A free evening from The Clockwork Witnesses

The Golden Lark

The night before it is delivered to the Lady Mayoress, Master Sprue’s golden lark vanishes from his workbench. Nobody human saw it go. His automatons saw everything, and they cannot stop repeating it.

The evening and its puzzles are new, made for this page in the style of the book, and nothing in them spoils it. Play on screen, or print them and grab a pencil.

Start the evening About the book

Medium ×2
Hard ×3
Fiendish ×2

Crookspire Lane at night in the fog: crooked shops with clock-shaped signs and lit windows, and the tall crooked House of Automata — Crookspire Lane, from the cover of *The Clockwork Witnesses*

Master Absalom Sprue, the toymaker, with a white shock of hair, a jeweler’s loupe and a leather apron full of tools — Master Absalom Sprue. “Machines are honest. They only do what you wind them to do.”

A winter before the book begins

The empty velvet box

You are the apprentice at Sprue’s House of Automata, No. 9 Crookspire Lane, in Sorrowby-on-the-Wane. All week Master Sprue has worked on a golden lark for the Lady Mayoress, and tonight it sat finished on the workbench, wound and gleaming, to be collected at nine tomorrow.

At ten o’clock Sprue wound every witness in the workshop, as he does each night. At half past ten he went up to the Parlor with the Lady Mayoress’s secretary to sign the papers. At eleven he came down, and the velvet box on the bench was empty.

“Don’t ask the people,” he says, screwing his loupe into his eye. “People tell you what they wish had happened. Ask the toys.”

Seven puzzlesFrom Medium to Fiendish, in the book’s own kinds: a drum roll in Morse, a gear train, a logic grid, mirror writing, toys wound backwards, a puzzle-box lock and a musical cylinder.
Keys carried overThe spare-parts drawer (6) opens on the key to Miss Warble’s cylinder (7), the way the book’s answers unlock one another.
The TestimonyEach puzzle adds one line of testimony. At the end, name who took the lark and where it is now.
Stuck?Every puzzle has hints, and you can show its answer. Your progress is kept on this device.

The visitors in the house tonight

Miss Araminta GauntThe Lady Mayoress’s secretary, come to inspect the lark before it is delivered. “Her Ladyship expects it to sing on the stroke of nine.”

Mr. Cornelius CleatA clock-mender from across the river, and no friend of Master Sprue’s. “Any fool can make a bird sing. Making it stop is the trick.”

Mr. Jasper TuttleThe cabman hired to drive Miss Gaunt home through the fog. “I go where the horse goes, and the horse goes to the kitchen door.”

Mrs. Hermione QuaverA singing teacher, who taught the lark the Lady Mayoress’s favorite song. “A bird is only as good as its teacher.”

Also in the house: Mrs. Pim, the housekeeper, who keeps the kitchen and every key in it, and Jonas Flint, the lamplighter, who stopped in the yard for a pipe. Neither is a suspect: Mrs. Pim was never out of sight of her kettle, and Jonas Flint cannot tell a lark from a kettle.

Mechanism Cipher

Corporal Rattle’s Drum

MediumAbout 10 minutes

Corporal Rattle, a tall tin drummer soldier in a plumed shako, sticks raised over his drum

Corporal Rattle, the drummer soldier, stands beside the workshop door. A pinned barrel inside his drum remembers everything the door does, and plays it back as taps and rolls when you wind him.

How it works. A tap is a dot and a roll is a dash: Morse code. Each group of beats between bars is one letter, and a long rest ends a word. The key gives every letter.

Corporal Rattle’s Morse key

The question. What did the door do after it opened? Write the last two words.

Gear Train

When the Pin Went In

MediumAbout 10 minutes

The tall clock in the workshop, its pendulum case carved with scrolls

The drum roll does not say when. But Rattle’s barrel is driven from his escape wheel, and the pin for the door sits a measured way round it. Master Sprue wound him, barrel at zero, at ten o’clock.

How it works. Gears on the same axle turn together. When two gears mesh, the smaller turns faster, in the ratio of their teeth. Rattle’s escape wheel turns once a minute.

Master Sprue’s notes on Rattle’s works

The escape wheel turns once every minute, and carries a pinion of 10 teeth.
That pinion turns the first wheel, of 30 teeth. On the first wheel’s axle is a pinion of 5 teeth.
That pinion turns the drum barrel, of 40 teeth.
The door’s pin went in one and seven-eighths turns of the barrel after ten o’clock.

Rattle’s train, from the escape wheel to the drum barrel.

The question. At what time did the door open? Write it like 10:15.

Logic Grid

A Quarter to Eleven

HardAbout 20 minutes

Mrs. Pim, the housekeeper, arms folded, a great ring of keys at her waist

At half past ten Master Sprue left the lark on the workbench and went up to the Parlor. At a quarter to eleven each of his four visitors was in a different room, and each had different company, or none. Mrs. Pim, who sees everything that happens in her kitchen, remembers this:

How it works. Tap a square once for ✕ and twice for ✓. Every person was in one room, with one companion (or nobody), and no two shared either.

