Exclusive – here’s where to find the next hint in the epic online riddle.
If you’ve been following the #FindTheDoctor online Doctor Who treasure hunt that’s been ticking along for the last few weeks, it’s been quite the virtual chase. Beginning with a stray word in a trailer that led fans to a mysterious webpage, since then clues have cropped up in Google Maps references, the gift shop of the London Science Museum, a landscape portrait in Liverpool and (very recently) a lump of fossilised amber listed on the Natural Science Museum website, among many others.
Now, the mystery continues – because RadioTimes.com can exclusively reveal the latest clue to be revealed, taking fans one step closer to solving the puzzle and unlocking…well, whatever gets unlocked when fans fill in the doctorwho.tv/mystery password at the end of the whole thing.
The next puzzle piece arrived today in the official Doctor Who newsletter, which had specific letters capitalised and emboldened (a running theme in clues fans have found so far). Those letters are B, H, I, R, L, R, I, A, T, I, Y, B, R, M, A, S, R and Y – in of themselves, not that revealing.
But if you rearrange the letters, they spell out something much clearer: “British Library Mary.” And while there’s more than a few Mary-s within the walls of the British Library, only one author has the distinction of cropping up within the same newsletter as the clues – Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein (and guest star in series 12’s The Haunting of Villa Diodati).
And accordingly, if you do check out the British Library page for one Mary Shelley, yet another trio of clues are presented within her short biography: the words “reAched” (with that spelling and bold emphasis), librarians and Doctor.
!["Doctor]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2021/09/Mary-Shelley-British-Library-78a2e68.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"Mary")
Exactly what to do next with these words is more of a mystery, as is the emphasis on certain parts of the words over others – but given what quick work Whovians have made of the other riddles in #FindTheDoctor so far, we’re sure they’ll make short work of this one too.
After all, they’ve already tracked down hidden Instagram posts with Jodie Whittaker, delved into the Doctor’s Google search history and decoded an audio message from Mandip Gill. Surely that password can only be a few more clues away…
Doctor Who returns to BBC One this autumn. Want more? Check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.