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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
Confirmed solve: location of Receda Cube
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M. Johansson
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 		Great read!!! Looking forward to the rest!
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:47 am
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lonadar
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 		When the news finally broke officially, I went and told my wife who got me into this originally but who has avoided actually participating (she says it's my kinda thing). I told her that the person who found it was one of the regular players, and that the group in general had hoped it would be a regular who would find it.

She agreed, saying "Yea, it would have sucked if it was somebody random."

...well, actually dear... Very Happy


Personally, I'm satisfied with how the game played out. I didn't like that we had to be spoon-fed (Babel), but it still all fell together when it did. Random, you've handled all of this with class, and I respect that. A warm hand also to all of the other people who braved the woods in these frigid times. Sure there was a lot of money as an incentive, but nonetheless for many of us it ceased being just the money (if it ever was) and became a desire to solve the game as well.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:32 am
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sirichj
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lonadar wrote:



Personally, I'm satisfied with how the game played out. I didn't like that we had to be spoon-fed (Babel), but it still all fell together when it did. Random, you've handled all of this with class, and I respect that. A warm hand also to all of the other people who braved the woods in these frigid times. Sure there was a lot of money as an incentive, but nonetheless for many of us it ceased being just the money (if it ever was) and became a desire to solve the game as well.


On which point there are still clues to be solved and cards to be solved, but I guess people will concentrate on season 2 when that starts so I hope we get some kind of answer or solution to the meta's and the unsolved cards in time.

Come on Andy we're all waiting for the rest of the story, isn't it funny how it all makes sense with hindsight lol

PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:45 am
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Brian Morton
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 		Yes, I also can't wait to hear the rest. I take great solace that a fine gentleman with lots a free time, submerged in the game, and with professional digging knowledge is the finder of the Cube. Maybe there is hope for all of us next season. For the millionth time CONGRATS!
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:44 pm
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rose
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 		Way to go Rand0m!! Great job. So totally excited that you won this.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:59 pm
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sirichj
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 		Five fingers . . .
Now that the cube has been found, maybe we could try and work backwards to work out the answers to the five fingers point clues, we never did solve the meta puzzles and though MC are going to explain it shortly I thought maybe someone might have a clue how it all worked, any ideas?? Here are my guesses to the answers (which may not be correct) but how do these tie in with the LoB clues??????

I think we worked out that (half the world - northern hemisphere) came from the clues that when CT arrived it was Winter with snow, description (something like) New York. I guessed that (realm - UK) was self explanatory because I don't know many other realms in the Northern hemisphere and I always thought that the cube would be buried in the UK anyway, it just made sense to me, but where was the clue for this??. The (region - Jurassic strata) came from solving the amorphous blobs which was really what started the cube chase and a great piece of work, the feature (jurassic way) was hinted at in the same message as forming the layer which led to the jurassic strata, (follow the way) which leaves the last mystery. We were told it was buried in the woods, but the clue to which one which Random pointed out came from the Wakerley map tied in to Gyvann's message about the stones, following the paths led Andy to the cube. I know this all seems easy now it has been done but there must be clues in LoB and elsewhere that weren't solved like the letter strings, otpaaworldtdnia and the 1.56.29 clues, does anyone have any ideas about these - RAND0M HELP US

Five fingers point :

Half the World - Northern hemisphere
Realm - United Kingdom
Region England / Jurassic strata region
Feature Jurassic strata region / Jurassic Way
Last Mystery Wakerley Great Wood ??

PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:26 pm
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ixalon
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 		#094 Prime Rhyme Crime seems to point to a waymarked path - i.e. the Jurassic Way in this case. The sign has a diamond on it and the symbol for waymarked paths on Ordnance Survey maps is a diamond (either magenta or green depending on scale.)

Also, might be coincidence, but CASLE is a waymarker/navaid for transatlantic flights near New York La Guardia.

Last mystery is definitely Gyvann's scripture - looking forward to how Rand0m worked out it was the 2nd quadruped and not the first where I dug. Smile

Goodness knows what those 14 characters from the RNA decode to. We tried brute forcing it in both directions and don't get anything good other than vigenere with key RECEDA starts out promising "OAKWOL..." My guess is this is the 'feature' finger.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:34 pm
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Rand0m
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 		Well, I really don't want to spoiler clues that people could still get enjoyment from solving. And in some cases I can't explain them because we were discussing the clues over lunch in an ebbing and flowing conversation between six people where not every point that was started was ever finished.

But I remember there's one particular puzzle that Adrian's keen to explain, so expect at least some information to come out of Mind Candy soon. In another one, we were teetering on the brink of solving it when the discussion veered off in another direction.

