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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
Library of Babel - Flying
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AtionSong
Unfettered


Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 352

 		I still like the idea of DNA. Here's a brief analysis:

Code:
ATIONSONG'S BASIC GUIDE TO DNA
=============================
* DNA is a series of bases - either A, C, T, or G.
* DNA has two sides, each with a string of bases. However, if there is an
   A on one side, there is a corresponding T on the other, or vice versa,
   and if there is a C on one side, there is a G on the other.
* A piece of DNA can be replicated into a strand of RNA. The RNA will
  contain the same code as the DNA, only T will be replaced by U.
* Each set of three pairs of bases in the RNA contains the code for one
   specific amino acid
* Specific amino acids form proteins

The Theory
=============================
The "mod" and 4 dots in the animation indicate:
   a. that the letters found by the number strings need to be
       mathematically modded down with mod 4.
   b. In mod 4, there are only four numbers - 0, 1, 2, and 3
   c. Each of those numbers corresponds to a base A, C, T, or G
   d. The combination of the bases will indicate various amino acids
       1. The combination of amino acids may indicate a specific protein

The problem is that most proteins contain around one hundred amino acids, making it beyond the range of the strings. An alternative however:

       2. An alternative is that each amino acid has a corresponding letter.
          The amino acids found may spell out a clue.

=============================

I hope that this all makes sense. I'll give this a shot to see if it works. Also, if I had a scientific error in this explanation, please PM me and I will fix it right away. Thanks.

EDIT: Another thing that occured to me is that the letter string could be one protein, with each letter corresponding to one amino acid:
x = none
Code:

F phenylalanine
R arginine
B asparagine
P proline
U x
L leucine
A alanine
F phenylalanine
H histidine
P proline
O x
S serine
M methionine
L leucine
U x
C cysteine
N asparagine
I isoleucine
D aspartic acid
Y tyrosine
M methionine
E glutamic acid
N asparagine
D aspartic acid
B asparagine
K lysine
I isoleucine
E glutamic acid
L leucine
G glycine
T threonine
P proline
D aspartic acid
O x
A alanine
A alanine
K lysine
I isoleucine
L leucine
T threonine
I isoleucine
O x
 


PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 6:11 pm
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jonc
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Joined: 04 Jul 2006
Posts: 144

 		I think this is likely going in the wrong direction. Just because it was spinning in a "look I'm DNA"-type way doesn't mean that it was trying to symbolise DNA.

It wasn't in a double helix, and the fact that "mod" is quite obviously mentioned, and is very related to circularity, I think some people are thinking too much Smile

PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 7:54 pm
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Mikeyj
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Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 1847
Location: London
AtionSong wrote:
EDIT: Another thing that occured to me is that the letter string could be one protein, with each letter corresponding to one amino acid:
x = none


Using the string as a short protein (oligopeptide in case you want to be fancy) doesn't work as U and O aren't used. Ignoring this fact I replaced them with X, which in amino acid terminology stands for any old amino acid and searched for them in known sequences using http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/ specifically BlastP for searching the literal letter string against the protein database and tBlastn which searches against the translated DNA database. To be thorough I repeated this simply removing the U's and O's rather than using X .There were no significant hits found in either case.

Using the string as a protein doesn't work.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 8:14 pm
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ramsfan
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Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 232
Location: holmfirth, yorks

 		dna or not
I tend to agree with jonc, even though the dna idea was elegant. Much of the 7 clues have been story with the odd bit of meat thrown in. I suspect the spiral is just telling us to dig, although the fact that the letters and punctuation marks are in groups of 3 does feel significant. I agree that the 4 dots may indicate a keyword of 4 letters to be applied in a transposition cipher. The obvious ones I've tried with various forms of the letter string are cube, cent and bael (for babel), i.e. I've used it on the straight forward string and on various pairings. One go did point out that you have po followed with a gap by ml, which serves to give you the same letter 4 times, when you're transposing, perhaps just coincidence. I've tried working backwards, i.e. assuming words like the are at the start of the message to find the key. One concern I have with this approach is that the absence of rare letters such as j, x, z, q make you think it doesn't require transposition. On the other hand there's no w which seems odd when we might expect a question or direction. The two commonest letters l and p are separated by the same distance as a and e but don't seem to lead to any rot working, even on say a fourth of the message. I did come across a site called digg.com when I was looking up mod. I was initially hopeful as I hadn't put in dig, but it didn't reveal anything.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:53 am
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jonc
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Posts: 144

