Puzzles

Church Library Bonus Riddle

After completing the game at least once and then starting an Extra New Game on Hard Riddle Level, you'll come across eight hidden notes on the Church's library shelves (no visual clue, you just have to find the right spots blindly) that piece together a very difficult riddle. Read it below in whole:

A secret told before you awake:
the start of a new transformation.

The first number is
'the traveller to St. Ives.'

The second number is
'the hare wear a crown of straw.'

The third number is 'king of beasts
and goddess of harvests.'

The fourth number is 'representative
of both knight and page.'

The fifth number is
'lapis lazuli or turquoise.'

There's no separating numbers from
beginning to end.

14 buttons all told; therefore, one
is always two.

Where to even begin here... With the first line perhaps referring to this riddle being found only in an Extra New Game (new transformation), five number clues are listed along with two additional hints. Let's start with the clue for the first number, which is "the traveller to St. Ives." This refers to a famous nursery rhyme riddle called "As I was Going to St. Ives". It reads as follows:

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

The trick to this riddle is all in the language. Rather than pulling out a calculator, simple reading comprehension reveals only the author to be going to St. Ives, while the man and his wives, sacks, cats and kits are completely inconsequential and not accompanying him to St. Ives. Note that even our riddle spells it out with "the traveller", indicating it's one person from the start. With just one person going, the first number of our riddle is 1.

Onto the second, "the hare wear a crown of straw." This is a tricky one, but if you're familiar with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland you may remember the March Hare from the tea party scene with the Mad Hatter. In the original illustrations by John Tenniel inside Carroll's book, the March Hare wears strands of straw on his head like a crown. Okay, so how do we deduce a number from this character? Well, March is the third month of the year. Therefore the second number is 3.

"King of beasts and goddess of harvests." Who's that? Well, the king of beasts is certainly the lion, also known as the king of the jungle as well as the zodiac symbol for Leo, from July 23 to August 22. Continuing the zodiac theme, what comes next? That would be Virgo from August 23 to September 23. The symbol for Virgo is a (female) virgin or maiden, with heavy association with wheat as this period from August to September is known as harvest time when the crops are cut. Further, Greek and Roman mythology associate Virgo with Proserpina, the Roman goddess of harvest. And the common theme between Leo (king of beasts) and Virgo (goddess of harvests)? They both share the month of August, the eighth month of the year. Therefore the third number is 8.

Now the fourth number, "representative of both knight and page." This calls back to the history of playing cards which descended from tarot cards. Tarot cards ascended from ace to 10 just as do modern playing cards, however the face cards were Page, Knight, Queen and King. Modern playing cards retained Queen and King, but effectively merged the Page and Knight under the new name of Jack. As the first face card and thus the 11th numbered card, and representing both knight and page, the fourth number of the riddle is 11.

And now our last number, "lapis lazuli or turquoise." Simple enough to figure out, lapis lazuli and turquoise are both birthstones for the month of December, the 12th month of the year. Therefore the fifth number is 12.

And so we're left with 1 3 8 11 12, but it's not the final form of our code. We read on for two more clues:

There's no separating numbers from
beginning to end.

14 buttons all told; therefore, one
is always two.

So we won't have any spaces in our code and the final form must have 14 button presses. "One is always two" refers to standardizing each number as two digits, which means 1 becomes 01 while 11 remains as is, and so on. But if we go with 0103081112 we only have 10 buttons all told.

How do we get the final four if we can't use spaces? Well, what do we often use on the internet to solve this problem? Underscores, specifically four of them – one between each two-digit number. 10 numbers plus 4 underscores is 14 buttons all told. That leaves us with the following code:

01_03_08_11_12

This is the password for the "Royal Flush" Shirt. Enter it into the Extra Costume menu to add it to your inventory on your next Extra New Game playthrough.