Enchant Puzzle

The Enchant Puzzle was released with Emilie Autumn's Enchant on February 26, 2003. It was printed on the back of the album insert and contained very simple instructions:

Everything you need to solve the puzzle and retrieve the treasure is contained within the album jewelcase. use the puzzleboard to begin your jouney towards the Prize: the Wings, Ruff, Fan, and Sceptre of the Faerie Queene Herself. A priceless collection of artworks, the Queene's raiments are encrusted with hundreds of genuine crystals and wrought entirely by hand in the fae tradition.

Look, Listen, and Trust your instincts.

These enchanted objects may soon belong to you!

The Rules: The game begins upon the release of the enclosed album and will continue until it has been solved, with the prizes going to the first person to solve it. Anyone may play the game regardless of age or nationality.

Hints Given by EA

Emilie no longer gives out hints to the puzzle, but she still insists that the Puzzle is solveable.

• The answer will tell you what to do, or rather, that IS the answer.
• Have faith. I assure you the Puzzle is entirely crackable, though I didn't expect it to happen right away. Then again, maybe I did... Hm. And I DO want to give the wings (and other) away, as I can't really do anything with them myself. If I wore them, then you'd all pretty well know where they were, right?
  Hint: If you have read and fully comprehended the solution to Kit Williams' "Masquerade," you'll have a few more crumbs of a chance than if you haven't. Not that it will help you solve it - it won't - but it will teach your mind how it needs to work. Or not work...sorry.
• "I really want to have a tea party, but I just don't have the time...Time...Shakespeare always capitalized it..." (The "T" in "Time" is important.)

Prizes

The Enchant Puzzle prizes are the costume pieces of the Faerie Queene, handmade by Emilie Autumn prior to the release of the album. The costume included Wings, Ruff, Scepter, and a Fan.