And now I'd better get on with writing part two Smile
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:53 pm
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rose
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Quote:
But I remember there's one particular puzzle that Adrian's keen to explain, so expect at least some information to come out of Mind Candy soon. In another one, we were teetering on the brink of solving it when the discussion veered off in another direction.


Woo, some information on the unsolved puzzles at last. I'm looking forward to that.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:25 pm
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Rand0m
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Rand0m wrote:
In another one, we were teetering on the brink of solving it when the discussion veered off in another direction.


Solving it on the forums, I mean - not over lunch.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:07 pm
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Rand0m
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 		Part two
Friday morning
Real life doesn't stop for puzzles, even ones the size of the Cube Hunt. On Thursday, returning from Fineshade, I'd stopped off at the hospital where my sister was recovering from having a baby the day before. And on Friday Beloved Other Half and I were due to go househunting, with appointments booked for 2pm more than 60 miles from the woods. PXC was having to fit into the available gaps.

We knew we were on a timer from the moment we woke up, at an outrageously early hour of the morning - you haven't lived until you've seen the sky growing purple behind the industrial units of Biggleswade, I always say. We arrived at Wakerley at about 8.30am and set off to explore the paths. Rather than get too excited by any one location on first sight, we planned to walk all the possible routes and then return to anywhere that looked likely. As before, the main thing we were looking for was a plausible quadruped - but we were also trying to watch for groups of trees or posts that matched the ones on the Library of Babel page.

It's an easy walk around on the purple path to where it's met by the blue bridleway, and you can't miss the junction. The blue path is actually a logging road, quite big, and there was a camp set up where treecutting work was obviously being undertaken during working hours. The correct path to take, the only non-blue and non-purple path, is a clear and well-trodden continuation of the one you've arrived on, sloping gently downhill. From the moment you've stepped on it, of course, you need to be on the alert for quadrupeds.

With hindsight, I now know that you only need to go a few yards before you should turn off onto a smaller grassy path that disappears into the trees. But at the time I was convinced that the clue "after that, nothing was right" required you to go along waymarked paths with at least one - and probably two - left turns before you needed to worry about anything with four feet. We made a mental note that there was a bridleway sign with a picture of a horse, and also a fencepost by the smaller path that didn't match the Babel photo, and continued onwards.

The paths around the back of the woods feel different - they are lower lying, wetter, more likely to be muddy, less hospitable. Despite this, after the first left turn the long back path looked quite promising. It had useful-looking bridleway signs that still (despite having seen Ixalon's fencepost) seemed the best bet to be a quadruped. There were any number of enticing clearings off to the side of the path. And there were a lot of left turns, including the Jurassic Way itself. We explored them all, seeing no fenceposts and few of the correct sort of tree, and found ourselves looping back to the car park.

I have to admit to feeling more than a little demoralised by this point - we'd explored thoroughly, and found no compellingly obvious place to return to. Beloved Other Half was still keen to try again, though, and in the end I was ridiculously encouraged after re-reading the End of the Line card. "My children I did not despair, as you must not despair," it says - and, although this sounds corny, after reading it I decided I bloody well *was* up for another look after all.

One thing we had noted exploring the woods was a near-total lack of fenceposts after leaving behind the one by the small side path. There were a few in the far corner, as part of the wood's boundary, but they were almost inaccessible and not at all promising. So when we got back to the post that marked the small side path, we did wonder whether there might be any more around. And Beloved Other Half felt very strongly indeed that we should go up the side path. Partly, she wondered whether it might in some way triangulate with a line drawn back from some theoretical quadruped on the long back path, and partly she felt it was a place we needed to go.

So we did. And at about 11am on Friday we found the fencepost pictured in the Library of Babel. It was an extraordinarily exciting moment. Up until then, we were as certain as we could be that we were in the correct woods, but lacked any sort of tangible proof. To see the combination of cracks and knotholes and shadows in the real post match up with the photograph held up next to it was electrifying. Even then, though, it wasn't about the possibility of winning. We were very aware that we were in the driving seat, that we had an advantage over all other players that wouldn't last forever, but I don't think either of us truly believed we'd be the ones to find it. I think we were mostly in awe of being at the focal point of all the work that had gone into setting up the game and its puzzles. Someone had planned for years, someone had taken the photograph, and now we were the first and only people to follow in their footsteps. Sure, we wanted to find the Cube - but mostly I think we were excited to be at the sharp end, and in a state of disbelief that we were alone there.

