[mortality]

Ah. Fair enough.

If you're trying to crack those, why not ask Ethan to get the information Frank logged for those trackbacks and comments? It may at least provide another way to get whatever solution we're supposed to find.

We do kind of have to assume those posts were significant. So it's worth trying.

[dashcat]

Quote:

The code monkeys who have gone AWOL were much better with straight ciphers. The 0702 note was more their kind of thing.

I'm sorry, I should have referenced the codes/puzzles I meant.

frhogmcr,

URL=http://tencnyjb.com tavjvjxx[/URL] ovvcyadq http://megldluu.com zocvzzbd qcecjfji rxvjacdm,

hlbgvloi…

hlbgvloi…

e57c098e2c6a61f92562…

e57c098e2c6a…

92b302e7c7b2a403890c…

92b302e7c7b2…

[mortality]

Sure, but I think Directors Patel and Kennedy would still like to know which fanboys. Maybe so they can join the club?

[Rogi Ocnorb]

So lets just report to WF that all this is all simply fanboy art and not anything their charter was meant to include.

[mortality]

Rogi Ocnorb wrote:

The Charmed reference is a perfect example of what I was trying to say, earlier. We really shouldn't be adding fictional arcana to our melting pot. WF is, so far, based on reasonably well-established paranormal canon and R/L reported phenomenon. The bulk of our posted sentences already include words like "could", "maybe" and "might". An unfortunate telltale of our overall cluelessness. While doing a supernatural/paranormal game is much easier and attractive to PMs than say, a tech offering, PMs should also realize that having such a wide array of mythos built upon mythos to try and find a path through means that we may have trouble finding the Wikipedia reference they were using when they were building it out. Maybe more targeted hints would help. A historical reference that actually leads to a single cohesive noun or event would be welcome.

I was kind of joking. On the other hand, the PMs have spent a lot of time referring directly to fictional literature. MSG1 is Tolkien. Each book from MSG2 is from the magical realist fiction genre. If Casa's right, Ethan keeps on titling his blog posts based on a graphic novel (each of the titles is actually a fictional paranormal entity in that series). It would not be surprising if they were directing us to look at pop cultural portrayals of fantasy.

0702 and the things Ethan's investigated are the sources of real life paranormal phenomenon and canonical magic/alchemy.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

The Charmed reference is a perfect example of what I was trying to say, earlier. We really shouldn't be adding fictional arcana to our melting pot.

WF is, so far, based on reasonably well-established paranormal canon and R/L reported phenomenon.

The bulk of our posted sentences already include words like "could", "maybe" and "might". An unfortunate telltale of our overall cluelessness.

While doing a supernatural/paranormal game is much easier and attractive to PMs than say, a tech offering, PMs should also realize that having such a wide array of mythos built upon mythos to try and find a path through means that we may have trouble finding the Wikipedia reference they were using when they were building it out. Maybe more targeted hints would help. A historical reference that actually leads to a single cohesive noun or event would be welcome.

[casablanca]

More Meta

[mortality]

Sylvia, did you have to alter the shapes to combine them, or did they fit naturally?

Cryto is allegedly a demon. So the study of demonic entities might be what they're getting at with 'crytozoological'. In which case, if there's a ritual summoning a demon, 0702 is right up WF's alley. I mean, you want weird, here's weird: Summoning Cryto (according to Charmed, the tv series).

Quote:

# To Call Cryto: Must possess a form of a human made of flesh and the spell must be chanted by three witches: We call on the demon Cryto. Reach back throughout the ages. Humbled by his power, we invite him into our circle.

More generally:
I have a hunch that the back-channel from Christopher, plus Ethan's pessimistic opinion about what Jade will find after 1/8/08 might be telling us that we won't get much in the way of an answer in that direction. Again, I've been wrong before, so maybe they'll provide something good for us.

For that matter, I also expected we'd have a MSG5 with a pentagram by now, but maybe we have to solve the first four puzzles to get it?