 		Re: dna or not
ramsfan wrote:
snip


The four points could refer to either the 4 corners of key square, or least the four letters revealed from the previous "pathways" flash.

I also don't think we have enough letters to do any sort of meaningful frequency analysis.


Digg.com is a social networking/linking site, a bit "web 2.0" (not related to any one topic).

PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:16 am
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drinkmonsters
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Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 89

 		spinning letters
I haven't really been involved in this LOB update, but I thought I'd throw in my random spec.. couldn't hurt right?

so we have this long list of jumbled up nothing from the pathways update. and now we're talking about spinning letters and spinning clocks... letters on top of letters blah blah blah. is it possible to take that long jumble from pathways and overlay a coded message on it to create another message? here lemme give you an example:

I WISH SEASON TWO WOULD START under this we might have
A AAAA BBBBBB AAA ABAAA BBCDA

now the difference inbetween these words would give us another word depending on whether or not you add or subtract values (maybe why some number strings were upside down?)

the final message would be shifted:
1 1111 222222 111 12111 22341 and would become:
J XJTI UGCUQP UXP XQVME UVDVU

anybody get what i'm saying?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:22 am
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		I agree that the DNA idea is going far afield.

This is how I see the communications from CT. When planning the puzzle, CT has to assume that he can only contact us through the cards and through a possible link in the Academy website.

He has no common background with us, so the only thing he can safely assume we can use to solve his puzzle is the information on the cards. If we had had some DNA puzzle to solve in the cards, then I would think this would be a fruitful line of inquiry. At this point, it seems like we are reaching a bit far.

Is there any puzzle we have had that this reminds anyone of? Or even the solution to any puzzle we have had?

I don't know what he is trying to tell us here, maybe we need to go back a step and recheck the letter string? And then ROT it or "spin it", funnel it somehow?
---------

Drinkmaster wrote:

Quote:
I WISH SEASON TWO WOULD START

I think you need to hang in there a bit longer, but it will get here eventually.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:29 am
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Scribe
Unfettered


Joined: 09 Jun 2006
Posts: 300
Location: Brighton, UK

 		Re: spinning letters
drinkmonsters wrote:
now the difference inbetween these words would give us another word depending on whether or not you add or subtract values (maybe why some number strings were upside down?)

anybody get what i'm saying?


Absolutely, although I've only tried this using "COMBEDTHUNDERCLAPCOMBEDTHUNDERCLAPCOM..." as the "addition/subtraction" text (I figured the highlighted M's and E's were a reference to the name...) - didn't find anything there. Maybe some other phrase? Somebody mentioned one of the cards had a solution that was 42 letters...
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:45 am
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myf
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Joined: 30 Dec 2005
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Location: Hiding from squirrels

 		Another brief (and probably irrelevant) post from me, about the 4 dots. I had a quick look through the thread, but didn't see it mentioned. When I see a series of dots, especially in this puzzley kind of environment, I tend to think of Morse code. 4 dots appears to be the letter H in Morse. I don't know if an H anywhere might help with solving this thing.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:52 am
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ramsfan
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Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 232
Location: holmfirth, yorks

 		irrelevant
OK I know it's £100,000/$200,000 (what prescience over the exchange rate) and you have to work for that kind of money, but I'm getting bored. Yes I want to win, but I also want you to win, so we can move on. Season 2 starts quite soon I think, so not long now to that vital final clue, which will be dead and buried before I know it's out there. So a few off the wall thoughts.
You don't think this is all a tie in with Babel (out in UK on the 19th). Is Brad the pit we need to dig? ASByatt's Federica quartet has a verse in a book and a third book called the Babel Tower, and Arsenal want to buy a Dutch international from Ajax called Babel. It all starts to make sense. Hey you don't think Combed Thunderclap hired a white fiat and drove through the Place d'Alma. Someone put me out of my misery and find the b------ thing. Dig up the New York Public Library, the Bodleian, Epping Forest, and blow up a few Macdonalds while you're at it (free of employees and consumers of course).
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:06 pm
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The Sound Ninja
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Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 100
Location: Cedar Park, Texas

