When Planetarium was first released, we challenged readers to see who would be the first to solve it completely. This is now known as the 9/9/99 Competition (because that’s when it started), and twelve weeks later, several people had indeed completed it. To help distinguish between them, Planetarium contained a tiebreaker. The tiebreaker was simply to suggest a name for the girl central to the Planetarium story — she’s never explicitly named in the story (the oddity of this is somewhat justified when you find the tiebreaker for yourself).
Now the competition is over the tiebreaker serves no function, but we kept it in as an interesting diversion for readers working through the story. As a result, from time to time readers still post new suggestions in the xiii Forum.
Two years after Planetarium’s release, we decided to compile our favourite suggestions and present them outside of the xiii Forum. If you are currently working through Planetarium you might prefer not to read further — there are no ‘spoilers’ here, but the tiebreakers were suggested by people who, by definition, had the benefit of knowing the complete story. Also, remember that we offer no firm confirmation of what the girl is really called. Maybe we know, maybe we don’t, but either way we’re not saying. You can decide for yourself.
The reader-name of whoever originally nominated the name is shown too.
Palindromes
Anagrams and Word-play
Contrived Names and Allusions (Classical, Temporal or Astronomical)