Would that work, I wonder? - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 29/06/2010 11:27:54 AM
EDIT: Also, articles and the like are capitalized when they are the first word of a title, so: "ACoS" and "TGS" (not "aCoS" and "tGS. " ) Sorry to be nitpicky, but it's been bugging me for a while.
They aren't proper abbreviations, and some leave them out altogether. I lowercase them to prevent them from distracting people and making them take another second to figure out which book I am referring to. I seldom think about the articles in the titles and only acknowledge them to be precise. If we're going to be persnickity about grammer rules, shouldn't the abbreviations be punctuated?
They should, yes, but I've given up on that since it seems pretty common on the internet to omit abbreviations. Not just on the internet or recently either; when's the last time you saw someone write "C.I.A." or "I.R.S."? Conceding that point does not, however, mean I'm willing to surrender completely, and while people routinely omit articles and common prepositions in acronyms and abbreviations, IF we're going to use them we should use them correctly. Which incidentally means it should be "SCotUS" not "SCOTUS" but I don't expect to win that argument.
As for the real issue, it doesn't seem that hard to figure out. IIRC, she kept them in her room. You go into her room, find the likely hiding places for a bulky collar & bracelet set-up, and it should be fairly quick. I think her protections were basically like a safe, rather than a hiding place. Protect it so well it doesn't matter if they can find it. In this case, Semirhage was equal to the task of cracking the safe.
I disagree; the section where she takes the Wise Ones to see it makes clear that she intentionally provided a much more obvious decoy. It's not like everything of value was in that one non-descript box: The adam and the Choedan Kal access key, nothing else. Also, when Rand confronts her with the box later there's nothing else present: It wasn't that someone tore her room apart until they found the adam, they knew exactly where to go to get exactly what they wanted, and did. That means they knew where it was already, and that was hardly common knowledge.