What the hell is this site?!?, page 2

Hi,

All this information comes from my friend James, I'm just typing it up for him. He asked me to pass on any email I recieved about this:
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Hi,

My name is James McLaughlin, and I was intrigued to discover this discussion. I think I can shed some light on the matter, although there's a lot I'd like to know more about.

First of all, "Chasing Charlie" is an armchair treasure hunt. By solving clues hidden in the book by Richard Henderson it was supposed to be possible to deduce the location of several (1000) bottles of expensive whisky (as well as several smaller caches in other locations) hidden in the Scottish Highlands. On the Millennium, Henderson revealed that the only clue to the main cache was the bottles on the cover - going to Bottle Island, a seeker would have found a hidden bottle containing information on the location of the treasure. He also invited everyone who'd written to him to a party at the hiding place, with 150 of the whisky bottles to provide the drinks. After that, he moved the rest somewhere, and stated that there was one more lateral clue in the book that would lead to the new location. "Perhaps, if you find it, you will drink a few and hide them again."

I didn't pay much attention, even when I discovered that a website, (chasingcharlie.co.uk, I think) along with a very odd related site (www.thecrossword.co.uk) had appeared, until I decided this summer to take a shot at solving thecrossword. As I was about to do so, it occurred to me that there may be more such sites out there, and I googled for terms like thecrossword and chasingcharlie.

A very exhaustive google found www.aliceincyberland.com - a site containing only a little text ("Curiouser and curiouser" - taken from Alice in Wonderland) and a link to thecrossword. I nonetheless informed my friends at www.quest4treasure.co.uk, www.treasureclub.net, and www.armchair-treasure-hunt.com. Not much later, using an application that allowed him to search for pages that linked to a chosen page (Google does this as well, but it didn't find this), treasure hunt veteran Mark Parry found pleiades.info, although at that time it only linked to thecrossword.com. and not thepeoplesprincess.co.uk. I saved copies of the Alice, Charlie, Pleiades, and Crossword sites. I also found Henderson's website, www.bothy.com, and emailed him to find out if these sites were his and if they had anything to do with CC. I got the response:

Dear James,

Yes, but I think you may be missing the point

Richard

or something of that sort. I do remember that as well as referring to "missing the point" he included not one full stop in his email, which may be related - I don't know.

I was really bored by the tedious googling, but I nonetheless searched as thoroughly as I could for any more sites, and finding none, gave it a rest until this week, when I had time to try to solve the puzzle. (No luck). I did want to look up words like chaolais and anglec - in fact, it was +charlie +anglec on Google which brought me here.

Now, I thought until I read about terrorists, thebase, and thepeoplesprincess here that Alice In Cyberland and pleiades.info might be two of seven sites, each themed after a different thecrossword page - on this occasion "Curiouser and curiouser" (titled dodgson, not williams) - Lewis Carroll wrote Alice In Wonderland, and his real name was Charles L (Luttwidge I think) Dodgson, and the page with Pleiades highlighted. I rather hoped so as the williams page would then have been especially interesting - Kit Williams wrote Masquerade, the first armchair treasure hunt, starring Jack Hare, who attempted to convey a golden hare as a gift to the Sun from the Moon, only for it to be lost (and the book's readers then went trying to find where Williams had buried the gold hare). I don't know what anything none-hare related on that page has to do with KW.

I'd very much like these codes that one of you found when trying to enter a password on one of these new sites. Currently I can't find any forms, or password requests on thebase.org - just a picture of "The Beechnut Fairy" and a quote from Marcus Aurelius. There's nothing interesting on terrorists.co.uk either, or thepeoplesprincess.co.uk, although Prince Charles featured prominently in Chasing Charlie, so the Diana site could be related to that.

I would like it if someone could email me copies of the versions of these sites that contained the form, password request, the picture of "those kids", Major Deriko, Colonel Ian Gordon, etc. I'm afraid www.archive.org was no help.

At the time I write this, it may be a few more days before I can get back onto the Net, so my friend Sandra has agreed to post this for me(Thanks Sandy!). Please email the codes and any other information you have to her at SandyP_982@yahoo.com. (and hopefully post them to this board too!)

Cheers,

James McLaughlin.
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That's James's message. Interesting, non?

Meow,

Sandra Parker.