From the Capitol Crypt, intended for the remains of George Washington, to Cryptology, Dan Brown delights readers with codes and ciphers that he must surely enjoy himself. A basic device of each and every novel is not only the clues hidden within, but those contained on the cover art and the games or quests that his readers must decipher along with the grand decoder, Robert Langdon. In this regard Brown is not unlike the verbal conjuror Vladimir Nabokov, who in his novel Lolita complains of those authors who put their clues in italics, only to place a clue to the mysterious child abductor in italics himself. And few authors like italics as much as Brown does.
On his web page, newly updated in 2009 just before the publication of The Lost Symbol, Brown gathers his past and present challenges, including how to get inside the site itself. Try passing your cursor over the portion of the painting of The Apotheosis to reveal a portrait of our favorite author. Clicking on “The Secrets” on the left-hand side will provide access to several games, including “The Symbol Quests” as well as The Da Vinci Code web contest and “Uncover the Code,” an Angels & Demons game. There are sites of bizarre facts for the Langdon series novels, and some fun with ambigrams, the art of calligraphy to represent a word right side up and upside down identically, which served as the basis for Angels & Demons. There is even an Apple Iphone/Itouch application for “The Symbol Quest.”
The novel is one long series of puzzles and codes that when deciphered lead one after another toward the final solution, the place where “all will be revealed.” The novel actually begins its “Fact” list with mention of a letter given to the director of the CIA. Later in the Capitol Rotunda an unsuspecting tourist makes a macabre discovery of a “Hand of Mystery,” indicating some sinister, occult knowledge that Langdon must interpret if he is to save the “soul” of his friend, Peter Solomon. The first of these is the Freemason Cipher needed to decode the message. The inside of the hand reveals the clue 1514 AD, which directs Langdon to the Albrecht Dürer engraving, in particular to its magic square. The gibberish provided by the Freemason Cipher becomes meaningful only when passed through the decoder by using Dürer’s square.
The gold pyramid that Langdon is protecting undergoes its own transformation to reveal a far more complicated set of symbols. That transformation can only be accomplished when the anagram concealed in the solution to the deciphered Dürer message points to Isaac Newton. The symbols then lead to another mystery of the Order 8 Franklin Square, first misinterpreted as a geographical location for several chapters. Those who successfully arrive at the end of the novel and its unveiled set of symbols can turn their attention to a completely new set of challenges on the book’s dustcover. The front, back, and spine contain references to The Lost Symbol, offer a prize for the lucky few who deciphered it early, and may provide the first clues to Robert Langdon’s next adventure. In his NBC Dateline interview, Brown hinted that his next novel will be filled with a bigger and set of challenges:
Dan Brown: The most fascinating code I left out of this book.
Matt Lauer: Why?
Dan Brown: Be– it was too complicated. It was just too tough to use.... Well, I’m not gonna tell you about it. It’s in the next book.
DAN BROWN SECRETS
www.danbrown.com/#/secrets