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It was, Christopher Monckton now admits, a miscalculation. In June this year, he launched a geometrical jigsaw puzzle called Eternity, and, in the sure and certain hope that it would take at least three years to solve it, he offered a £1 million prize to the first person to do so.
A dangerous gamble? He didn't think so.
In fact, he reckoned that by the time the world's puzzle-solving community had unlocked Eternity's secret (at £29.99 a go), he would have earned substantially more than £1 million in sales. Unfortunately, though, it now appears that instead of taking three long years to finish the puzzle, a growing number of people have all but cracked it in five short months. Thus, rather than being in a position to reap the fruits of his labours, Mr Monckton now finds everything has gone pear-shaped - and in order to raise the promised prize money, he is having to sell off his ancestral home in north-east Scotland. Does he mind? "What do you think?" he fumes. "I'm furious."
It was three years ago that he and his wife Juliet bought 67-roomed, 175-year-old Crimonmogate, 40 miles north of Aberdeen. In those intervening months, they have converted the place from somewhere fit for the Addams Family to somewhere fit for the Royal Family. "This place was built as somewhere you could entertain princes, bishops and prime ministers," declares Mr Monckton. "But you would never have known it when we moved in. Basically, the place had been going quietly downhill for 50 years. I bought it from my third cousin at what I would describe as a special price, in view of all the work that needed doing.
"There were infestations of rats and woodworm, nearly all the windows were rotten, and the roof had so many leaks we needed 12 different buckets to collect the rainwater. Oh, and at the top of the house, there was a 45ft beehive."Three years and £500,000 later, the roof has been repaired, all 170 window frames have been replaced, and the worms, rats and bees have all buzzed off. Not only that, but the ballroom floor has been restored, storage heating has been installed and the smell of damp completely banished. "I should think this is the first time in half a century this place has been dry," says Juliet Monckton, as we take coffee and biscuits in front of the library fire. "That's why it's so tremendously disappointing that we're having to leave."
Not that she blames her husband for a minute. Whereas to the outside observer, it might seem as if Christopher Monckton has risked his family home out of some kind of vanity or recklessness, the true story is somewhat different. In fact, it all came about because he thought he was dying. "I'd been ill for four years, and was pretty certain I was on my last legs," says Mr Monckton, 47. "Naturally, the thing that most concerned me about dying was how on earth was I going to provide for my lovely wife." (This is his standard way of referring to her; she, in turn, calls him "sweet one".)
The answer to Mr Monckton's dilemma was tessellation - the ancient art of arranging small blocks into a large mosaic. Though unable to get out of bed, he could still draw, and as the months went by, he created a symmetrical 12-sided figure made up of 209 identically coloured but differently shaped little green pieces.What's more, he calculated that the odds against anyone being able to re-create this feat from scratch were of an astronomically high order.
"I worked out that there were about as many possible combinations of these 209 pieces as there were particles in the known universe, and that is a figure which is at least 621 digits long. As for a computer, I found it could solve a 12-piece puzzle in one-hundredth of a second, but from that point on the progress was exponential - which meant that even with quite sophisticated software, it would take one million billion years to solve a 209-piece puzzle. “This led me to conclude that even if someone was working on the puzzle right round the clock, it would take them at least three years to solve it. If not four.” Oh dear. For, having confidently expected not to have to pay out the £1 million until at least 2002 or 2003, Mr Monckton now finds that 2000 is nearer the mark.
"Er, yes," he admits, in a somewhat strangulated voice. "It appears there are one or two rather clever people out there who are getting uncomfortably close to the solution. Apparently there is one person who has already fitted 204 out of the 209 pieces. I fear I may have seriously underestimated the power of human ingenuity."
Crimonmogate is near Crimond, eight miles south of Fraserburgh. All inquiries to Knight Frank's Edinburgh office (0131 225 8171)
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