Rein or Shine Solution

You get a set of letters and a will. The only interesting piece of information from the will is the extraction method (which is the table below). Your goal is to understand the relationships of the people writing and receiving the letters. So really the solve steps are:

  1. Make a family tree using the letters

  2. Realize there are different letter senders and they always use the same stationary. They are:

    SenderStationary
    Ollie
    Tanya
    Catherine
    George
    Margaret
    Geraldine
    Maureen

  3. Using the family tree, identify the names for the relationships listed in the payout table of the will

  4. Final extraction is indexing into names from the will with their payout amount.

LineNumNameIndexNotes
To the brother of our missing girl1PaulPTanya's missing (Letters 1,2,5,6, 22)
Kat is "like a mother to Tanya" (Letter 5) (Kat is Geraldine's mom)
Geraldine is Tanya's sister in law (Letter 22)
Geraldine is married to Paul (Letter 30)
To my oldest friend – we weren’t brothers by blood but by choice5MichaelAMichael and Herb are bffs (Letters 3, 14, 32)
To the mother of my future great granddaughter-in-law, or so I hear8MargaretTMargaret is Lindsay's mother (Letter 9,11)
There are wedding rumors about Lawrence and Lindsay (Letters 3, 8, 11,12, 24,30)
Lawrence is Herb's great grandson by:
Lawrence is the son of Geraldine (Letter 24)
Geraldine is the daughter of Kat (Letter 2)
Ollie is the son of Jacob (Letters 6, 17)
Ollie's grandfather is Herb (Letter 4)
Jacob, Kat and George are Siblings (Letters 10, 17)
To my young and foolish son4GeorgeRHerb has two sons, Jacob and George:
Ollie is the son of Jacob (Letters 6, 17)
Ollie's grandfather is Herb (Letter 4)
George is Herb's son (Letter 14)
Jacob, Kat and George are Siblings (Letters 10, 17)
Of the two, George abandoned his girlfriend creating drama and is having a whirlwind romance with Uma, so "foolish": (Letters 13, 15, 20, 23, 25, 28)
George is also the "younger" brother (Letter 17)
To my forlorn grandson, love Granddaddy4OllieIOllie has a Granddaddy Herb (Letter 4)
Ollie was abandoned by Tanya (Letters 1, 6)
To my sweet wife with every last ounce of my soul
To a close family friend – apologies on behalf of my son4MaureenRGeorge is Herb's son (Letter 14)
George abandoned Maureen (Letter 13, 20, 23)
To the father of our only set of Eckleburg twins3JacobCOllie and Owen are twins (Letter 26)
Jacob and May are Owen's parents (Letters 6,17)
Ollie's grandfather is Herb (Letter 4)
To my friends’ granddaughter for her unfortunate son4CatherineH"My friend" would be Michael, working in the Schaeffer tree (Letters 3, 14, 32)
Jimmy has some sever deformities/boils (Letters 11, 20)
Jimmy is the son of Catherine (Letters 8, 11)
Catherine is the granddaughter of Michael:
Catherine is the daughter of Penelope (Letter 3)
Petunia and Penelope are Michael's daughters (Letter 14)

Solution

PATRIARCH

GC Notes

This is the complete family tree resulting from the letters.

And the Excel spreadsheet behind the whole thing.