The Collation

Happy Boxing Day! We’ve brought you another crocodile mystery to open with your holiday goodies. This month’s mystery comes in two forms and appears in two places. Tell us, if you would, what these mysterious numbers suggest to you?    …

For December’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s happening in the images below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!  

For November’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s going on in the image below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

This month’s Crocodile Mystery is a caption contest: Option A: Provide a factually accurate title for this portrait. Option B: Provide an amusingly inaccurate title for this portrait. Option C: Provide both A and B.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Walsh (1953-2017) We are devastated to announce that Betsy Walsh, our beloved head of reader services here at the Folger, passed away on Friday, September 22, 2017. Betsy was an inseparable part of the Folger—indeed, for many of…

For this month’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what the image below depicts. Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

We’re in the heat of summer (at least here in Washington D.C.) as we approach the end of July. So to help everyone cool off (or at least provide a distraction), we’ve pulled another Crocodile Mystery from our vaults. Tell…

For the July 2017 Crocodile Mystery, have a look at this detail from a printed play. What’s up with the strangely uneven tone of the page? Check back next week to learn more….

Welcome to the end of another month and another Crocodile Mystery. This month’s Crocodile is brought to you by Folger manuscripts! Here’s a detail from a bifolium that is part of a collection of papers described at the item-level in…

For the Crocodile Mystery this month, peer into the handwriting of this manuscript and let us know what word or words you see and/or what they mean. Leave your thoughts and guesses as a reply in the Comments section. Check…

As March draws to a close, spring has finally (mostly) sprung in Washington DC (we’ll not talk about our poor cherry blossoms). If the days are warming up where you are as well, contemplate this Crocodile Mystery while you enjoy…

The mystery this month isn’t about what the text is (these pages are excerpts from a Calvinist Bible in French printed in Geneva in 1588) but rather it’s about the paper. What is going on here? Leave your thoughts and…