My most plausible hypothesis is that their plan for fooling Rita Skeeter is some incredibly clever black box that Eliezer hasn’t bothered to fill in, even for himself, because it’s simply not that important to the plot to waste time coming up with something suitably clever they might have done.
To be honest that passage didn’t strike me as strong enough to warrant inventing a fake black box. It’s the sort of thing that is only worth putting in there because you’ve thought of a clever way to do it but just coming out with it directly feels slow story wise and it is better to give folks a chance to guess.
To be honest that passage didn’t strike me as strong enough to warrant inventing a fake black box. It’s the sort of thing that is only worth putting in there because you’ve thought of a clever way to do it but just coming out with it directly feels slow story wise and it is better to give folks a chance to guess.