Bledlow Ridge

The rebus shows a representation of BLEED, from which you remove the E, and a traffic sign indicating a LOW BRIDGE, from which you remove the B [REB5].

In the village you will find a pub called The Boot (apparently now a restaurant), and Saint Paul's Church. The �tall balding man� is Dave Kee, setter of the 2000 ATH, as confirmed by his card. Steganography is the art of secret writing, which is mentioned in the answers to that hunt. It had a theme of Snakes and Ladders which is why the card references �snakes charmed� and �ladders erected�. 

�Playfair� is a clue to the Playfair cipher, often used in these Hunts. In this case the keyword is Vulpine ("fox-like"), which is applied to the jumble of letters on the back of the card to reveal �The wife of Socrates�, who was XANTHIPPE [BR1].

The quotation is from the Joss Stone song Snakes and Ladders, again referring to the theme of the 2000 Hunt [BR2]. The apparent misprint �It time for us to face the facts� is in all the online listings of these lyrics so I felt it best to retain it. The dice are used to extract a word from this quotation, so the first roll shows a 7, which gives the 7^th letter, N. If a six is thrown on either dice then the next roll is added in as well, so the next two rolls yield 16 and hence the letter O, 16 forward from the N. A similar method was used to spell a message in the 2000 Hunt. The full sequence of rolls is 7,16,17,5,4,45,11,3,2,2,8,13,3,6,12 � revealing the message NOOSHA�S REAL NAME [BR3]. Noosha is Noosha Fox, lead singer with the band Fox, who had some hits in the mid-70s, most memorably Single Bed. Noosha Fox�s real name was SUSAN TRAYNOR [BR4].

Passwords and Directions

(a) XANTHIPPE to reach West Wycombe
(b) SUSANTRAYNOR to get to Radnage.