unforum

[cassandra]

I'm responding here also to the Sentinel 'Holyoke's Wife Found' thread, because I think recent posts there might more properly be discussed here in full.

To wit:

I don't think we are supposed to have very much substantive information that could lead us to the cube answer at this time. I suspect this game has many, many months to play out, given what we know about the release and extent of puzzle cards, whispers of a videogame, unreleased websites, the possibility of a physical 'unearthing,' etc.

Also, tops on my 'to interrogate' list regarding the cube is still Henrik Tanner. And I think we *need* to find out what happened to Hesketh Zeller. (Scarlett has been, naturally, nonresponsive to all my emails on this one.)

[Leeravitz]

Yep, I quite agree (if that hasn't become clear already!). There *is* a substantial question as to how long the game is likely to pan out for, and I do think that will affect strongly how much meaningful information wings itself our way. I guess it could all be over six months from now, but I kinda hope not. On the other hand, are MC hoping that we'll all stick with it for 2 - 3 years? Makes you wonder (altho I guess there was enough of a break between Syzygy and the current point!!).

I do feel that, given the obvious amount of intellectual talent available to the boards at the moment, it's pretty unlikely that we would have missed blatant clues or put meaningful constructions on matters, if significant connections were clearly to be found. My suspicion is that most of what we've been given so far is just 'noise', not 'information' (in the cybernetic sense). We agree that the card game proper hasn't started yet, so perhaps the mystery game proper hasn't really got going in earnest either...

It certainly feels like we're moving forward incrementally at the moment, through no fault of our own...

[terminalskeptik]

[Leeravitz]

Maybe so, maybe so. But if I was just putting on a logical hat, I'd say that there's no obvious reason that the Futures Section should hold 'clues' by default, just because it looks weird. In that sense, it's not unlike a lot of astrological prognostications.

If we accept that the Sentinel is really published in a more or less identical format to that we recieve for the reading benefit of the good folks of Perplex City, then it wouldn't necessarily be written in such a way as to encode lots of complicated puzzles to be cracked. The cards carry puzzles, but we know something about why that should be so. If clues to the mystery are likely to appear in the Sentinel, they would emerge coincidentally, as different pieces of news come to light that have a bearing on the central mystery. Sometimes, the writers won't even be aware that the story in itself has any connection to the Cube theft...but we, hopefully, will be able to join the dots...

There might, however, be other possibilities. Maybe, in a puzzle - mad culture, the newspaper is written in such a way that it contains all sorts of meta - levels of logic. On the other hand, it does have a dedicated puzzles section, so maybe not.

Equally, if there's a conspiracy somewhere, and it's infiltrated the Sentinel offices, then maybe some kind of code is being broadcast through the Futures pages...but the key's always changing, or so it seems...

Finally, doesn't the existence of that page presuppose that the City has some kind of firmament overhead? Could that happen in a virtual environment? And who knows what the signification of the actual zodiac signs are...!