Editing 2869: Puzzles

{{comic
| number    = 2869
| date      = December 18, 2023
| title     = Puzzles
| image     = puzzles_2x.png
| imagesize = 328x455px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by AUNT '''A'''MY, AS IN AN '''A'''WFUL CLUE FROM A CHILDREN'S BOOK - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Many children's books, especially those read by Randall's generation, feature in-story puzzles. Some of these hold up pretty well decades later, like the ones in {{w|Ellen Raskin}}'s award-winning mystery books for kids. Others, however, are…a lot less impressive. Randall doesn't specify which children's books have "terrible" puzzles, but the ''{{w|Hardy Boys}}'' series by Franklin W. Dixon, the ''{{w|Boxcar Children}}'' series by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and the ''{{w|Encyclopedia Brown}}'' series by Donald J. Sobol are all strong possibilities. (The Riddler in the 1960s ''{{w|Batman (TV series)|Batman}}'' TV series famously played the trope for laughs.)

In the panel, characters from one such book (presumably a made-up example) are contemplating a puzzle involving somebody's Aunt Gertrude. The characters guess Gertrude's amulet must be hidden in the Ground, because that starts with a G, like Gertrude, and that they should diG a hole. These guesses are not very practical; it seems unlikely that Aunt Gertrude either (A) chose to be known indefinitely by a G-name purely as a clue about where she hid an amulet, or (B) was inspired by her own name to choose a vaguely relevant hiding place. Even if she ''did'', there are many other words that begin with G, such as Gulf, or Gull, or Go-Get-a-plane-and-fly-to-Greenland, and any of these would be just as plausible "clues."

Moreover, once deciding, even more implausibly, that this "clue" is telling them to dig a hole in the ground, because 'dig' ends with a G, the search is not significantly narrowed as the world is a big place and "underground, somewhere" leaves a huge range of possible locations. You may need {{tvtropes|XMarksTheSpot|at least one more letter}} to narrow the options down. All this leads us to Randall's point — that these connections made by the characters are tenuous at best and are unreasonable to make, especially as part of a riddle.

Aunt Gertrude is probably named after a supporting character in the ''Hardy Boys'' series; the Aunt Gertrude in that series didn't set puzzles, but main characters Frank and Joe Hardy frequently had to decipher clues to find hidden objects. The name may also be a nod to Gertrude Chandler Warner, whose Boxcar Children are an adventurous group of mystery-solving kids like those in the comic.

The title text references {{w|Alice and Bob|Alice}}, a fictional character commonly used in discussions about cryptography. In those discussions, Alice is often sending and receiving encrypted messages, and she would be expected to be able to make a better puzzle than the one shown in the comic. Alice and Bob and other characters from the same set are the reverse of case of Aunt Gertrude, in that they have been given their names to reflect a convenient A, B, C, ... pattern. They have been mentioned previously in xkcd, like in [[177: Alice and Bob]]. Using modern cryptography in lieu of riddles in children's stories was also mentioned in [[370: Redwall]].

==Transcript==
:[Possibly teenage versions of Hairy, Jill, Ponytail, and Cueball, listed from left to right, are standing in a line. Hairy is in a thinking pose, Jill faces Hairy, and Ponytail and Cueball are walking to the right; Cueball is pointing off-panel.]
:Hairy: Aunt Gertrude must have left a clue to the amulet's location.
:Jill: Hmm. Wait a minute.
:Jill: '''G'''ertrude. '''G'''.
:Hairy: As in "'''G'''round!"
:Jill: And "di'''G''' a hole!"
:Ponytail: I'll get a shovel!
:Cueball: To the yard!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Some of the authors of books I read as a kid were '''''terrible''''' at designing puzzles.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Cryptography]]
[[Category:Kids]]