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[potostfbeyeluvr]

Sice I'm guessing you're referring to me, AngBa, I'd just like to clarify. I don't know who he is. In fact, I'm assuming the 'he.' I don't know 'his' name, age, gender, or anything else about him. I wouldn't want to. All that he's really told me about the game that I didn't know is that he's the one who made the first two puzzles, and that he's not the only PM. We talked about some meta issues, sure. But not as 'Kara to the PM of the game she's playing,' as 'Kara to a person who made a contriversial move that involves Kara personally.' We discussed the events of the weekend, and how important it is for players of any game to mark a message as in-game or out of game.

The way I know that they're late in updating is that he said he'd found a way to fix the weekend events in the game, and it should all be resolved by that night. It isn't like he's sending me game secrets or update schedules. Also, before the trail went cold, I sent him a reply, and at the end said that to keep myself securley in game, I thought even our OOG meta discussions should stop until the game was over. There's no reason to worry, IMO.

In my above post, I was asking a favor on the behalf of a stranger. But a stranger who has, IMO, shown outstanding moral character and great remorse for a mistake he made. I'll stick up for anyone that I think has those characteristics, whether I know them or not. So don't fear that I know him, or anything about the game that I shouldn't. I'd be mad if I did, because I want to play this game like anyone else.

So, no one needs to worry about me. I know what you know. I had a convo with a minor PM about ethics in ARGs. All ARGs. Ethical issues that had affected me. No more than that.

[Snic]

Bah, I go to watch Silent Hill and Synthesis actually contacts me in-game:

[Elferien]

[negativeview]

The diagrams are classic electronics. Wee! I love electronics, though I'm probably rusty by now. I'm working on it though, have five of the output bits figured out so far, working on "reverse engineering" the rest. Interesting puzzle!

[Elferien]

[negativeview]

The first two pages are (I believe) simply to sortof explain the puzzle. The first shows the letter N being broken down into binary, with each bit labelled. The second page simply explains that you use certain labels as binary and reconstruct them into letters.

The other two pages are filled with electronics logic gates and a few other ICs that you can find the logic behind on the Internet. The trick is that you don't have all of the inputs!

I've gotten far enough that I wrote a little script (I'm all about writing programs to make my work easier) that says that one of the following is true:

1) The output is not a plain-text word
2) The output is not in /usr/share/dict/words (unlikely, there are 234,936 words in there)
3) The word is 'Ballerina'

I am now going to assume that the word is ballerina and try to work backward to get the input word(s).

If someone wants to go ahead and work on the text, assuming that the output is the key, then try using ballerina as the key and let me know how it goes.

[SinJin]

Ladies and Getlemen, Ballerina is our keyword! It's the same as before, starting the cipher over with every paragraph. I'm still working on a full translation.

[negativeview]

Yay! I actually helped in a puzzle! The input seems to be either more than one word, or I messed up somewhere. That makes it harder. Since we have verification that the output is correct, I'm going to attend to things that need to be done in the real world. If someone thinks that the input is going to be needed sometime, I'll try reversing everything again.

[SinJin]

You're right. But the question in the first paragraph,

[Elferien]

[negativeview]

[SinJin]

No, the note is new. I had a window of it up, forgot about it, and opened a new one. In case any of the text changed, I copied down the original text. There are no obvious differences, though, other than the note.

[Elferien]

[Elferien]

[negativeview]

TRANSLTR was actually the name of the supercomputer. It wasn't used as a key for anything that I'm aware of.

Yeah, the lack of ballerina working anymore was one of the things that took my by surprise after the second (that I saw) update when the diagrams disappeared. Does anyone happen to have a copy of the old page, and can you verify that what we see now as the first paragraph was the second from before? Are we still looking for the digital fortress key for the second paragraph or has _everything_ changed on us?