VFYW: A False Flag Operation

For contest #404, we find an array of amazing animals — and incestuous ghosts — in the land of Hobbitses. Plus a sleuth finds the window IRL.

(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)

Here’s a followup on the latest contest from the Alaskan globetrotter (who was rushing to the airport last week for his next excursion):

I loved the Jaipur photo, but hate that we didn’t have time to find it and make some comments, because I’ve been there a couple of times (1994 and 2015). The changes I saw between those two decades really challenged my biases about developing countries and helped me recognize the astounding pace of modernization. 

India still has its issues — not least the Hindi-Muslim antipathy, ridiculous traffic, and frustrating bureaucracies — but the reduction in daily poverty is remarkable. With one of the youngest and now the largest populations in the world, plus a rapidly growing middle class, I can’t wait to see how India changes by my next visit. 

Our failure to find the Jaipur View quickly is what I call a Type 1 error — been there, but didn’t recognize it. (Type 2 is when you guess the place, look for it, and then mistakenly reject it.) Type 1 errors ruin my Saturday morning after reading the reveal. Type 2s leave a bitter taste until till you find the next View. 

The UWS super-sleuth is also kicking herself for missing last week’s view:

Jaipur! I had guessed southern India, and normally I’d be OK with getting just the country correct. But I’ve actually been in Jaipur — staying in a hotel a few miles from contest #403 — so I should have recognized it.

In any event, the timing of this View was appropriate for me, as my husband and I just celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary earlier this week, and we went to India on our honeymoon. So all the photos and stories brought back good memories. We stayed at Oberoi properties in four different cities, including the Rajvilas in Jaipur. It was easily the most glorious hotel we’ve ever been in.

But the Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra wasn’t far behind — and we even had a view of the Taj Mahal from the terrace of our room. At the concierge’s suggestion, we visited the Taj several times — to see it in morning, afternoon, and evening light. Someone from the hotel staff would give us a lift in a golf cart and drop us off at the entrance, where we’d be mobbed by people who wanted to sell us postcards and extra storage for our cameras (no iPhones yet).

We were the only Westerners there, and apparently we stuck out like sore thumbs: a pale-skinned, blue-eyed woman with auburn hair, and an even paler 6’ blue-eyed man with white hair. There we were, at one of the most recognizable and (justifiably) hyped landmarks in the world, and some of the Indian visitors wanted to take pictures of themselves with us. I’m imagining them showing friends their vacation photos, pointing us out as the curiosities we apparently were!

Yes, this is a real photo — not us in front of a poster. And that’s a real bird!

We went to India in part because we knew it would probably be our only trip there together (I had been there on business once before), and therefore we wouldn’t ever confuse memories of our honeymoon with those from any other vacation. And we haven’t!

A followup from the sleuth who submitted last week’s photo:

Here’s an elephant I spotted on the streets of Jaipur — also, it being the Pink City, it’s only fitting that I discovered a pink gin, Samsara:

Heads up to our mixologist super-sleuth: Samsara is fun to smell (notes of citrus and herbs), as well as drink. In fact, it would be a shame to mix it in a cocktail. Drink it straight.

The super-sleuth in Bethlum has “two comments about last week’s write-up”:

I’m definitely going to try the “The Pink City Tonic” creation from the Austin mixologist — sounds right up my alley with the hibiscus syrup! Also, the lac bug discussion was fun, as my spouse uses shellac for his instrument making and often can be found shaking jars of shellac flakes in Everclear to dissolve them. He retired from fixing bugs in IBM software to fixing bugs in alcohol for ukuleles. He’s much happier with these bugs.

One more followup, from a first-timer:

Thanks for including my musings in last week’s post. I now feel one with the hive! Looking forward to achieving “super-sleuth” status in the year ahead.

From the sleuth who submitted this week’s photo:

Winning the contest and then two contests later, having my photo chosen ... how exciting. Regarding the free six months for submitting it: thank you for that! Totally unnecessary. I’d happily donate it to the sleuth mentioned in last week’s edition who is a non-subscriber ... if that helps grow the VFYW family.

