Unlike the formidable Friday foxers, the Monday kind are designed with lone truth sleuths in mind. While Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, would be very interested to know how long it takes you to defox the following brainteaser, he requests that the comments section isn’t used to share solutions or drop hints.
“Where am I?”
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, Wikipedia, MAPfrappe and other tools, work out my location. The answer will appear under next Monday’s solo foxer.
This fine September morn you’ll find me standing outside the offices of an international intergovernmental organisation in a city with a name that begins and ends with alphabetically consecutive letters. The organisation’s logo adorns a nearby sign and gate and consists of a stylised man, woman, and child surrounded by a globe with askew hemispheres. Ninety metres from a freestanding clock tower, 205 from a statue of a man who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize five times, and roughly 550 from a fort built by the Portuguese in the 17th Century, I’m on a street named after a male saint, in a country that doesn’t permit same-sex marriages and hasn’t executed a criminal since the mid Seventies. The country’s trains run on rails that are over five feet apart. Equilatitudinous with four landlocked African countries, I’m about 275 miles away from the nearest nuclear power plant.
You’re probably in the right place if you can see…
- A travel agency
- Several shops that sell jewellery
- The word ‘MUBARAK’
- A rubbled building
- Numerous motorcycles
- More than one palm tree
- A man carrying three boxes on his head
I’m not in Pont-à-Mousson.
(Last week I was here)
About 20-25 minutes. Had a lot of fun with this one, thanks Roman!
My pleasure. Thanks for the feedback.
I’d love to run reader-submitted solo foxers from time to time. If anyone fancies foxing rather than defoxing for a change, puzzles sent to tim at tallyhocorner dot com stand a good chance of publication.
I found this one significantly hard – I suppose the good Captain and I must have taken different routes to the answer. But finally: Three boxes man ahoy!
I missed the most useful clue the first time I read it, and didn’t bother trying then – having spotted it, I got to the city quite quickly, but spent a bit of time finding the road, and more finding the man with boxes on his head. Maybe 20-25 minutes, I was doing other things in between so it’s hard to be exact!
No Idea if I’m even close but I cannot get any sort of street view in Google maps or earth (where I think it is).
Do I need other tools or am I just barking up the wrong tree alltogether?
If you’ve ended up somewhere that’s not covered by Street View, you’re definitely in the wrong place. From now on I’ll mention that in the intro.