On the Subject of the Mystic Square

O knight in shining armour, deliver us from the evils of the skull!

1. “row”/“column” on this page always refers to the table below.
2. Do not uncover the skull before uncovering the knight.
3. How to find the skull:
   1. If the middle position is empty, the skull is under the 7. Continue to step 4.

   2. X		X
      	X
      X		X

      The middle number determines which row/column to use. If the last digit in the serial number is in one of the five cross positions as shown in the diagram on the right, use rows. Otherwise, use columns.
   3. Start from the empty position on the module. Using the table below, consider each number in the row/column and check if it’s a direct neighbour to the current position. If it is, continue from that position. The final position is where the skull is located.
   4. To disarm the module, move the sliders into a target constellation shown on the next page.

		last serial digit does not lie on the cross-parts of the module
	number in the middle of the module	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
on the cross- part	1	1	3	5	4	6	7	2	8
	2	2	5	7	3	8	1	4	6
	3	6	4	8	1	7	3	5	2
	4	8	1	2	5	3	4	6	7
	5	3	2	6	8	4	5	7	1
	6	7	6	1	2	5	8	3	4
	7	4	7	3	6	1	2	8	5
	8	5	8	4	7	2	6	1	3

“row”/“column” on this page always refers to the module.

Determining the desired constellation:

Before moving any sliders, use the sum of the rows as R1, R2 and R3 and the sum of the columns as C1, C2 and C3 to look up the target constellation in the table below. The following constellation is also always acceptable.

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8

	C1 > C2,C3	C2 > C1,C3	C3 > C1,C2	else
R1 > R2,R3	1 ? 2 ? ? ? 4 ? 3	1 ? 2 ? ? ? 3 ? 4	1 ? 3 ? ? ? 7 ? 5	1 ? 3 ? ? ? 5 ? 7
R2 > R1,R3	? 1 ? 4 ? 2 ? 3 ?	? 1 ? 3 ? 2 ? 4 ?	? 2 ? 8 ? 4 ? 6 ?	? 2 ? 6 ? 4 ? 8 ?
R3 > R1,R2	1 ? ? ? 2 ? ? ? 3	? ? 3 ? 2 ? 1 ? ?	3 ? ? ? 2 ? ? ? 1	? ? 1 ? 2 ? 3 ? ?
else	1 2 3 ? 4 ? ? ? ?	1 ? ? 2 4 ? 3 ? ?	? ? ? ? 4 ? 1 2 3	? ? 1 ? 4 2 ? ? 3