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[Dionysus]

Well, I checked for Stegging the other day at Sin Vraal's behest and logo.jpg came out clean. As for something else hidden in the actual image, I fear I do not have the software for such analysis.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Looks like just the normal compression artifacts associated w/the .jpg format.
But, I'm no graphics whiz.

EDIT: I'm wondering if there isn't some kind of base conversion puzzle here, though.
We all recognize 16 as a commonly used number base and I've heard that Base85 is used sometimes when dealing with images (although I don't know how).
The fact that this road accesses an Air Force Reserve base just makes me wonder.

[Dionysus]

As seen here, Seth has reached the same conclusion as many of us have after the past day or two of searching... geography is not the way to go. I'm dissappointed.. I was really a supporter of that idea. Eh, live and learn.

So what does that leave us with? Math and cryptology. Clearly much of the puzzles have been cipher heavy, so thats a plus.

Let's look at what we have to work with now that geography's out.

- The number 85
- the series of number 1-16 (seperated by commas)
- (Possibly) the word Arizona or its abbreviation -AZ, this could be meaningless but I wonder if there's a specific reason for choosing this state
- Even less likely, the actual geometric shape of the state, especially as seen in the sign. Its silly, but I'm mentioning everythign I can think of.

So.. where do we go from here? I'll be working on it, you can count on that.

[Shelina]

As someone else told some posts above, maybe some base16 conversion would work here.
I've tried converting 'Arizona' and '85' form base10 to base16 and from base16 to base10... but no luck

[Shelina]

Probably this is not related to the puzzle, but just in case....

In the pictures Steven sent in his last mail (the disk), there are:
- an #86 wirtten in the box (we have a 85 in the puzzle...)
- a code in the envelope: CX60616 (16?)

Steven has never used pictures in his mails as part of the puzzles, but who knows...

[enaxor]

[Shelina]

[Dionysus]

IN light of our brainstorming session with Seth, we have come to a few conclusions/theories.

A) AZ is in fact refering to the alphabet

B) the numbers 1-16 can be represented as WORDS as well (one, two, three, four...) and perhaps as a set of first letters of those words (ottffssentettffs)

So now we have a new jumping off point.. lets work some magic people!

[Dionysus]

Some more things we've been trying over in IRC

For now we've been with collectiosn of the first letters of the words for the numbers.

Now since there is sixteen of them, which is a perfect square, I tried putting them into such a square

[Axys Denyed]

Tried sending an email to 81115541491761610133122SPLATmaefamily.info and received this reply:

[Dionysus]

I've emailed Seth with the solve. I also asked him to find out where Steven went to elementary school. Since it may be connected to this next puzzle.

Ok, so enaxor found that the image was stegged! Using the password Watson and JPhide/seek he pulled out the attached file.

[Shelina]

The image is from http://www.paulscharffphotography.com/nj-elementarymydear.htm
The quote "Elementary, my dear" is actually the name of the photo

[Dionysus]

SO far... I thought that perhaps, again the numbers were letters. Sicne the quote told us to "eliminate the impossible" I deleted all numbers over 26 and converted to letters which gives us

jtyzrjnxnt

So far emailing that gives no joy, and rotting it doesnt yeild anything clearer.

[1keupon1peukon]

in the stegged text the quote

[Sherlock_Holmes]

Point of Clarification (From Holmes)