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crocodile mystery

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: March 2018
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: March 2018

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The Collation

This month’s Crocodile mystery is about an engraving. What do you think are the wavy lines on this print?

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: February 2018
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: February 2018

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Author
The Collation

This month’s crocodile mystery is an example of one of our favorite things: Shakespeare portraits! What kind of item is this portrait of Shakespeare from, and what is significant about the item?

"What manner o'thing is your crocodile?": January 2018
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"What manner o'thing is your crocodile?": January 2018

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Author
The Collation

Happy Boxing Day! We’ve brought you another crocodile mystery to open with your holiday goodies. This month’s mystery comes in two forms and appears in two places. Tell us, if you would, what these mysterious numbers suggest to you?    …

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: December 2017
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: December 2017

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The Collation

For December’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s happening in the images below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!  

Time writing
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Time writing

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Deborah J. Leslie

Telescopium Uranicum, 1666. Folger 269- 460q item 5 Chronograms—literally, “time writing”—are dates embedded within text. As such, they are a form of hidden writing called steganography: the encoded characters maintain their own value, but are hidden within a larger text.…

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: November 2017
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: November 2017

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Author
The Collation

For November’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what’s going on in the image below. Leave your guess in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job
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Dryden's Virgil, Ogilby's Virgil, and Aeneas's nose job

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Erin Blake

First, a confession: this month’s Crocodile Mystery was originally going to pose a question along the lines of “What’s weird about this image?” or “What makes this picture especially interesting?” but I gave up. I couldn’t figure out how to…

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: October 2017
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: October 2017

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Author
The Collation

This month’s Crocodile Mystery is a caption contest: Option A: Provide a factually accurate title for this portrait. Option B: Provide an amusingly inaccurate title for this portrait. Option C: Provide both A and B.

"Whose least part crackt, the whole does fly": early views on Prince Rupert's Drops
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"Whose least part crackt, the whole does fly": early views on Prince Rupert's Drops

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Abbie Weinberg

Honor is like that glassy Bubble That finds Philosophers such trouble, Whose least part crackt, the whole does fly, And Wits are crack’d to find out why. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II, Canto II, lines 385-89. In the second part…

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: September 2017
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: September 2017

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Author
The Collation

For this month’s Crocodile Mystery, tell us, if you will, what the image below depicts. Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and we’ll be back next week with the answer!

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: August 2017
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: August 2017

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The Collation

We’re in the heat of summer (at least here in Washington D.C.) as we approach the end of July. So to help everyone cool off (or at least provide a distraction), we’ve pulled another Crocodile Mystery from our vaults. Tell…

A Photographic Facsimile from 1857
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A Photographic Facsimile from 1857

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Erin Blake

The July Crocodile Mystery showed a “detail from a printed play” and asked what’s up with the strangely uneven tone of the page. What’s up is that although the text is printed, it is not printed in ink. It is a…

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