Attempts and analysis

• The reason why the Enchant Puzzle is so difficult to solve is that it cannot be cleanly divided into parts, and the intended solution - which presumably would be a description of how to contact Emilie, or someone else, to claim the prize - is likely to be a long phrase. The only clear divisions in the puzzle are the twelve boxes in the middle and each of these is too small to meaningfully contribute on its own. This means that applying consistent rules to the puzzle tends to result in strings of letters that are highly ambiguous and impossible to verify as part of the solution, or as not part of it.
• The puzzle stated that everything needed to solve it was "inside the jewel case", meaning it could also include the album's annotations and liner notes.
• The puzzle's complete letter space is 144 letters and includes every letter of the alphabet except J, X and Z. 130972 possible English words can be formed from the available letters, of which 46551 come from only letters on the border. This means that almost any phrase can be formed somewhere on the puzzle. Potential phrases that can be formed include CONTACT ENCHANT CLOTHING, MALIBU, CALIFORNIA, PASSWORD KOYAANISQATSI and E-MAIL INFO AT WILLOWTECH HOUSE DOT COM, referring to two clothing stores with likely connections to the production of the items. However, this have no clear pattern in the puzzle and, as with many candidate solutions, cannot be distinguished from coincidences given the large number of letters available and the unknown nature of the solution. (Please do not contact Emilie's family on this basis!)
• It is important to remember that Emily's output and website at the time of the Enchant puzzle's release was based entirely on the "fairy" theme. Her gothic, Victorian, and insanity themes had not yet emerged and thus are unlikely to appear in the solution.
• A utility for tracing the routes between letters in the Enchant puzzle can be found at https://github.com/hyphz/enchart . Note that this does not include the image of the Enchant puzzle because it is copyrighted; it must be supplied by the user.
• There are 11 central boxes on the puzzle, and 11 words in the border, but there are 14 tracks on the album. Two of these are marked as "prologue" and "epilogue" which may indicate they are not part of the puzzle.
• The images in the corners together form a rebus reading "I believe too" (eye, bee, leaf, two) when read clockwise from the bottom left. This could provide a clue as to the ordering of the border words and possibly their mapping to the central boxes.
• Taking single letters from each of the border words can form 1537 English words, but no 11-letter word. Single letters from the first four border words can form TIME, but there are few meaningful phrases drawable from the remaining words on this basis (the closest is TIME ERA LATE)
• Masquerade was based on tracing lines through the eyes and hands of figures in the pictures to letters on the outer border of the pictures. It is likely that this is part of the Enchant Puzzle too, given the erratic spacing of letters on the outside border. However, tracing lines from the centers of images based on the songs to the outer border has yet to produce any meaningful anagram, nor has tracing lines through the dragonflies pictured on the puzzle (this produces the letters ALNCMERE and one line which strikes an empty space on the border between E and V). The Golden Hare appearing in the bottom right of the puzzle is likely a reference to Masquerade, but tracing a line through it according to the Masquerade rules hits the "2" part of the rebus; tracing it in reverse (per the clue that "Masquerade tells you... how not to work") hits either M or E. Tracing lines through the dragonflies in reverse goes off the page in most cases. There are very few meaningful anagrams of these, and in any case, it is not clear that 9 letters would be sufficient to convey an instruction.
• The top sonnet includes "if you dare to fall from space". Tracing two vertical lines downwards across the puzzle from the two stars (space = stars) in the top row gives an anagram of "DEVIL'S MOBILE TEMPLE". There is no such structure, nor is there a Devil's Temple in the city of Mobile, and although there is one in Detroit it was built after the puzzle was written. This set of letters also includes the phrase "TELL EMILIE" but the remaining letters do not make anything meaningful. Removing the letters T-I-M-E, as per the sonnet the clue "take your time", gives an anagram of "I'M SOLVED TELL PB", but it is not clear who or what PB is.
• The musical notation at the top of the puzzle indicates a key of: G minor, Bb major, or C dorian. The only song on the album in any such key is If You Feel Better.
• The boldfaced letters surrounding each individual box form an anagram of a word. In reading order, these are: dark, word, ancient, spell, believe, vision, mind, sleep, beauty, moment, shadow. If using both bold and light letters, many other anagrams are possible, with some significant ones: rat, hoard, demon, women, wonder, ancients, canniest, tea, tell, elves, open, poise, maidens, spot, pestle, tale, memento.
• The boxes also potentially relate to lyrics in the songs:
  • Mask: Chambermaid (take off the mask now)
  • Hourglass: Rose Red (in my darkest hour), Across the Sky (time does not return again), Chambermaid (honey you are out of time), Second Hand Faith (I will pay you for your time), Juliet (I'll never recreate the time), Remember (a memory of a time gone by), Rose Red (it's time you go on), Castle Down (there will come a time), Heard It All (it isn't the first time)
  • Night: Across the Sky, Rapunzel (up in the sky), Juliet (the sky will fall but I don't care), How Strange (the middle of the darkest night), Juliet (no one but you could ever fill my night), Rose Red (cover me with the night), Save You (than strangers in the night), Rapunzel (like the moon and the stars)
  • Flower: Rose Red, Rapunzel (a rose needs the rain), Castle Down (nothing left but a battered rose)
  • Curtain: Rapunzel (tear the curtain), Second Hand Faith (hang your curtain, get behind it), Save You (behind the curtain waits a darker world)
  • Wheel of fortune: Across the sky (fatalistic fortune), Chambermaid (I'd tell your fortune), Second Hand Faith (go ahead and read my fortune)
  • Rook: Castle Down, Chambermaid (come around my castle)
  • Star: Rapunzel (the stars came out), Juliet (you're in my stars)
  • Sky: see "Night" above; also Second Hand Faith (above the clouds I see)
  • Dice: Second Hand Faith (cast your dice). The singular die does not appear in the lyrics.
  • Square: Rapunzel (put her hand outside of the frame), What If (I'm outside your picture frame)
• The words in the border also appear in the songs, but most appear very frequently. A bold listing indicates an appearance in a chorus.
  • Ever: Across The Sky, Chambermaid, Rapunzel, Juliet, Rose Red
  • Never: Across The Sky, Chambermaid, Rapunzel, Second Hand Faith, Juliet, Castle Down, Heard It All, What If
  • Dream: How Strange, Remember
  • Alone: How Strange, Rapunzel, Rose Red, What If
  • Change: How Strange, Remember, Heard It All, What If
  • Faith: Across The Sky, Second Hand Faith, Castle Down
  • Choice: Across The Sky, Rapunzel, Castle Down
  • Fate: Second Hand Faith, Save You
  • Voice: Across The Sky, Rapunzel, Save You
  • Name: Rapunzel, Juliet, Remember, Rose Red
  • Whisper: Remember
• This may indicate potential links between positions on the border and words appearing in songs.
  • The top word, Ever, appears in Rapunzel ("the top of a tower").
  • The two bottom words, Faith and Choice, appear in Castle Down.
  • Dream, Alone, and Change all appear in How Strange, but Never does not, although it may be implied by the theme of the song.
  • Name and Whisper appear in Remember, and Voice may be implied by the theme of the song, but Fate is not clear.
  • Never, Ever and Fate (indirectly, as "Fatalistic") all appear in Across The Sky, and form an arch across the top of the puzzle.
  • If You Feel Better is the only song which contains none of the border words - and also is the song whose key matches the music stave.
• The song Faces Like Mine includes "Go ahead and solve the puzzle, if you need the glory.." which was interpreted as potentially meaning that the prizes were no longer available, possibly because the puzzle has already been solved. (Note above that Emilie only stated that the puzzle was still solvable, not that the prize for doing so was still available.)