The Inspiration for The Quest

Wayne MacPhail, w8nc inc.

It happens on page 93 of The Frozen Thames. The year is 1684. A frost fair, depicted on a facing page, has sprung up on the ice of the river. Describing the scene, Helen Humphreys writes: "A fox is hunted on the ice ...". Those words sparked this quest. A fox on the ice. Where would it run? Where would it hide?

Could it tell the dull white ice of the Thames from the grey snow and dirty slush of a London wrapped in winter? What if it leapt the frozen banks and disappeared into the town? Would it ever stop running?

With those questions in mind, I constructed an elaborate backstory for the fox, which I won't bore you with here (it has to do with magic, a thwarted lover and the transformation of a young girl into a hunted animal). But, more importantly, I imagined the fox being spotted about London, and each time leaving clues about its final resting spot.

Those clues are the ones you must unravel now.

Humphreys' book is a series of love poems to the life of London and to the river that ebbs, flows and freezes through its history. To read it is to fall under the spell of a timeless town that is the home of so much of Western culture. So, it was natural that The Quest for the Ice Fox pull readers down to the river and into that tarnished, talented knot of humanity.

The natural vehicle for that journey was Google MyMaps. This amazing tool allows you to not only explore streets, buildings and geographical features  the world over, but also to annotate them. You can, in effect, leave behind info breadcrumbs for others to discover. You can pin notes to the geographic fabric of a virtual world. Which is how all the clues in the Quest are delivered. Without Google MyMaps, you cannot make the journey of Quest, or solve its riddles. Use it wisely.

The notion of leaving caches of clues in a geographic space isn't new. It's as old as treasures and treasure maps and as fresh a geocaching, a modern hobby that involves using popular GPS devices to locate hidden caches of trinkets stashed in woods and streams all over the world. As an occasional geocacher, I discovered the fun of hunting down real world treasure/trinkets using only GPS coordinates and simple ciphers. 

So, it was natural to extend the fun of geocaching to the virtual world of the Quest.

I'm also an avid Facebooker. Facebook.com is a remarkable social community. It is viral in is very DNA (in a good way) and engenders participation and sharing like no other social site I know. So, it was a natural to leverage that ability to share fun discoveries, groups and activities to make the Quest a community and communal activity by creating The Quest for the Ice Fox group where clues will be distributed weekly. It is my fond wish that you'll work on the Quest with your friends, family and co-workers and that you share your discoveries on Facebook.com. That's was social media is all about. Embrace it.

Together facebook and Google MyMaps allow McClelland & Stewart to honour the aching beautiful narratives of The Frozen Thames and give them a new, interactive and social dimension. I hope the Quest will let its players discover the beauty of London and of the frozen Thames itself. 

It was a joy to dive into London's history myself as I prepared these clues. I happily reacquainted myself with old friends and tales from a long ago study of English Literature, streets I had walked down during a three month bicycle trip in England, and my nerdish boyhood hours reading Martin Gardner's mathematical diversions in Scientific American.  I hope you have as much fun unwinding the puzzles as I had crafting them.

Now, the game's afoot. Godspeed.