Solution to 2: Robarts Library

    This puzzle looks rather daunting, and we expected it to be the most difficult one in Act 1. (Just look at how long this solution is!) However, there are several things which you might notice right away:

    

    1. Each of the six paragraphs has five sentences.

    2. Every sentence is copied from a book.

    3. In each paragraph, one word is italicized. We will call this the keyword.

    

    If you dig a bit further, you may discover that each paragraph has a theme that relates in some way to the keyword, but only four out of the five books referenced in that paragraph follow the theme. The themes and books are listed below, and the books that don't belong are italicized.

    


    Paragraph 1: books about war (keyword: WAR)

    Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

    All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

    Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

    Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

    The Iliad, by Homer

    


    Paragraph 2: books with an unreliable narrator (keyword: DECEIVED)

    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

    Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

    The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger

    Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

    The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford

    


    Paragraph 3: the third book in a series (keyword: THIRD)

    The Never War, by D. J. MacHale

    Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

    Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J. K. Rowling

    The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis

    


    Paragraph 4: an author's only novel (keyword: ONLY)

    Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

    The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

    Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

    Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

    


    Paragraph 5: children's books (keyword: SON)

    The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss

    Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

    King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard

    Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch

    The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle

    


    Paragraph 6: books about books (keyword: BOOK)

    The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

    The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood

    Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett

    Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

    Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

    


    Taking the first letter of each book that doesn't belong, we get the word "blinks".

BLINKS