 		The Dial
Trout me if necisary (six pages of form is difficult for anyone to read within 40 minutes!), but don't old rotary phones have dials with a number and three letters?

Fancy hotels sometimes have rotary phones in the lobby
to use you ROTATE to the left (like what happens in the flash)
rotary phones are not widley used today, making it rare enough to find anyone who knows anything about it.

BTW, if necisary, trout away.

(also the cube is located in North America, and the only country where english and french are the spoken languages is Canada. *nudge, nudge*)

PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:53 pm
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ampetrizzo
Boot

Joined: 14 Sep 2006
Posts: 54

 		Changing the letters to rotary phone numbers gives this string:

372785234767658264396363254354873722545846

The numbers 1 and 2 share letters on traditional dials, so the twos could be ones as well.

It's possible that the mod here is figuring out what words can be spelled out with the coresponding numbers, which seems a bit far-fetched but I can't think of anything better to do with the numbers. At any rate, I have to go to work so I won't be able to play with it more until later on this evening.

PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:39 pm
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gulrad
Boot


Joined: 08 Jan 2007
Posts: 16

 		Telephone and other
I'm thinking that this code does not relate to a phone or, phone number. We are dealing with an international phone system (as when we dialed Kurt), the US had a different number than the UK. Also the US system is three letters per digit and do not share...

Just in case.....

Rotary dials in the US:

1 = Nill
2 = ABC
3 = DEF
4 = GHI
5 = JKL
6 = MNO
7 = PRS
8 = TUV
9 = WXY
0 = Operator
Missing are = Q and Z

The first thing I notice in the new Flash is that it looks like a Cryptext with the letters M and E in bold...

They could relate to Q and Z.....Maybe

The second thing I notice is the % modifying to produce MOD .... Key

Are we to divide something to produce a numerical sequence that contains only 0,1,2 and 3 ?

The last bit still looks like a CYLINDAR CODE divided into three bit segments.

hmmm...

PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:40 am
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charcoaldragon
Boot

Joined: 03 Aug 2006
Posts: 11
Location: Melbourne, Australia

 		in flying i highlighted the flash movie. this made the % disappear but the key could be quite clearly every so often. Probably useless, just hadnt seen anyone else say it. wanted to get that out of my system. Thanks

P.s. highlighting has been used before by MC. forest picture from that computer maze which lead to the live event.

PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 6:56 am
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Mikeyj
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Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 1847
Location: London

 		Re: irrelevant
ramsfan wrote:
OK I know it's £100,000/$200,000 (what prescience over the exchange rate) and you have to work for that kind of money, but I'm getting bored. Yes I want to win, but I also want you to win, so we can move on. Season 2 starts quite soon I think, so not long now to that vital final clue, which will be dead and buried before I know it's out there. So a few off the wall thoughts.
You don't think this is all a tie in with Babel (out in UK on the 19th). Is Brad the pit we need to dig? ASByatt's Federica quartet has a verse in a book and a third book called the Babel Tower, and Arsenal want to buy a Dutch international from Ajax called Babel. It all starts to make sense. Hey you don't think Combed Thunderclap hired a white fiat and drove through the Place d'Alma. Someone put me out of my misery and find the b------ thing. Dig up the New York Public Library, the Bodleian, Epping Forest, and blow up a few Macdonalds while you're at it (free of employees and consumers of course).


Run away ramsfan...run far away from the endless theories. Of course, someone has already found it and is just torturing you Wink
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:09 am
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