You are a secret agent in the service of the KGB, about to embark on a highly dangerous mission to infiltrate MI6. You have your disguise, your papers, and your backstory all prepared. The night before your departure, you receive the following email:
From: Andrew Void < a.void@disparition.com >
Sent: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:57AM +0400
To: ██████████████████████
Subject: Your workDear Mr Smith,
This is to inform you that your poem is now nearly noted up for publication. Its age notwithstanding, this poem will fit as part of a vast pattern of poems that spans millennia. You stand among us now as a poet, throned among such applauded poets as Aristophanes, Plato, Byron, and so on. As one of us, your poetic prowess will not go unadmired.
Many congratulations!
Andrew
Mr Smith is the pseudonym you will be adopting on your mission in Britain, but you do not recognise the name Andrew Void or the email address. You are about to delete the email as spam, but some instinct tells you to examine it more closely. After a few minutes at your computer, you find the hidden message within it and slump back in your chair, disappointed.
What is the hidden message?
Answer
The secret message is:
DON'T GO TO LONDON NOW
because
A French author Georges Perec once wrote a 300-page novel called La disparition without using the letter 'e'. (It was later translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void - and also without using the letter 'e'.) This suggests that the letter 'e' in the email is important somehow. If you look at the letters immediately preceding every occurrence of this letter in the email, they spell out the message
DONTGOTOLONDONNOW
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