Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 September 16

= September 16 =

Searching for...a book
Honestly speaking I am not even sure if I should be asking this here : but is there a source anywhere on Net where I can get John Grisham's The Whistler ? Yeah, it's yet to be released. Jon Ascton    (talk)  01:13, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right: you should not be asking. We don't give support to copyright violation. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:15, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If it's not released yet, it's not just copyright violation, it's outright theft. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:53, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Amazon has the release date as October 25th, you will just have to wait until then to purchase it from your local bookstore or from an online distributor. uhhlive (talk) 14:56, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Name of fantasy story
I'm trying to remember the name and author of a story I read at least 30 years ago. I think it was a short story but it might have been part of a novel. The protagonist acquired some magical device, a box I think, which he was trying to determine how to open. This required saying a magic spell of three syllables. Unable to think of any other approach, he started reciting all possible combinations of three syllables, alphabetically I think. He assumed this would take years, but when he finally hit on the correct first syllable, the box responded in some way (very poor security obviously), so he was able to stop searching for the first syllable and move on to the next one. Does this ring a bell with anyone? CodeTalker (talk) 20:43, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That story line doesn't ring a bell for me, I'm afraid, but the plot outline immediately made me think of Roald Dahl, specifically his short stories for adults. Do any of the titles at Roald Dahl short stories bibliography sound familiar? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:43, 19 September 2016 (UTC)