52

Many things in the book and the short films can be counted up to 52.

There are 52 words on the CROSSFIRE GAMBIT list (not counting the word "map")

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, which is half of 52.

There are 52 standard cards in a playing card deck.

There are 52 standard cards shown in the ZEBULON short film.

There are 52 "slides" in the ALLGOOD short film if you consider the Krog Street Tunnel sequence as one slide and ignore all of the slides showing the playing cards.

There are 52 cards in the ALLGOOD short film, and they spell out the phrase, "Oh, You'd Like me to connect the dots for you, lead you from A to B to C." which is an unaltered line from the *Star Trek: The Next Generation* episode *All Good Things...* The phrase itself also (obviously) has 52 alpha characters in it.

The caption in the video for ARTICHOKE is: "but we are human beings and mercifully, human beings can forget" which is 52 alpha characters long. This is a (partial) line from the last Agatha Christie book, Elephants Can Remember. The full line includes the title of the book but omits it from the caption in the video.

The caption in the video for ZEBULON is: "The light from your room tells me it's midnight... Follow, go with me" which is 52 alpha characters long. This is an altered line from the Autour de Lucie song *Island* which originally reads: " And the light from your room. Tell me, it's midnight. Follow, come with me."

The caption on the video for *Can't get here from there* is: " I've changed the locks, and you can have one, you know the other two" which is 52 alpha characters long. This is an altered line from the R.E.M. song, *Star Me Kitten* which originally reads: "I've changed the locks. And you can't have one. You, you know the other two.

The caption on the short film for ALLGOOD is: "the other side of our memories... when all that is left is memories" which is 52 alpha characters long. This is an altered line from the Pär Hagström song *Ode to What Could Have Been* which originally reads: "Also from the other side of our memories. When all that's left is memories."

The caption on the video for *09132 -28* is: "there's a number, you can call the pay phone, let it ring a long time" which is 52 alpha characters long. This is an altered line from the REM song "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" which originally reads: "There isn't a number, you can call the pay phone. Let it ring a long, long, long, long time."

The caption on the video for *Fairytale of Paradise* is "Sometimes I wonder why I spend my lonely hour dreaming of a song." This is the unaltered line from the song heard in the song *Stardust*. But, this is the only version of the song that I have come across that uses that line. Most versions of the song, including the original, use the line "Sometimes I wonder how I spend the lonely night dreaming of a song"

As an interesting deviation from this pattern the caption on the video *JAM* is "Now I taught the weepin' willow how to cry..." is a slightly altered version of the original lyric *Big River* as sung by Johnny Cash (and heard in the background of the video) and is 33 characters long. 33 is another number that shows up a lot in our mystery. And as an interesting bit of math, 52 + 33 is 85. 85 is the number of characters in the Cherokee syllabary. The 33 character phrase would be used as the key to deciphering the rose puzzle cipher embedded in the spearfinger video.

52 cuts are found in the video segments in the spearfinger video.