The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I am not white. I only look it.
I am about ninety per cent air, which is why I make the world quiet.
The claim that no two of me are alike has never been proven, and is probably true.
I fall as a crystal with six sides. Always six.
Winter, cold, and a shovel.
Snow
Snow is clear ice. It only looks white because so many crystal faces scatter every colour back at you equally.
The six-fold symmetry comes from the shape of the water molecule itself: the angle between its hydrogen bonds forces growing ice into a hexagonal lattice, and every arm of a crystal experiences the same temperature and humidity at the same moment, so they grow alike. Wilson Bentley, a Vermont farmer, photographed more than five thousand of them through a microscope between 1885 and his death, and never found a repeat. Fresh snow also silences a landscape, because the air trapped between crystals absorbs sound instead of reflecting it — the quiet after a snowfall is real, not imagined.
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 #22 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #21. Next: mystery #23. Or try #48, #49, #50, #51, #52, #53.