains traveling toward each other..." problems.

Given: Sinister and Dexter are the hands of a "broken" clock. Broken, in this case, means the little hand goes anti-clockwise. They start straight up at 12:00 and start going opposite directions.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

By intuition, they will meet a little before Sinister reaches the 11 mark. By computation, you can "unroll" the clock to a 360 degree path. In my calculations, I used "s" for Sinister and "f" for Dexter (because he's faster and because "d" is typically distance). s is at one end, d is at the other. s travels at a rate of 30 degrees per hour, f travels at 360 degrees per hour. The will meet somewhere in between, but pretty close to s. 360t + 30t = 360 390t = 360 t = 360/390 = 36/39 = 12/13 = .92 hours After .92 hours, f has travelled 331.2 degrees. At .1 degrees per second, that's 3312s or 55 minutes and 12 seconds when they FIRST meet. But that first meeting doesn't really matter because the slow guy will continue on until he is on the 11 and the fast guy will continue around to the 12. At this point, we are ready to run the experiment again, but instead of going 360 degrees, they're only going 330. Some time in that second hour, they'll hit a second time and continue until Sinister is at the 10 mark. When exactly they hit is "beyond the scope of this text and left as an exercise for the reader." Some time in the third hour, they'll hit a third time, then Sinister will be at the 9. Some time in the fourth hour, they'll hit a fourth time, then Sinister will be at the 8. Some time in the fifth hour, they'll hit a fifth time, then Sinister will be at the 7. Some time in the sixth hour, they'll hit a sixth time, then Sinister will be at the 6. Now, we come upon the 7th meeting. Sinister is at the 6, Dexter is at the 12. This time they only have 180 degrees to travel through. 360t + 30t = 180 390t = 180 t = 180/390 = 18/39 = 6/13 of an hour f has travelled 360 * 6 / 13 (or 166.15...) degrees in that time. Again, at .1 degrees per second, that's 1661s or 27m, 41s. So, in total, when they meet for the 7th time, 6 hours, 27 minutes, and 41 seconds have passed.

QED

Edited to add:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

If you look specifically at where they meet instead of how long has passed since they started, they meet on the 27 minute marker. When the big and little hand are on that marker, you're looking at a clock showing 5:27.

[dopefiend]

i agree with toongoon - i don't think there's enough there to duggest it's anything to do with a clock- and the left/right thing makes even less sense cos both hands go the same way - clockwise!

[toongoon]

Why would the brothers essentially be called "left" and "right" though? Why not "short" and "long" or "big" and "small". And if they were representing "guards" why would they start out in the same direction and only gradually separate from each other....

If clock hands are the solution I guess I have a problem with their metaphors.

[strife777]

The whole story is a metaphor. The garden IS the clockface. Not a real garden, not a clock in the real garden, just a clockface. They use "guards" because its supposed to be a story, and if they called them hands, it would make it a tad obvious. Like I said before, this puzzle HAS been done before. Not exact text, but same methodology (story referring to people meeting at different points, ended up meaning clockhands, find the time even though no time is mentioned), and I really don't see evidence of anything else.

[Leeravitz]

I have no problem with the theory that 'Sinister' and 'Dexter' are clock hands (or even just parts of a clock mechanism, for instance, akin to those figures that you see on cuckoo clocks), but the way the story is phrased takes a bit of lateral adjusting to actually make this theory tenable.

That the putative 'hands' are called 'brothers' is fine as a metaphor, but it's also suggested that the brothers were 'guards'. I suppose at a pinch one might read metaphoric relevance into that ('guardians of the clock face'?), or maybe, if they were indeed carved figurines, then they carved in the likeness of guards. That they meet in the Fellow's Garden might be interpreted to suggest that the clock they are part of was situated within the Fellow's Garden. But then we are told each time they make the circuit, they meet at a different point *around* the Garden. That doesn't make real sense, unless we consider that the clock face somehow depicted the Fellow's Garden. If the latter is the case, then 'meeting' *in* the Fellow's Garden must be interpreted to mean. not that the clock was in the Fellow's Garden, but that it depicted the Fellow's Garden.

I'm not sure how convincing that actually sounds when it's boiled down.

[oliverkeers13]

Does midnight count as the first meeting? they started together at midnight so i would say that it isn't 6.36, but 7 whatever.

[lummox]

I think it has something to do with wordplay, as there are no numbers to play with, no start times or patrol lengths you have to play about with the words. It could be somthing like this.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

----------S --------- I ----------N ----------I ----------S ----------T -D E X T E R ----------R This has the two words meeting like clockwork, you get that arrangement by sliding sinister along dexter until letters match seven times (it is also the seventh letter of sinister). It looks like they meet at nine o'clock at he gatehouse, however I hade to guess at which is vertical and which is horizontal so it could be quarter to twelve. Feel free to debunk this asI'm not entirely sure

[yanka]

Oh, I'm totally with Brian and strifey here: they simply have to be clockhands - it would make sense that one of them would "walk a little slower" - because it takes the hour hand the same amount of time to cover 1/12 of the distance that the minute hand covers.

So, here are the times hands meet:

1. 12:00
2. 1:06
3. 2:12
4. 3:16
5. 4:22
6. 5:28
7. 6:34
8. 7:38
9. 8:44
10. 9:50
11. 10:55

When do they begin the rounds? For some reason, the natural answer seems to be "at midnight", so I think I'm going to go with "6:34" as opposed to 7:38

EDIT: The correct answer is actually 6:32.727272... (obviously, it is more correct to do the math than to sit around winding a watch )

[diddymac]

It doesn't say ancient, just old.

[Leeravitz]

We've got to be careful here, as there are two levels of time to deal with. Yes, the invitation is for the night that the Cube was stolen (i.e. beginning of last year), but the story of the brothers is supposedly ancient. They could have been perambulating round the Garden 500 years previously.

[toongoon]

I'm thinking this has something to do with orbits and alignment on January 15, 2004. The problem seems to be that this all occurs in one day making it a bit more difficult. Something is nagging at my brain but I can't pull it out.

[Scott]

noting the date:
January 15th 2004
that's The Annual fFounder's Ball, the night before the cube was stolen, of course.
The only thing we know about time is "the cube was stolen sometime after 2AM."