Dimity Jones in Puzzle Castle: An Electronic Escape Novel
_Dimity Jones In Puzzle Castle: An Electronic Escape Novel in Eighty-Nine Ciphertexts_ is a (mostly) fictional story, contained in a single text file, that requires the reader to solve puzzles as they go along, and to use each chapter's solution as a key to decipher the next. Think: escape room in the form of a novel. A computer, and rudimentary coding skills in a language of your choice, will be indispensable for performing the transformations -- and might help with the solving too! My wife, the author, passed away five years ago. This is not the last thing she wrote, but it is the most…
In plain words
Dimity Jones in Puzzle Castle is an interactive story delivered as a text file where readers solve ciphers and puzzles to progress through chapters. Each puzzle's solution serves as the decryption key for the next section, combining escape room mechanics with fiction. Readers need a computer and basic coding skills to decode the transformations. The work is designed for puzzle enthusiasts and literary readers seeking an unconventional, hands-on reading experience.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
_Dimity Jones In Puzzle Castle: An Electronic Escape Novel in Eighty-Nine Ciphertexts_ is a (mostly) fictional story, contained in a single text file, that requires the reader to solve puzzles as they go along, and to use each chapter's solution as a key to decipher the next. Think: escape room in the form of a novel. A computer, and rudimentary coding skills in a language of your choice, will be indispensable for performing the transformations -- and might help with the solving too! My wife, the author, passed away five years ago. This is not the last thing she wrote, but it is the most unusual, unapproachable, and personal of her major works. It is also, as the only novel of hers that I cannot breeze through in an afternoon (and despite my unflattering appearance in it), my favorite. Though _Dimity Jones_ was left unfinished, and perhaps abandoned, at the time of my wife's death, its elements were all there, on her hard disk, awaiting only a final compiling. My contribution to this text has therefore been little more than that of an occasional copyeditor (my wife was a meticulous speller and self-proofreader) and playtester. Before releasing this work more widely, I would love to have it test-driven by better coders and puzzlers than I. Any and all feedback is welcome, from positive to negative, from the sweeping to the picayune. Let me know what confuses or frustrates you -- and especially let me know if (where) you get stuck. Otherwise, there are no special instructions; it's all in the book. While _Dimity Jones_ is still in its debugging/proofreading phase, please refrain from sharing it or putting it any (other) public place. (Christine would have been horrified to see her work thus published before it was letter-perfect; but I have exhausted my pool of friends and colleagues both able and willing to tinker with it. This seems like the ideal community of potential testers.) Thanking you in advance. I hope you enjoy!
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