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Witches well
8m
You'll start on Castlehill, just below the castle esplanade, where the app opens your case file and introduces the agent running it. Your first task will be to find a small iron fountain on the wall and work out what's hidden under the sticker in your photo. You'll learn that it's the only memorial to the more than three hundred women burned on this hill, and that it doesn't even run.
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The Hub
7m
You'll walk to the foot of the tallest spire in Edinburgh and use two street signs on the railings to crack a five-letter password. You'll learn why it was built to be seen from the New Town, and why it carries the name of a building that no longer exists.
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Deacon Brodie's Tavern
8m
You'll stop at Deacon Brodie's Tavern on the Lawnmarket and compare its famous two-faced sign with your photo to find what's missing. You'll learn about the respectable councillor and locksmith who let himself into the houses he had fitted, and who later inspired Robert Louis Stevenson.
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Victoria Street
7m
You'll go up onto Victoria Terrace, above the curve of Victoria Street, and find the word missing from a nearby sign. You'll learn about Major Thomas Weir, who confessed in 1670 to crimes nobody had accused him of, and why his house then stood empty for a hundred years.
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Grassmarket
7m
You'll head down to the Grassmarket and find the stone plaque at the old gallows site to complete its inscription. You'll learn about Maggie Dickson, hanged here in 1724, who woke up in the cart on the way to her burial.
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Greyfriars Kirkyard
8m
You'll walk into Greyfriars Kirkyard to the domed tomb of Bluidy Mackenzie, decode a scrambled instruction and inspect the door to answer it. You'll learn about the 1,200 Covenanters held through a winter in the field next to his grave, and the night in 1999 that started the hauntings.
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Greyfriars Bobby
7m
You'll stop at the little bronze dog on the corner of Candlemaker Row and pick the real statue out of four photos. You'll learn what the council records say about Scotland's most loyal dog, and why one historian thinks there were two.
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National Museum of Scotland
7m
You'll walk along Chambers Street to the statue of William Chambers outside the museum and spot the detail added to your photo of one of its bronze panels. You'll learn how the man who bought Bobby's licence cut the city's death rate by a third, and what he demolished to do it.
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Old Town
7m
You'll go round the back of the old Royal Infirmary, to the lane where the anatomy school took its deliveries at night, and decode a word from a weathered plaque. You'll learn what a body was worth in a hard winter, and why taking one was never against the law.
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John Knox House Museum
8m
You'll walk down the Royal Mile to the brass line in the road where the city gate once stood, read the World's End sign, then compare the carved panel on John Knox House with your photo. You'll learn why the gate came down in 1764, and why Knox probably never lived in the house that carries his name.
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Tron Kirk Market
6m
You'll stop at the Tron Kirk and find the detail that exists only in your photo of its sign. You'll learn what was found under its floor in the 1970s: a whole sixteenth-century street, still paved.
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St Giles' Cathedral
10m
You'll finish at the Heart of Midlothian outside St Giles', where you'll turn every fragment you've collected into one final question about the Mercat Cross. You'll learn why people still spit on the heart in the cobbles, and how Deacon Brodie tried to survive his own hanging.
