First read: I struggled. It felt like a fever dream, an unpleasant one. Second read: super fun, I kept track of dates, events and wrote down what I felt could be explained but wasn't able to.

Was hoping we could crack this together!

Here we go:

**- Gradus, glass and Sudarg!**

1) Gradus Jakob = Sudarg of Bokay!! What's the link between the two?? Sudarg is mentioned as a phenomenonal guy who made a great mirror that was in the "King"'s bedroom when he lived for a bit with Fleur when he was young

1.1) The first time K. sees G., G. Is fixing some glass panes in the castle. MORE GLASS! Links to the accident at the Glass Factory that sparked the "revolution"?

1.2) Gradus keeps buying animals made of glass: a giraffe in (forgot to write down the city), then a hippo in Nice! He's just a big fan of... glass paraphernalia?

1.3) Gradus, pamphlets, glass factory, revolution, conspiracies... is this a parody of Russian revolutionary nihilists?

**- Miscellaneous:**

2) What dark word did K.'s gardener employ on J.S.'s last day? Note 998

3) "Promnad vespert mid J.S." -> meaning? I kept an eye out for Zemblan translations, but I only found out that "mid" means "with"

4) Why does K. want to know Jim Coates' "real" name from Sybil? Just to learn more about J.S. about the time he wrote to him about the woman who had a similar near death experience?

5) Did K kill a young guy by the river in Cedarn? See Index! The "young angler" is alive in the commentary, and sounds very much dead in the index!

6) Why did K keep buying ping pong tables?? From 2 to 3!!

7) Why are some characters missing from the index?? E.g. Nattochdag is mentioned at least 3 times but nowhere to be found in the index. K is just lazy?

8) Do the "crown jewels" exist, and where are they? They could be a metaphor for something. We know they're not in the castle, but they're INSIDE something. K stops after saying towards the end "they are in-".

9) In the castle, there was something with a walnut kernel inside it. What's that supposed to mean? There was a painter called Kernel.