Author Topic: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall  (Read 1304 times)

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Offline Allan L

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Just by way of a change I shall set a puzzle without showing a picture.
One point for you if you can tell me enough about the Butler-Lacey to show that you know what it was.
Another point if you can show us an authenticated picture of one.

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Offline Otto Puzzell

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2011, 03:50:29 AM »
Neat idea  :thumbsup:
You wanna be the man, you gotta Name That Car!

Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2011, 04:18:43 AM »
Neat idea  :thumbsup:
Thanks, but let's see if anyone answers!
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2011, 08:37:12 AM »
37 views and no offers yet. Probably worth sending this upwards fairly soon.
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2011, 03:37:51 AM »
37 views and no offers yet. Probably worth sending this upwards fairly soon.
67 by now so up to the Experts.
Probably not much hope that our younger puzzlers will know/remember but who can tell!
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Offline Carnut

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2011, 07:23:41 AM »
Anything to do with Clive Lacey?
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2011, 08:52:36 AM »
Anything to do with Clive Lacey?
Not that I know of.
But then I don't know who he is/was.
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Offline Amsterdam

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2011, 09:12:26 AM »
What or by who this make is I do not know. All I could find is an article in which is wondered by some people if it ever existed. It seems it is a "heard off'' make but no actualy record is to be found.

This is the article:

Recent reference to a Butler-Lacey car in these columns has caused much controversy
We can find no record of such a make, but one correspondent says his father recalls being shown a tourer in a Suffolk garage after the 1914/18 war which purported to be a Butler-Lacey
another letter claims that the name arose as a result of a joke played on two friends of the writer's before the first World War but may have been adopted subsequently by one of the mushroom firms that sprang up after the Armistice, while yet another correspondent, writing from Rickmansworlh, says that only recently a member of his golf club asked if he knew anything about this elusive make,  because this person had spent a Scottish golfing holiday in one after the Kaiser War
More concrete evidence comes from G. Oakwood, who claims that his godfather described to him a Butler-Lacey owned in Paris in the early 'twenties.Apparently many offers were made for it but the owner refused them all and as he ended his life a cripple the car probably " lies mouldering in some French backyard." Finally, another reader is very interested in purchasing one After which we are delighted to hand over this section for readers to run themselves in

Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2011, 03:02:48 PM »
Your are on to something there, Amsterdam, but haven't quite got to the heart of things!
Can you tell me where that article appeared, and when?
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Offline Amsterdam

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2011, 04:10:02 PM »
The source of the article is titled Motorsport 1957 on Google Books Search, but further info on the source very limited. Most likely it is a magazine.

As my time is also very limited at the moment ( I need to get some work done in the meantime  :-\ ) a quick search on more info was not very successful.

All I can make out of it is they were probably an early 1900 British car manufacturer who made a very small amount of cars.

Indeed a neat idea of turning the puzzleway around. In this case not easier though.  :D

Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2011, 05:52:29 PM »
Motor Sport, the well-known British magazine, is indeed the place to find out more - but the whole story was published rather later than  1957 although there was sporadic correspondence in its columns at about that time which is, I think, what you've found
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2011, 04:24:34 AM »
After a week without any response, here it is in the Professional set.
Despite what I wrote above, the whole story was actually not in Motor Sport but somewhere else. I'll just say it was written in 1984 (and not by George Orwell!).
Well???
« Last Edit: February 10, 2011, 08:49:01 AM by Allan L »
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Offline Otto Puzzell

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2011, 02:22:56 PM »
I'll do some digging
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #13 on: February 23, 2011, 08:55:33 AM »
Not many extra views since two weeks ago.
Probably there's nobody from the VSCC on this forum, or it might have had a reply.
(and yes, that's a clue of sorts)
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Offline woodinsight

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #14 on: February 23, 2011, 01:28:49 PM »
I'm a VSCC member (fairly recently) but I haven't had the time to delve further yet.

Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #15 on: March 08, 2011, 03:20:36 AM »
Time for another clue before the Black Hole: the answer may owe something to Tom Threllfall - a VSCC Past President, and former racing driver
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Offline Allan L

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #16 on: April 01, 2011, 04:27:41 AM »
I think this has been here for long enough so I shall quote Tom Threlfall to tell you the story. Although this is posted on All Fools' Day, the story is true - but quite appropriate to today!

The Butler-Lacey
Tom Threlfall wrote in 1984

A theology student of my acquaintance - he later took the cloth - becoming tired of Motor Sport magazine's long dissertations on forgotten and mostly very forgettable makes, invented a light car called the Butler-Lacey and he started a long and erudite correspondence with the magazine upon the topic. We were expected to write to the editor during the summer vacation from far-away places impersonating elderly gents who could well remember seeing a car of that make coming rapidly down Lynton hill (or Mam Tor, or wherever) with its brakes alight, and becoming a total write-off at the bottom. The brakes were this mythological beast's weak point, and the reason that none was known to have survived. I recall being employed by this budding cleric to produce a photograph of his brain-child, which was in fact a three-quarter rear shot of an Austin heavy twelve, full of undergraduates in the upper parts of period costumes, and outside Grantchester church. The picture was underexposed, out of focus, and not fixed for long enough, so that it went all yellow.


I think Amsterdam found a reasonably relevant few items which revealed (more or less) that it was a hoax, so a point for him I think.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2011, 04:32:21 AM by Allan L »
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Offline woodinsight

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Re: A puzzle without a picture from Allan L explained by Tom Threlfall
« Reply #17 on: April 01, 2011, 08:30:57 AM »
Very interesting!
I never did find it so thanks for posting it.