Thanks again for using my photo, which I took on a wonderful trip with my wife and daughter. When the Dish newsletter came, I showed the photo to my daughter and asked her if she could guess this week’s spot. She looked at it briefly, leaned back, and gave me a high-five. Priceless.

Our super-sleuth in San Mateo writes, “I asked DALL-E to produce a picture of a VFYW sleuth sleuthing”:

With a magnifying glass to this week’s view, a sleuth writes:

Man, I thought I had a chance with this one. My first thought was Normandy, France. The view reminded me of where we stayed in the summer of 2001. Of course I couldn’t remember exactly where that was, and I had to dig out a scrapbook to jog my memory. (Thanks for that — it was shocking to look at pictures of my 29-year-old self.) Turns out it was Caen. I remember noticing that Caen was mix of European old and mid-century American new (related to the recovery from WWII, I assume). 

If the VFYW this week isn’t in Caen, it must be some other city in Normandy that was rebuilt after the war. For a moment I thought the steeple was St Pierre, but I’m not convinced they match. Then I started looking at other steeples in the city. There are many.

I tried to figure out what the blue rook logo represented, but came up with nothing. I should have known the French flag was either a red herring or a hunt for a needle in a haystack. A steeple in a pile of steeples?

The flag also caught the eye of the CO/NJ super-champ:

The tricolor flying above the building obviously puts us somewhere in France. NOT!

The super-sleuth on Park Avenue also didn’t fall for the red herring:

I love the building with the flag combined with the spire of what looks like a suitably gothic French church in the background — nice way to play with people. Then you start looking at the rest of the photo and it may be many places, but it ain’t France. Indeed, the view has that distinct British-style architecture, but doesn’t look like UK. Tasmania? Too soon and wrong greenery.

Right region. How another sleuth responded to the flag: “Sneaky eh, cuz! As our NZ friends would say.” Here’s what a Frenchman says:

Hello, bonjour :-) First time writing to you, monsieur. This contest took a Sunday lunch with five people, including the cook (me). First, a French flag doesn’t mean France. French people are NOT patriotic. And if it was a French embassy or consulate, there will be an EU flag plus a French flag.

So Ava, the smart cookie, thought of a French school. Too small. French schools (lycées) are often bigger.  

He got to the right building and signed off, “Fun fun — merci, Chris, un bon moment de détectives en famille.” A noob solves another clue and gets the right country:

Greetings! First entry for me, so thanks for throwing in an easy one for the newbies. I don’t think I have the bandwidth for floor and window, so I’ll leave that to the experts. But I know it’s New Zealand, based on the New Zealand distinct fire hydrant “yellow circle and square” street signage/painting.

Giuseppe got there with another clue:

Apart from the giant red herring — or rather the blue, white and red herring — this was an easy one. That French flag is not flying over a French embassy or consulate — which would normally sport both the French and European Union flags. A clue for the correct country is found in the monogram on the side of a building with the letters “NZ”:

More initials were spotted by this sleuth:

I was lucky to figure out New Zealand rather quickly: it began with the license plates — they’re blurred, but you can still make out the aspect ratio. Then there’s the NZE logo, which I later learned stood for “New Zealand Express” — the builder and first tenant of the building now known as Consultancy House.

My first guess in New Zealand was the French embassy, which is in Wellington. That wasn’t it, of course, but things I saw in the overall streetscape — the large triangle painted in the roadway, the yellow dashes around the curbs, the handicap parking markings, the parking meters — told me to stick with New Zealand.

From a sleuth who got the city quickly:

How did I get here? Well, I’m in New Zealand. In the foreground, the Trustees Executors logo is ubiquitous enough that any New Zealander will recognise what country we are in, despite the misleading French flag. Cunning. Once we have New Zealand, we have miserable cold and wet and late Victorian architecture in a town big enough to have a spire on its church. This can only be Dunedin.

Another adds about Trustees Executors:

I lived in Wellington during the 1990s and worked for one of the banks there. My boss from that time is now one of the board members of Trustees Executors — and one of the most deeply unpleasant individuals I have ever come across.

The San Mateo sleuth “tried to improve the readability of the words on the Trustees Executors building so you can see the etchings that were erased for the VFYW”:

A first-timer is psyched to find the right building:

GUYS I FOUND IT I FEEL LIKE A GENIUS!!