Kevin's Watch

I'm reading The Da Vinci Code. I get to page 155, and instead of the page number in the upper right hand corner, there are the letters:

SOS

I'm not joking.

Here I am, reading a novel about hidden meanings, cryptic codes and mysterious cyphers, and this happens.

I'm going to have to check other copies of the paperback and see if this is a common misprint.

Otherwise, cue in Twilight Zone music, right?

it's not in my hard cover edition...

"Help, I'm Trapped In a Printing Press!"

The hardcover DaVinci Code boasted that there were several codes in the cover sleeve. Maybe more codes?

anyone know about numeric equations of letters?

S-O-S
1-8-1

Ring any bells?

no, should it?

That didn't ring any bells for me, either.

In any event, there are many copies of the books with the SOS misprint, in many stores, as I checked everywhere I went over the weekend. In fact, I couldn't find a paperback WITHOUT the misprint.

So it's not unique, whatever it is.

I admit it! It's a sign to stop reading that rubibsh!

Just trying to save minds here...

Well, I finished Da Vinci Code. Some of the character motivations were somewhat suspect, and the ending was sort of contrived, but I still enjoyed the book more than I thought I would going in. And unlike most thrillers in my experience, it didn't end with a colossal bloodbath!!

I still don't understand the enormous popularity, but then, I don't understand why Titanic is all-time box office champ, either.

Let's put it this way . . . (Ducks to avoid brickbat thrown by Ainulindale)

I liked it much better than His Majesty's Dragon.

Now that you're through with it, read Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, and see how it should be done without the schlock.

--A

I have SOS on page 155 as well! But I found some other things as well, which are what led me to looking for a DaVinci Code thread on this board.

I'm almost finished with the book (first time reader), and along the way I've noticed several things that seemed strangely out of place. I was wondering if perhaps there is a code hidden in the book itself - part of a game created by the author. I looked around the web for other info on this, but couldn't find any.

Two of the most prominent ones I've found are (and these are from the mass market paperback - the normal paperback-sized edition, with "Now a major motion picture" on the cover and spine):

Page 138, halfway down the page: "Tearing it open, she found four Paris phone numbers." The whole book is in Times New Roman font, but the word "numbers" in this sentence is in some kind of gothic script. Not something that would slip in there accidentally - it's not even something that should be bold or italic or underined in this sentence.

Page 322. The page number is actually listed as three asterisks: ***. I flipped through the books, and didn't find this anywhere else.

There are a few other things that I found - verbs that are in the plural instead of the correct singular, repetition of some information where it's clearly not needed for the story, etc. Things that I thought would certainly have been corrected during the editing process.

I'm glad to hear that someone else has found similar things. But perhaps that just means that there's more than just me reading too much into the clue hunt.

so roland should i get the book are wait for the movie

I think they are just errors. The nature of the book primes you to read things differently.

I've never seen (or at least noticed) errors like that before, though. And they don't seem very random. The page that has "SOS" as the page number is the first page in a chapter - and in this book, those pages usually go without page numbers altogether.

And the word "numbers" being in a different font is the really wierd one. That font wasn't used anywhere else in the book, so how did it "accidentally" end up on that one word? And the word isn't even one that would be marked for bold or italics. I don't know if this is standard, but in Steve's drafts he underlines words that will eventually be italicized. That may be left over from the typewriter days (when you couldn't really do an italic font unless you changed the type ball), or maybe it's because the underline is more noticable in the draft than italics might be. When it goes to print, I assume they just have the computer replace the underline characteristic with the one for italics. So although it's a stretch, I thought if this was a similar situation, the characteristic change may have been botched by the computer (and missed during the final editing sweep). But it's not even a word that should have been tagged for any font change to begin with. And why the whole word instead of just a few letters? And why THAT word, and not any of the surrounding ones? The word "numbers" is key in everything that is going on since it's a lot of cryptology. Or could this be part of a clue that points to the book of Numbers in the Bible?

Maybe in his research for the book, Brown discovered the true location (and identity) of the Grail. And he's trying to communicate it to his readers. These changes seem to be only in the most recent edition of the book - even though there should have been no changes between the different versions (granted, however, that Steve insisted on a few corrections to HIS book when the paperback version came out). Brown couldn't do it in the first editions, since people may be combing over that to make sure he didn't give away anything real. But they wouldn't look through *every* edition of the book - so at this point it's safe for him to let out the clues. Or maybe once the book was published, someone else who knows the where the Grail is located got a job at the publishing house so that THEY could plant those clues in future editions.

Hey - I love a good mystery. Even if I have to make it up myself!

But I don't know if I'll pursue this any farther. In today's world, we're more likely to meet disappointment rather than reward. If there is a real code there and I cracked it, I'd end up flipping out if it said something like, "Make sure to drink your Ovaltine." HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Okay - I'm rambling again. You need to add a way to monitor what people are typing here in real time so someone can IM me and tell me to knock it off and get back to work. <grin>