RSC Blog

Towering geniuses were often underappreciated in their day – Picasso, Stravinsky and the like. So when presented with an entry to our Italian Job competition that is so complex as to border on unreadable, I hesitated to immediately label it “bonkers”.

From Mitch Groves (”a.k.a. Mitch Groves”) in Pasadena, California, I received a mind-boggling submission. It seems to include a complex understanding of chemical bonding and fundamental principles. I think. It’s a bit hard to tell.

I reproduce it here (after the jump) in the hope someone with greater cranial capacity than I can make sense of it: perhaps Mr Groves’s entry will be the Petrushka of the 22nd century.

We will be announcing the winner of our competition on or around the 20th January, having searched through nearly 2000 entries for the most rigorously proven hypothesis. Thank you for a puzzling but enjoyable read, Mr Groves.

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Over a thousand responses into our Italian Job competition and things are getting tight. Many keen mathematicians have applied rigourously Newton’s laws of motion, and any others they can get their hands on, to prove their problem-solving worth.

It seems, however, that their efforts may have been in vain. I had an email from the Leatherhead Drama Festival Organising Committee, reproduced with kind permission:

Sir Michael with the award (picture: Andy Newbold)

“We are at a loss as to why there is so much urgent panic to explain how the bullion would have been rescued. The coach featured in the “Italian Job” (1969) is still teetering on the edge…..of the “Sir Michael Caine Drama Award” trophy, a unique steel construction with an authentic coach which is still rocking, dangerously.  The Drama Award trophy is presented in May each year at the Leatherhead Drama Festival (in Surrey) by Sir Michael Caine himself (aka Charlie Croker).

“The trophy was designed and constructed by ‘Fire and Iron’ at Rowhurst Forge in North Leatherhead. The enclosed pictures show Sir Michael contemplating the coach on the cliff-edge and struggling with the trophy as he prepares to present it to the Winning Drama Group, recently.  How the coach was miraculously reduced in size and whether the gold is still intact within the coach has not been ascertained, but enquiries are still continuing.

“However, the present size of the haul and therefore its current value may render the extraction uneconomic.”

The photo, taken by Andy Newbold, is also reproduced with the kind permission of David Brett of the Leatherhead Drama Festival Organising Committee. Thank you David!

A gratifyingly huge response to our “Save the Italian Job gold” competition has left me deluged by the crazy schemes of wannabe criminal masterminds.

One entry has made a distinct impression – not for its scientific exactitude, but its artistic skill. The image below was sent to us by Piers Mawhood, clearly a talented artist. Many thanks Piers!

Piers Mawhood's watercolour of the Italian Job cliffhanger

We asked the public to provide us with sound mathematical proof that the $4m worth of gold bullion, and Charlie Croker’s crew, can be rescued from the literal cliff-hanger of the 1969 classic The Italian Job.

Featured in the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Channel 4 News and on Have I Got News For You – not to mention the hallowed Pete’s PR Hall of Fame – the competition has sparked the keenest intellects in the country… and some less keen.