Monoceros Unicorns: Puzzles Once You've Ruled Out God on Elementary

Summary: Puzzle-solving proves less piquant, despite its mysterious unicorns, than crime-solving in the Elementary episode Once You've Ruled Out God May 7, 2018.

Aberdeen Bestiary Folio 15r depiction of monoceros unicorn; University of Aberdeen Library Special Collections and Museums, manuscript 24: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Unicorns appear as aspects of an outpatient's approach to ameliorating post-concussion syndrome (PCS) in the last minutes of the Elementary procedural drama series episode Once You've Ruled Out God May 7, 2018.

Director Guy Ferland and writers Robert Doherty, Kelly Wheeler and Robert Hewitt Wolfe brandish puzzle therapy in the sixth season's second episode, 122nd series episode overall. Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) comments, "Just look how productive I've been. I recognize that, like any potential adversary, PCS is best attacked from different angles." He divulges different daily strategies as "Yesterday, I helped foil an international ring of jewel thieves. And, today, I'm assembling Unicorn Utopia, ages eight and up."

Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) expects that "If you like Unicorn Utopia, you are gonna love Pretty Princess Party" despite Sherlock's emphatic "I prefer the jewel thieves."

Perhaps Sherlock favors unicorns (from Latin ūnicornis, from unus, "one" and cornu, "horn") before princesses from familiarity with the Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library Ms. Ashmole 1511.

Time travel backwards to March 1990 gets another Sherlock (Edward Woodward, June 1, 1930-Nov. 16, 2009) to Cambridge, England, for a Yorkshire Television-filmed made-for-television Holmes mystery. The University of Cambridge's Sheldonian Theatre, for Gilbert Sheldon (June 19, 1598-Nov. 9, 1677), hosts scenes in Hands of a Murderer, or The Napoleon of Crime. The Christopher Wren (Oct. 30, 1632-March 8, 1723) designed theatre is on the grounds of the Bodleian Library, for Thomas Bodley (March 2, 1545-Jan. 28, 1613).

The Ashmole Bestiary joins 12-plus million items in Elias Ashmole's (May 23, 1617-May 18, 1692) namesake library as Ms. Ashmole 1511 and summary catalogue no. 7541.

The parchment codex, as an early 13th-century illuminated manuscript from Cambridgeshire or Lincolnshire, knits 100-plus allegorical descriptions together with a creation story and a moral treatise.

The moral treatise De avibus ("[Medieval Book] of Birds") by Hugh of Fouilloy (1100?-Sept. 7, 1174) looks at blackbirds, cocks, cranes, doves, eagles, geese and hawks. It mentions cedar and palm trees and herons, hoopoes, kites, night-herons, ostriches, owls, partridges, peacocks, pelicans, phoenixes, quails, ravens, swans, sparrows, storks, swallows, turtledoves and vultures. It nurtures trouble-shooting real-life models for the all-white caladrius whose averted and eye-to-eye gazes respectively affirm death and recovery from sickness and whose groin cures cataracts.

The caladrius perhaps occurs as real-life albino or white-morphed European grey herons or white plovers even as the Ashmole Bestiary obfuscates the origins of monoceros unicorns.

The Ashmole Bestiary and the similarly illuminated 12th-century Aberdeen Bestiary present monoceros (from Greek Μονόκερως, Monókerōs, "one-horned," from μόνος, mōnos, "one" and κέρας, kéras, "horn") unicorns.

The Ashmole Bestiary queues up a prancing animal with a deer-like head with black-blue eyes, red cheeks and nape and white ears, face, mane and neck. A 1.51-foot- (46-centimeter-) long, pointed, somewhat forward-curved, yellow horn runs from a red forehead even as the horse-like, white body reveals red-patched back, belly and flanks. Folio 21r of the Ashmole Bestiary shows a monoceros unicorn with white horse-like hooves, white legs with joints outlined in red and white, wild boar-like tail.

The Unicorn Utopia puzzle perhaps turns even Sherlock's thoughts toward monoceros unicorns as mythological creatures, as related precursors of Asian rhinoceroses or as unlike other unicorns.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) de-stresses after solving a jewelry theft by assembling a Unicorn Utopia jigsaw puzzle in Elementary tv series' Once You've Ruled Out God (season 6, episode 2): CBS Elementary episode 6.02 promotional photo via SpoilerTV May 2, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Aberdeen Bestiary Folio 15r depiction of monoceros unicorn; University of Aberdeen Library Special Collections and Museums, manuscript 24: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F15r-aberdeen-best-detail.jpg

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) de-stresses after solving a jewelry theft by assembling a Unicorn Utopia jigsaw puzzle in Elementary tv series' Once You've Ruled Out God (season 6, episode 2): CBS Elementary episode 6.02 promotional photo via SpoilerTV May 2, 2018, @ https://www.spoilertv.com/2018/04/elementary-episode-602-once-youve-ruled.html

For further information:

Clark, Willene B. (ed.). The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy's Aviarium. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 80. Binghamton NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/medievalbookofbi00hughuoft/

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London, England: George Newnes Ltd., 1892.

Lindahl, Carl. "Unicorn." The World Book Encyclopedia U-V, Volume 20: 26. Chicago IL: World Book, Inc.

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