The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I was invented for the sun, not for the rain.
For a long time an English gentleman carrying me was considered ridiculous.
I am the single most abandoned object on public transport.
The wind turns me inside out and I never quite recover.
I keep the rain off your head.
Umbrella
Jonas Hanway carried one through London for thirty years while people jeered, until it became ordinary. He simply outlasted them.
Parasols shaded Egyptian and Chinese nobility for thousands of years, and the Chinese made the first collapsible ones. Rain was a different matter, and in Europe the object was firmly feminine; a man who wanted to stay dry was expected to take a carriage. Jonas Hanway's thirty-year campaign of walking through London under one was mostly successful because he was too rich to embarrass. The design became practical in 1852, when Samuel Fox replaced whalebone ribs with grooved steel. It has barely changed since, including the part where the wind ruins it.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #14 · today's mystery · the vault
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