Is the biggest mystery in your house that funky smell in the attic when it rains? When the Klinsky family moved into their 4,200 sq. foot apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York father, Steven, thought it'd be fun to hide a poem he had written for his wife and kids in one of the walls ("put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule”). To say their architect, Eric Clough, ran with the idea would be a vast understatement. He created a Da Vinci-like maze of ciphers, codes and puzzles setting the family on a lengthy scavenger hunt around their apartment.
Mr. Clough, unbeknowst to the family, called upon 40 colleagues and friends to create this elaborate mystery for the Klinsky family which only began to be unraveled a year after the family moved in after a piece of their custom-made bed, one of the clues, snapped off and they called Mr. Clough to complain. Soon after, a poem from Mr. Clough arrived setting the hunt, which involved hidden panels, a magnetic cube, a cipher, riddles, and secret writing, in motion.
It took the family two weeks to work through all the puzzles and reveal the hidden poem. They've since moved, but took pleasure in leaving the mystery behind for another family to solve. “You move into a place and you have your life there, and your memories, and it’s all temporary,” says mom, Maureen Sherry, “Especially with apartments, which have such a fixed footprint. I like the idea of putting something behind a wall to wink at the next inhabitant and to wish them the good life hopefully that you have had there.”
Read the full story and view a slideshow of the clues hidden in the Klinsky's apartment here.
While about a thousand times less elaborate, when our parents covered our living room walls with grasspaper a few decades ago they let our sisters and us write on the walls before covering them up. The house remains in the family and the grasspaper remains on the walls, but we sometimes think about another family with children finding our drawings and writings on the walls someday. Have you found or left hidden objects or messages in any homes you've lived in?
(Photos by Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times.)
Well, well, well - 4,200 sq. feet in NYC?!!!!!
view paperdollsforboys's profile
When I was a boy, we moved into a new house. I was sitting in the bathtub and saw that someone had written 'Have fun!' on the toilet, on the underside of the bowl in red marker. Maybe there was a secret coded message there, but I doubt it.
view bakerboy's profile
I remember in my parents basement on the wall in my dad's work room there being a note written in red letters that simply said "Help me". It always creeped me out.
view Signe's profile
My husband loves to find "time capsules" and leave them for others to find. He's left on in each of the 3 houses we've owned.
view Kerstin's profile
They couldn't stay in their 4200 sf apartment for more than a year and solve the mystery themselves? I guess they had to move on and fully renovate another place because this one was too small...
view SFGail's profile
SFGail, they did solve the mystery but left it intact for the next family to work through.
view CMcB's profile
I read this article a few weeks ago and I thought it was so magical. I just don't understand how you move out of a place like that.
view kitjule's profile
when i was in grade school my family built a new house in a new town. my father and his friends did most of the building, so i was there often, throughout the building process. i remember scrawling a note on a napkin (probably long-disintegrated) and sticking it in the framework for the wall on the stairwell to the basement before it was sheetrocked... along with a few small toys of mine... some lego men and fast food kids meal toys, i think.
view closertotheocean's profile