So some crackpot comes up with an alternative calendar and that is the basis for the answer? It would be far more interesting if they used questions that didn’t use some BS created by some random joker.
Anyway, I hope you are right Colibri!
Well pk was unable to get through today (as you know already since the contest has not yet been won). As they take random callers and the line is always busy it may still take some time. Or someone else may twig to it and beat us to it.
Actually, it’s worth a lot more to me to get credit on the Board for being the first to find the answer than to actually win the contest. (But not worth enough to lower our odds of winning by just posting the answer. ;))
So I’m going to mention a detail that shouldn’t give anyone else a lead, but will serve to confirm later on that I actually have the right calendar in hand, even if someone else beats pk to the dial-in and the answer is revealed.
On this calendar, October 27-29th is the Music Festival.
(since Colibri is being so close-mouthed I’ll try psychological warfare. I want to know! I spent an hour in the library once but couldn’t find anything)
Colibri, I think you’re full of it. You don’t really have any answer, you’re just yanking our collective chain. If you’re so smart and do have the answer, then what is it? Huh? Huh?
Not that I’d want anyone else to get the credit for what Coli so rightly deserves, or hopefully will deserve as thecase may be, but where’s Cecil in all this? It would seem that this would be right up his alley?
Moe, please see the post by administrator C K Dexter Haven on page 1 of this thread.
quote
We haven’t put this to Cecil, although it has been tossed around by Staff. We’re agreeing with the conclusion that it might be some very obscure trivia, rather than some cleverl mathematical or calendar puzzle, and so we suspect that Cecil would just not be interested.
i.e. he/they can’t figure it out 
This is looking more and more like the answer is " ‘The last day of the Summer Festival’ according to the Barlow Calendar," however I’m not absolutely 100% sure until I see this myself. I know where to look.
If anybody can get their mitts on a copy of The People’s Almanac 3 I have seen it referenced to this. Look for a Barlow Calendar reference.
It is definately not in the 2nd edition.
As much as I love sarcasm the cloak and dagger “answer by email” aspect this thread is taking on, I don’t think that’s what this board is all about.
I could be wrong though.
still working on this
Hmmm… Nobody’s commented on Summer Festival…
Sounds pretty good to me…Especially if you
check out the You Can’t Win homepage…
thinks he’s starting to see the end of this tortuous thread
I will bet dollars to donuts that Cecil actually has the book in question in his possession, although he may have misplaced it. I think he must be using it to prop open a door somewhere, or else it has fallen behind a filing cabinet. And I expect at least a few of the Staff will be smacking themselves in the forehead with great force once it is revealed. Heck, I did when I figured it out. But I was misled by some of the early speculation in the thread.
Just goes to show, Cecil has forgotten more than most of us will ever know. (Except me, of course. :D)
Chapeau, Arnold! J’aurais difficilement pu trouver plus subtil comme approche…
i gotta learn to type faster…
Looks like dietrologia unwisely(?) let the cat out of the bag. Here’s a partial quote:
The People’s Almanach #3, p. 697.
The Barlow calendar is reproduced therein and, yes, it would seem that the answer is ‘the end of the Summer Festival’.
All that remains is to wish the best of luck to pk and Colibri in the ‘fastest-finger dialing’.
Jeez, I bet you’re the kind of person that gives out movie spoilers and tells people about surprise parties that are being planned for them. Thanks a lot. Sheesh.
Ah, well, since it’s just a matter of time before someone checks it now, its on pg. 696-698.
And dietrologia, since this thread is linked to that site in Milwaukee, all you did was make it into a contest of who has the fastest auto-dialer. You just gave the answer to a hundreds of people who have done absolutely no research on it.
Same goes for you, dietrologia…
And you just confirmed his answer Anyway, I’m more than willing to split the proceeds with Coli and pk (via some sort of PayPalage) if I get in…
Seth
And congrats to maralinn for getting it independently too.
Some coincidence, huh? This thing goes on for months, then several people apparently get the answer independently in the space of a couple days. And just after that, the whole thing is blown wide open by somebody mentioning the Peoples’ Almanac.
You know, I probably would have got it a lot sooner except for all the speculation earlier on that it was some kind of fictional or fantasy calendar. Once it became clear it was a real calendar, I recalled that the Peoples’ Almanac had several alternative ones. All 3 volumes were sitting on my bookshelf. But it’s been a quite a few years since I read them!
I suspect the Peoples’ Almanac is the only place the Barlow Calendar has ever been published.
If it is indeed the case that the answer has been fully publicised (and that therefore this won’t give anything else away), could someone please describe this Barlow calendar? Why was it created, and how does it differ from our current calendar? What significance do the festivals have?
This thread has been mind-boggling and I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s suggestions. Good luck Colibri and pkbites!
Snaf
My copy lay/lies exactly seven feet from my computer!! It’s been so long I had gone through it that I had completely forgotten about that info being in there.
Actually, Coli, if you go to the end of the piece in the Almanach, it gives the Calendar Reform Foundation as a source for the calendar reproduced on page 697.
Best of luck to you anyways. I think you deserve it.
The question was asked. The question was answered. That’s the purpose of the board, right? Or are we to all work for months on solving puzzles such as this only to not post the answers when we run across them?
Personally, I’ve spent several hours researching this one. It wasn’t until there was the post mentioning the DJ’s hint with regards to how this question and the first in the series were related that I was able to find what I wanted.
Well yip-the-hell-ee. I really didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Shame you guys ain’t gonna win the prize, though. I suppose this thread and the last election are the latest confirmations that victory doesn’t always go to the swiftest.