The code monkeys who have gone AWOL were much better with straight ciphers. The 0702 note was more their kind of thing.

I do think the puzzles are a bit obscure and we aren't getting a lot of help, but the PMs have provided some hints for MSG1 and MSG2. On MSG2 they told us to double-check our work and that's how we figured out that "commanded" might be the right clue. Ethan confirmed that our "poem" hunch was right, and independent of the soundtrack to Jade's test video, they tried to direct us to the right Tolkien poem by dropping references to Lord of the Rings.

Now they're telling us to look at John Dee and a symbolic king. But for which puzzle? And how? Again, what kind of puzzle is it? What kind of solution are we looking for? How do we get to it by applying their hints?

ETA: another meta problem with this game is that Ethan, who allegedly doesn't know the solution to the puzzles, is the one providing us with the puzzles. It kind of complicates things...how do you discuss his hints with him?

ETA2:

Quote:

Ethan, Fair enough about the Hawthorne Group. As the Zen Master said: we'll see. Well, John Dee coined the phrase "British Empire." He identified King Arthur as the first person to initiate British Christian Imperialism. However, John Dee, being affiliated with alchemy, also seems to have an interest in King Solomon. There's a whole sub-set of Renaissance and Medieval magic literature that deals with things like the Key of Solomon, Solomon's Triangle, and the like. As far as the Grail goes, and it's a reach, if we're talking about a chalice, then when it's viewed from above it looks like a circle. If it's bloodlines...well, that's another story. The circle could also be a crown... It's nice to have two puzzles "solved," but jeez, could it be any harder to interpret the answers? We've also been mulling what you mentioned about Spearmint and free websites. Maybe we're ultimately looking for 0701 to lead to one. If so, still confused about how to pull a URL from these puzzles. Cheers, Mort

The PMs probably read the forums, at least Jade does, I think, but might as well complain to them directly.

[yellowcard]

Typoxic wrote:

We just need more fresh perspectives from puzzle-solvey types.

Who do you think we are?

Seriously, it is frustrating to hit a wall on an ARG that seems very well structured and interesting. I've been looking at that triangle and square now really hard over the last 48 hours and I can't come up with any angles other than historical connection or anagrams... and there are too many letters on MSG4 to come up with an anagram.

Having said that, I'm holding out hope that our new moon event in a few days will shed some light on where we are headed.

[Sylvia]

I just realized I uploaded the wrong image to flickr last night. I just now uploaded the correct version and sent the link to Ethan.

correct image should have been http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamsylvia2/2173092162/

dashcat wrote:

I like supernatural and paranormal. I have no problem with the subject matter of this game and I find the whole presentation charming. I don't much care for PMs making me feel dumb through incredulous posts by in game characters. If we aren't getting the puzzles then the problem is with the puzzles, not the players.

I see where you are coming from and I agree. For example, how were we suppose to get that poem from all those Xs. It was just luck that it was even stumbled upon. I do enjoy the story line. I guess what I'm growing tired of is the myths. They all seem to tell the same story with different names for the gods/goddesses, etc.. Anyone would have to have a cross referenced database as big as Texas to keep track of how they are all related.

The other thing that confuses me is this from http://whitechapelfoundation.org/index.html

Quote:

The Whitechapel Foundation is chartered to document and investigate reports of paranormal events and crytozoological entities. ‡ If you have experienced the inexplicable, please contact us with a complete description of the event. Include the location, date and time of the event along with your preferred method of contact. Depending on the nature of the report a Foundation researcher may contact you for additional information.

I'm not sure if rituals and burning angles on street corners is consider paranormal or not. And so far I haven't seen anything that points to anything related to cryptozoology which I assume they meant with the misspelled word crytozoological unless that relates to a whole different matter.

[Sylvia]

Not much to go on, but

[dashcat]

I like supernatural and paranormal. I have no problem with the subject matter of this game and I find the whole presentation charming.

I don't much care for PMs making me feel dumb through incredulous posts by in game characters.

If we aren't getting the puzzles then the problem is with the puzzles, not the players.