Mrs. Quaver was not with Mrs. Pim.
Mr. Tuttle was in the Parlor or the Kitchen.
Miss Gaunt was in the Parlor or the Shop.
Mrs. Quaver was in the Kitchen or the Shop.
Mr. Cleat was with Jonas Flint.
Whoever was in the Parlor was not with Mrs. Pim.
Miss Gaunt was in the Parlor or the Kitchen.
Mrs. Quaver was not with Master Sprue.

The question. Who was alone at a quarter to eleven, and in which room? Write the name.

Mirror & Transposition

Mr. Blot’s Page

HardAbout 20 minutes

Mr. Blot, the clockwork scribe, a gaunt clerk at a tall slanted desk with a quill and a long paper roll

Mr. Blot, the scribe, writes down every word spoken in the workshop, in mirror writing. At a quarter to eleven he wrote one line, very small. Somebody had been whispering.

How it works. Read the page in a mirror first: every line is written backwards. Then the letters are on a rail fence of three rails: the words were written zig-zag, down and up across three lines, and the lines were copied out one after another. Rebuild the zig-zag and read it along.

Mr. Blot’s page, three lines in mirror writing

Write the whisper here, letter by letter (69 letters):

The question. How flat was the lark, says the whisperer? Write two words.

Wound Backwards

The Chatterbox Shelf

HardAbout 20 minutes

Tally, the tambourine monkey, in a velvet jacket and a little fez, with a tambourine and a cymbal

Master Sprue’s four chatterbox toys sit on the shelf above the bench and repeat what they saw. But somebody brushed against them in the dark, and some were wound backwards.

How it works. A toy wound forwards tells the truth. A toy wound backwards says the opposite, so everything it says is false. “…, or …, or both” is true when at least one part is true; “If …, then …” is false only when the first part is true and the second false. Tap a toy to mark how it was wound.

The question. How was each toy wound, and which way did the lark leave the workshop? Mark every toy above, then choose the way out.

Puzzle-Box Lock

The Spare-Parts Drawer

FiendishAbout 20 minutes

Miss Warble’s key card lives in Master Sprue’s spare-parts drawer, behind a lock of four brass dials. Sprue forgets the code every winter. Scratched inside the lid are his last attempts, with what the lock answered.

How it works. Each dial shows one of six symbols, and no symbol is used twice. For each attempt, a black gear means one symbol is right and on the right dial; a white gear means one symbol is right but on the wrong dial. The gears are not in dial order.

Scratched inside the lid

Your dials (tap a dial to turn it)

The question. Write the first letters of the four symbols, in dial order.

Keep this word: the last puzzle needs it.

Mechanism Cipher

Miss Warble’s Cylinder

FiendishAbout 25 minutes

Miss Warble, a silver songbird on her perch in a tall domed brass cage

Miss Warble, the songbird, pins every sound she hears onto the brass cylinder under her perch. After eleven she heard a little song, muffled, from somewhere beyond the workshop door, and she answered it, as songbirds do.

How it works. Each letter is a chord of two pins: a low note (1 to 5) for the row of Sprue’s square and a high note (6 to 10) for its column. Build the square from the key: the key’s letters first, each once, then the rest of the alphabet in order, with I and J sharing a cell. A gap in the pins ends a word. The key is the word that opened the spare-parts drawer (6).

Miss Warble’s cylinder, after eleven: low pin over high pin

The question. Where is the lark now? Write the last two words.

Close the evening

The Testimony of the Witnesses

Mr. Tock, the clockwork butler, tall and grave, holding out a silver salver

Master Sprue sits at the bench, his loupe in his eye and Mr. Tock’s silver salver at his elbow. “Well?” he says. “What do my witnesses say?” Here is every line of testimony you have heard.

Corporal Rattle’s Drum Not heard yet.
When the Pin Went In Not heard yet.
A Quarter to Eleven Not heard yet.
Mr. Blot’s Page Not heard yet.
The Chatterbox Shelf Not heard yet.
The Spare-Parts Drawer Not heard yet.
Miss Warble’s Cylinder Not heard yet.

The question. Who took the golden lark, and where is it now?

Who took it Where it is now

Owlbrook Grim Tales · Book Three

The Clockwork Witnesses

The toymaker is dead. His clockwork dolls saw everything. They just can’t stop repeating it.

That was one quiet evening at the House of Automata. In the book, Master Sprue is found dead at his bench on the night of his seventieth birthday, the door bolted from inside, and the Inspector arrests the housekeeper before breakfast. Over eight days you question eight automaton witnesses, one a day, each through a chain of five puzzles that ends in its Testimony, and then you face the inquest. Ten kinds of puzzle: mechanism ciphers, gear trains, mirror writing, sightline floor plans, logic grids, puzzle-box locks, blueprint nonograms, toys wound backwards, alibi timelines and word searches. 45 puzzles, rising from medium to fiendish, every one checked by computer to have exactly one solution, with a hint and an answer check for each and full solutions.

See the book

More gothic mysteries in Owlbrook Grim Tales.

The Golden Lark

The empty velvet box

The visitors in the house tonight

Corporal Rattle’s Drum

When the Pin Went In

A Quarter to Eleven

Mr. Blot’s Page

The Chatterbox Shelf

The Spare-Parts Drawer

Miss Warble’s Cylinder

The Testimony of the Witnesses

The Clockwork Witnesses

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