Monday, November 3, 2008

Puzzling Home Design

So you hire an architect to design your home. It's built, you move in. Four months later your son is having a sleepover and his friend discovers that the radiator grill has a ciphered message addressed to the son.... and the game begins.

The house -- actually a 5th Avenue apartent in New York City -- was designed by architect Eric Clough for a family of 6. After the father requested a poem he had written be hidden somewhere in the house, Clough went on a puzzle building spree intended to "spark a child's mind."


In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.

Read about the whole thing here, with many pictures at the New York Times.

Hat tip to Malsperanza, commenting on Holly Black's LiveJournal.

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