crocodile mystery

Well, I thought the January 2017 Crocodile Mystery was going to be a tricky one, but Misha Teramura not only identified the phenomenon correctly (an endorsement written across the hole created when an early modern letter was torn open at the wax seal),…

For this month’s Crocodile Mystery, have a look at the handwriting and discoloration in this detail. What’s going on? Leave a reply in the Comments section to share your thoughts.

The rusty outline we showed in last week’s Crocodile post is, as one of our responders, Giles Bergel, correctly guessed, from a pair of scissors. It appears in Folger First Folio number 58, in Henry IV, part 1 (pp. 50-51). This First Folio…

Here is another ghostly residue for you to identify, for this month’s Crocodile Mystery: As always, leave your thoughts and guesses in the comments, and come back next week to find out the answer.

This month’s Crocodile Mystery was a bit of a trick, rather than a treat (although hopefully this post will fulfill the treat aspect)—as far as I know, it really is just a fancy, decorated letter A. This is one of…

Welcome to the November Crocodile Mystery! Take a look at the image below and tell us, if you can, what it is and where it appears in our collection? As always, leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments below,…

The answer to last week’s crocodile mystery? As Jan Kellett correctly pointed out in her comment to the October Crocodile Mystery, the red-orange concentric circles in this image are an “offset mark made by a seal.” The mark was made…

A new crocodile mystery for a new month! Can you tell us what this is? As always, please comment with your thoughts and guesses about our mystery image, and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

As several readers quickly guessed, last week’s crocodile image was a photograph of a Russian edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The “ghost” type in the image is due to a glassine (translucent paper) jacket around the volume, which obscures the printed…

Ready for September? We are, with a new crocodile mystery for you to take a stab at! What’s going on with this book? Why does some of the text on the cover appear to be faded?  

The Folger Shakespeare Library recently acquired a copybook with an intriguing pictorial paper cover, and it is, of course, the subject of the crocodile mystery we posted last week. This cover is made of thick paper (thicker than regular paper…

As July rapidly draws to a close, we have a pretty new puzzle for readers to ponder. This month’s mystery is about the picture on this paper cover: what is the image about and why is it on this cover?…