If the PMs didn't get the puzzle experts they were hoping for then they need to adjust their game to the players they did get.

I notice that a couple of the "code monkeys" who were playing before are not playing now. I notice that they never solved these puzzles either.

[mortality]

[General Spec]
Maybe we're going to the opposite extreme of simplicity now by looking only at the handwritten page number/clue? MSG1 and MSG2 both had unique solves. It's important to crack MSG3 and MSG4 as well, unless our PMs decided to torture us by handing us solvable puzzles with no ultimate relationship to the big picture.

My feeling is that the page number/clue will guide us in figuring out how the four puzzles relate to each other and maybe the other case, but that won't be readily apparent until we have the solution. It's good to have ideas as to how that stuff connects now, but we won't know which is right until we solve MSG3 and MSG4.

If Ethan is telling us to think more simply, then he's probably directing us to figure out the logic of the last two puzzles. Maybe the connections we've tried to find for Enlil, Ahasuerus and W. Wallace aren't meaningful.

What kind of puzzles are we looking at for 0701? Maybe anagrams for both? Maybe Simson Lines for MSG3?
What kind of solution do we expect to get? Ethan seemed to say that Spearmint's comments on 0702 may be a red herring. However, he did tell us to try to find a site on a free web host. Could that apply to 0701, too? Maybe the 0701 puzzles are directing us to a website?

[Kings and Solomon]
References to Solomon also appear in medieval/renaissance references to magic. For instance the Triangle of Art already mentioned or grimoires like the Key of Solomon. John Dee could be familiar with him. He also could be familiar with King Arthur. Ethan seemed to be steering us away from King Arthur.

[meta] Short version: me too, but I'm going to stick around.

Long version: Other than the occasional fantasy novel, I'm also not really a fan of it or the paranormal. here are only two reasons I even bothered with this game/story was because I had a mostly favorable experience with Djinn's other project, OverWatch. I liked the espionage story they created, how they populated it with well thought-out characters, justified the puzzles they threw at us, and did a good job with player interaction.

It's just a little too hard to suspend disbelief when dealing with the paranormal stories. The other reason I continued was because the purpose of this game intrigued me. They wanted it to be an open collaboration (something they struggled with in OverWatch); they really made the 4th wall disappear, most notably by including the production company and Jade into the story; and they're taking a skeptical approach to everything.

At this point, we've already sunk a month into the game and come up with a few solves, so I'll willingly fall for the psychological trap and stick around to justify my investment.

[Sylvia]

Rogi wrote:

Personally, I find it increasingly hard to invest a lot of time or effort in the paranormal themed games. I don't know if others are getting as tired of the theme as I am, but that may be a reason for what looks like a small player base.

You're not the only one.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

I can usually hold my own with the "puzzle solvey types" and can say that what typically gets (or keeps) them going is what Jared Spool called "the scent of information" (The concept which makes Wikipedia so popular).

Personally, I find it increasingly hard to invest a lot of time or effort in the paranormal themed games. I don't know if others are getting as tired of the theme as I am, but that may be a reason for what looks like a small player base.

Or, there could be a lot of lurkers. I can't count the number of times I've checked this thread, seen some small update and started looking around for clues. After spending (progressively less) time spinning my wheels, I move on to another thread having found a ton of marginally related nothing which serves only to obfuscate any real solve.

Like the numbers in Christopher's email. I too, thought 'IP Address' and checked the whois, (forward and backward) and applied a lot of Kama Sutra to the numbers and the best I could come up with was Mod(26) which gives "JPGF" after an alpha conversion. Hardly worth posting about, though. It must just be the case numbering system they use.

I lost the scent.

I'd like to find justification for Christopher's apparent back-channeling of the "don't go there" message and just can't. If only it were as easy as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce makes it look to connect all the obscure arcana.

At this point, I don't much care about the bigger picture for this game and am only curious to see how the mechanics of the puzzles/meta-puzzles was supposed to work.

*Rogi crosses his fingers for Orbital Colony II