Mail Puzzles by Harriet Russell

Posted by Alex in Arts & Crafts, Pictures on October 12, 2008 at 2:17 am


For her degree from the Glasgow School of Art, Harriet Russell decided to do a little postal experiment to find out exactly how far would the men and women at Royal Mail were willing to go to deliver mail:

To put them to the test she concealed the addresses of 130 letters to herself in a series of increasingly complex puzzles and ciphers. Among the disguises she employed were dot-to-dot drawings, anagrams and cartoons. The answer, it seems, was very far indeed. Amazingly, only 10 failed to complete their journey back to her.

The story is fascinating (complete with reference to how the private secretary to Queen Victoria also did this sort of thing): Link - via Laughing Squid


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COMMENT

7 comments to "Mail Puzzles by Harriet Russell"

  1. Pol x
    October 12th, 2008 at 7:07 am

    I was happily reading this piecvwe when the map suddenly oriented itself in my head.

    I grew uip around there. Hell my Mum still luives one street ove from Barrington Road.

    This is weird.

  2. Pol x
    October 12th, 2008 at 7:11 am

    Ah on closer inspection me mum’s place is there, Wood lands they wrote rather than Woodlands.

    And yes the corner shop there does sell an amazingly large number of Jazz mags, the veg shop sells alligator and Khat.

  3. bayamus
    October 12th, 2008 at 9:20 am

    This is entirely brilliant. I just wish there were more pictures online, 6 out of 120 is not enough!

  4. Thomas
    October 12th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    My Aunt and Uncle live in a small, but not tiny, town in the American northeast. My uncle’s mother couldn’t remember their address and, last year, sent them a holiday package labeled simply: Jud & Fredricka, Alexis, VT

    They received it the day after Xmas but it got there.

    Andy they say the post isn’t competent.

  5. MJ
    October 12th, 2008 at 7:22 pm

    I can’t believe this girl didn’t make a blog out of it.

  6. DOJ
    October 13th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    here’s another, similar story
    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article6686.ece

  7. Ali S.
    October 15th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    I’m amazed by the patience of the folks in the mail room to do these puzzles. Must be because not too many people send mail by post anymore.


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