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[Empty Eyes]

[SPEC] 1-800-PERPLEX ???

[GuyP]

Does somebody else in the USA want to try this?

Welcome aboard, Empty Eyes! Can't be sure about that number just yet, but that's some lateral thinking if I ever saw it.

[Shadowjack]

I'm usually just a lurker, but this one has caught my interest. I called the number that Empty Eyes referred to (just to make sure I'm not an idiot...800-737-7539) and I got the same thing, but the first few words appeared to be "This is Ernest Knott (sp?), with Swift Train (one or two words, not sure). I'm sorry I'm away from the telephone, however if you'll leave a message, I'll get right back to you, and thank you for calling me." I googled swifttrain (many hits, none appeared immediately relevant), Swift Train (same results) Ernest Knott (usu. genealogy stuff, and a hit on some income tax forum), and a search on http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/ shows the number being active since 2004 with MCI. Incidentally 888-737-7539 gets an answering machine for something that I can't make out...Accu??? who is on vacation until July 5th. How about it Empty Eyes? Want to try and decipher that one? BTW, I like your OTB thinking!!

[jshall]

Errrr not really playing this... but I just called 888-737-7539 someone picked up and Im pretty sure this is oog.

[am520dj]

[Scott]

valid toll fFree area codes are 800, 888, 877, and 866. As ma bell ran out of one trunk, she opened another, and another, and another.

I'm voting fFor this being OOG, as there has been no hint or clue we should look fFor it. However i like the way you think, Empty Eyes.

In some likelyhood, this may be a personal line. As 800 numbers became a little more widespread, the telcos started advertising them fFor personal use. Rather than expect everyone to call your home phone in kalamazoo and fFoot all the bills, you could now get a toll fFree line so you pick up the charges and everyone else calls fFor fFree. Especially useful fFor people with kids at college who need to call home a lot, or people with long distance relationships.

This boom in 800 line sales led to them needing to make more available, such as the 888s, 877s, and 866s

fFrom the answering message, It sounds to me like this is a personal line, and the PERPLEX numistry is but a coincidence. I suppose someone could call and leave a message saying "did you know your number spells 'PERPLEX'?" I would want to know that sort of trivia. but i'm weird. and might have chosen the number because of that, even.

[Empty Eyes]

Yeah, it might be a coincidence. Though, thanks for clearing it up a little ShadowJack.

Have you guys also tried 1-800-THE-CUBE? I got an answer on that one.

[Empty Eyes]

And i tried 1-888-PERPLEX, another answering machine. But at the end of the message, he mentions the link IQPuzzles.com, now that could be related to the puzzle cards...?

[BrianEnigma]

Here's my take on things: if the game does utilize an 800 number, then the people running it are going to smartly handle it like the do the web pages. Someone did some DNS trickery to obtain a list of domain names running at the same IP address as the known web sites, but going to those permaturely (i.e. before we had any clues or anything story-related to make us realize those pages exist), they were just splash pages. If there really is an 800 number associated with Perplex City (which I kind of doubt--isn't that mostly a North American thing?), then it will likely be useless, for instance a blank outgoing message, until we are "supposed" to know about it.

Consider the people at the other end of the phone. They have to pay for all of the incoming calls, and it would suck to have hundreds of people (maybe even some international calls) dialing their fancy 800-PERM-KEY number, leaving cryptic messages.