Talk:Puzzles
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About unsolved puzzles
Dating System
Although it is likely that "the replication of the compass in 180" on p. 8 refers to an event that occurs in the year DOR 180, it is perhaps noteworthy that this would be the only time that "DOR" is not explicitly used. One possibility is that the phrase refers to 180 degrees; perhaps some experiment related to Go.D.S.E.E.D. caused a reversal of the poles.
About solved puzzles
Simple ... and Direct
Here were a couple of the main theories:
Numbers to Letters
If we plug in the right numbers, the table will result in an important phrase. The input may be a thirty-digit number or a sequence of smaller numbers separated by dashes
Letters to Numbers
If we plug in the right phrase, the table will result in an important number or series of numbers. The phrase will be thirty letters long.
- Dashes to dashes: Dashes in the puzzle represent dashes in the solution. The result is a sequence of five numbers, 5 digits on average, separated by dashes. Possibly zip codes. No known anagram gives evenly spaced dashes.
- Fill in the blanks: Dashes in the puzzle need to be filled in with yet unknown numbers. The result is a 30 digit sequence of numbers. This could also be zip codes.
- Boggle: The phrase is to be constructed using adjacent letters.
- Jumble: The location of the letters is meaningless. One possibility is that the anagram reads "Work in the sun: grow your family tree". This would yield 61629402250--8001-24065-90-532. The first five digits are a zip code for Peoria, IL; the next five for the GE plant in Louisville; the next ten cannot be determined without more numbers; the next five for New Haven, CT; the next five are undetermined.
Some other phrases that could potentially appear in the anagram: "M-ROTOR RESEATING", "TREASURE HUNTER M", "MILWAUKEE", "WHY NOT MAKE IT YOURS".
Use http://www.oneacross.com/anagrams/ to find anagrams. The letters are HKAMFGLSEEERRRRWWYYNNTTIIUUOOO.
A useful little page for translating a letter sequence into its number sequence (assuming the common idea of using low subscripted letters before higher ones). http://hosted.xamai.ca/27.php
Clues
Mike got drunk and sent an email that said: thosssse ficking empty cels anmd all out of order
And in another call he said, "I can tell you that those final five cells are extremely crucial."
update
It now seems clear that it was a (mostly) jumbled letter-to-number conversion (with the last five letters reading straight across the last line). The letters spell out "Surely you know what I'm referring to," a phrase used frequently in the original video and later correspondence with MTC. Using the obvious substitution cipher (subscripts refer to second and later occurrences of a given letter), the result is
5062910122406026095830245_____.
Outline of the main thread of speculation which appears to have shown concrete results: Arraiging those digits into a grid, reordering the rows them based on the first digits, the last three digits could be times, those times all have visible family trees. The other time that shows a family tree is 138. Putting that with "20" as the first two digits (which place that time in sequence with the others), one has "20138". the url http://thisismymilwaukee.com/20138/ exists, and returns the number "1230768000". There is no other page source code.
Further, less certain, speculation:
- 1230768000 is a date.
- 1230768000 is a code used in POSIX, a timestamp representing midnight Jan. 1 2009. Typing the string into Google reveals it in several urls, all calendar related.
The Doleful City
The graph on page 26 measures depth along the y-axis and the energy of muon across the x-axis. The title is an obvious reference to Dante's Inferno:
- I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY,
- I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF,
- I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN RACE.
- JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR;
- DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
- AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE.
- BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
- WERE MADE, AND I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY.
- ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER.
- Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno. Page 89, Lines 1-9, Canto III, Penguin Classics, Indiana University, 2003
This could possibly be the way into the tomb of the Go.D.S.E.E.D. if only we knew how to read it.
Notice that the numbers in the first row are all in multiples of 3. People, (teens specifically) are advised to travel in groups of 3 while in sector 21.
The graph may be part of a map of Central Park, when used in conjunction with the fax and the SF dead drop.
I think that this was sufficiently solved after the January 17th meeting. I moved it to the solved puzzle section and combined it with the Central Park Map. --Robblatt 09:40, 8 February 2009 (MST)