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After a hard day of work, you return home and open your mailbox. All is usual, but you soon find another letter with an unknown sender. You carefully open the letter to keep the contents as it is. The message reads:

Dear Receiver,

When you have received this letter, go to the library. If you search hard enough, it will lead you to the answer. Enter through the back door. Make sure to enter quietly, careful not to wake the (unexpectedly sleeping) guard dogs. Once you have found the book we are looking for, tiptoe to the side exit. Give us the book you have found and have in your hands to receive your reward.

PS: Lemons are sour treats. ~~~ Water on rock/dirt.

~Unknown

The letter comes with an image, which you assume is unrelated to the message. Somehow, you think it could play a big role later on. The image is attached below:

enter image description here

As read in the letter, what is the "genre" of the book you are looking for?

Personally, I would start decoding the letter.

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  • $\begingroup$ My first question! Hope its not to easy or hard. I would like any recommendations for later puzzles. $\endgroup$
    – Acerfire37
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 20:04
  • $\begingroup$ More like this ;) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 20:04

1 Answer 1

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The PS of the letter's

first letters are Last words.

That's a clue to the rest of the note. So we take the

last word of each sentence: library answer door dogs exit reward.

The first letters of those words spell: Ladder

So we should focus on

the ladder in the picture rather than the other parts.

And

the letters on the ladder can be rearranged to make "Acronym MYS" so maybe we're looking for a Mystery book.

The letters on the steps

can be rearranged to spell wrong, so don't pursue that direction.

The letters near the climber

can be rearranged to spell incorrect, so don't pursue that direction either.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes! You are correct! Could you provide some feedback for later problems? Or was it a little bit easy? $\endgroup$
    – Acerfire37
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 20:56
  • $\begingroup$ @Acerfire37 I just happened to be working on a similar puzzle a couple days ago so went straight to the idea of first letters. I think too many people try to make their puzzles too hard. I'd focus instead on making them fun! $\endgroup$
    – Dan Russell
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 20:59
  • $\begingroup$ @Acerfire37 The only thing I might've tweaked would be to not add the "wrong" and "incorrect" anagrams. With them, you had two different ways of pointing to the ladder. If, instead, the other two parts of the picture were just jumbled letters, then you'd have to solve the note before you realized the ladder was the only important part. $\endgroup$
    – Dan Russell
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 21:01
  • $\begingroup$ Ok thanks! Yeah, I realized it afterwards that I should have jumbled the letters, but since I already had posted it, it was sort of too late. Thanks for the feedback! $\endgroup$
    – Acerfire37
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 21:03
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    $\begingroup$ @Acerfire37 Or you could've put red herrings in by having other genres on the climber and the steps. $\endgroup$
    – dcfyj
    Commented Sep 1, 2016 at 16:28

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