While I'm working to rebuild the missing minute of The Mockingbird Song (brief summary of What Exactly Happened: the main file and its backup were corrupt. I don't know why or how. Fortunately, there was another version saved in Dropbox that I'd forgotten about, and it's complete except for about 63 seconds, which I'm working on now. It's faster than trying to unbreak the other one), here's some news for you! As announced via Twitter and Facebook earlier last week, we finally have a winner for Evelyn's Puzzle. You thought it would never be solved, didn't you? Well, our winner has asked to remain anonymous because the prize--the original sketch of Evelyn and Mrs. Nattingbottom--is going to be a surprise gift for someone special. Congratulations, Winner (and Winner's sweetheart!) But I did promise I would explain all the clues for you once the puzzle was solved, so, here you go:
1. Find the last of the Micronesians and tell them my name Their beloved songs will tell you the place
The domain suffix for Micronesia is .fm. So, "the last of the Micronesians" means Last.fm. "Tell them my name" refers to my username, which is, in this case, my actual name. Which amounts to http://www.last.fm/user/katytowell. Finally, the location of the piece is given in the title of a track that I have marked as a Loved Track. (It's also right there in Recently Listened Tracks.)
2. go to The place where our every Word Is spoken by the sialia bird, be careful lest you fail, my friend; These birds will carry you unto your end. They'll wrap you up in silken suture Exactly as they did the great sea creature, but never mind this. come follow me... look to the background. you will see! fear not if it seems your skill is bleak. for below the horizon Rests the gift you seek.
A sialia bird is a bluebird. Birds tweet. Who has a blue bird for a mascot? Twitter. So, the piece is hidden at the bottom ("below the horizon") of my background image. Oh, and the great sea creature wrapped up in silken suture and carried by the birds? The failwhale. And just in case this was all too cryptic for you, I also spelled out TWITTER with every capitalized letter.
3. And by the side the horned beast waits with great displeasure on his face 'Tis he who'll take you to the spot where all the words have been forgot Find the treasure at its source Look for a name - and the prize, of course.
In the sidebar of skary.net is a picture of Mister Creazil. Click him, and you'll see what appears to be a page with no content. But view the source of that page and you'll see this hidden somewhere therein:
Evelyn's getting nervous. What took you so long? http://skary.com/wp-content/uploads/lbp.png
4. Consider everywhere I go. Look in the past and then you'll know.
This one was simple. I posted the location of a piece in a comment on an old, old Facebook post at http://facebook.com/childrinrskary.
5. Find me where the memories flicker How empty is the stream! But if you add my name, it'll be much quicker and there's more than it may seem.
The piece was uploaded to my new Flickr account at http://flickr.com/katytowell. But the piece itself was (at the time - it's public now) accessible only to people I add as friends. To find it, you had to add me first. I would reciprocate, and then you'd see the piece.
6. There was a crooked man, and he had something once, and it bought him a folder containing all things new, within which was another for Evelyn's nickname, which had a ping to it like "pea ell cee oh!"
"The crooked man who had something once" refers to the crooked sixpence nursery rhyme, which was the inspiration for one of my other sites: http://crookedsixpence.com. I added a folder called "new," inside of which was another folder for Evelyn's nickname (actually, three different folders with three different possible nicknames for Evelyn - Lyn, Lynn, and Evey) and placed inside it a PNG file called plco.png.
So, there you have it! All clues to Evelyn's Puzzle explained and clarified. Congrats again to the winner, and much applause for everyone who tried! This wasn't an easy one; I admit!