And it's just as well we weren't obsessed with winning, because over the next few hours I made a series of decisions that might almost have been designed to throw our advantage away.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:32 pm
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ScarpeGrosse
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 		*claps hands in delight*

You, sir, are an excellent story-teller! I almost don't want to go to bed for fear of missing out on the ending Razz I also think we need some s'mores! and a bonfire!
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:44 pm
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Rand0m
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 		Part three: Friday day and night
In which I keep getting it wrong...
ScarpeGrosse wrote:
*claps hands in delight*

You, sir, are an excellent story-teller! I almost don't want to go to bed for fear of missing out on the ending Razz I also think we need some s'mores! and a bonfire!


Happy to oblige Smile

So, there we were just 10 meters away from the Cube but without having solved the clues that should have led us there. Unbelieveably, despite seeing a pair of four-footed fenceposts, we had not realised that one of them was the quadruped. We even hung our coats on the post in the photo while we worked. Our only rationale for being there was the Library of Babel photos, so we stopped following the clues on "End of the Line" - and because of this the Cube stayed buried for two more days.

At first we scratched away at clearings nearby, me on one side of the path and Beloved Other Half on the other side. We found, and excavated, a lot of abandoned animal burrow entrances. You very quickly learn the shape - a long, shallow descent from one side into the soft ground of the middle, with a very steep side opposite. The ground on the two sides of the path is very different - it must run along the boundary between two types of clay. To the side where the Cube was buried the ground has a thick layer of black rotted-down material, with thin roots meshing it together, and beneath that a layer of hard, wet, greeny-grey clay. Any hole that had once been dug into that, and refilled, would be as obvious as the nose on your face. On the other side, the wrong side, the ground is easier to work - several inches of brown earth, with dry yellow-brown clay underlying it. The tree roots are deeper and more woody, and the forest floor is drier and covered in leaves and twigs. Although this is the wrong side of the path, it is an almost perfect match for the photo of the Cube being buried in the Library of Babel.

It wasn't long before I grew bored with digging, and I went further down the path to see whether there might be a quadruped along there. There wasn't, and I was struck by a sudden thought that had me running back excitedly. What if the three Library of Babel photographs should be taken literally? The trees might be the ones at the junction where the path started (they looked a bit dense, but at a stretch they could have been) while the fencepost could be some sort of backstop to indicate you didn't need to walk any further down the path. The Cube, by that logic, would be half way between them. Total genius!

Total rubbish.

Nevertheless, we changed the focus of our exploration, moving back down the path and away from the correct location. It didn't do us much good. And then I finally, belatedly, realised that the fenceposts were quadrupeds. But, like several people after me, I got excited about the wrong fencepost. I picked the one by the main path to have my insight about, and thereby moved us even further from the correct spot. I also moved us a lot closer to possible discovery by the foresters who were by then working at the purple / blue junction, and by anyone who might pass by on the main path - but no-one did.

Logically, I should have known from End of the Line that this was the wrong post. The card clearly puts the "nothing was right" clue *before* the reference to the quadruped, and therefore it must be necessary to take at least one left turn before you see it. Fenceposts before a left turn, or even fenceposts *at* a left turn like this one, don't fit the clue and should be ignored. Despite this, we dug out our tape measure and marked off 10 meters along two lines - one, along the path as if we had turned our backs on the junction post and marched onwards towards CT's post, and the second directly behind the junction post where its rear leg was pointing. We sampled a large area on one side of the path and a smaller area on the other, and behind the post we got tremendously excited when we found an area of very soft ground exactly 10 meters back. It was in the equivalent place to where the Cube was buried in relation to the correct post, so it fitted the clues, and it was with great disappointment that we eventually concluded it was an animal burrow.

At this point we were running out of time and decided to split our efforts. We knew we weren't coming back on the following day and we weren't at all sure we'd be returning after our househunting appointments later that day, so we needed to think laterally. Beloved Other Half went back to the car, fired up the laptop with its mobile internet card, and checked and double-checked we had the correct definition of ammots. I tried to phone Mind Candy in an attempt to bluff them into telling us the location. After all, it had worked with Masquerade, and I really didn't want to have to bring in the heavy artillery on Forestry Commission land - we still had a thumping great spade in the boot of the car from when we feared we might get snowed in at Christmas, and by then I was prepared to do some serious damage to the forest floor with it - or, at least, to threaten to. As it turned out, the number supplied by directory enquiries rang and rang unanswered until it eventually cut off. Five times. With hindsight, I'm glad it wasn't answered. MC would have said 'sorry, no' - they confirmed that later - but speaking to them under those circumstances would have spoiled the whole thing, whatever the result.

A little more digging behind the wrong post, and we ran out of time, filled in our holes and left. We couldn't see how we'd gone wrong, except perhaps by covering too little ground too slowly, or by not digging deep enough.

Househunting was bizarre. Beloved Other Half had a change of clothes, but I was covered in mud. The householders were very understanding - they remembered Masquerade - and the estate agent was baffled but intrigued. We gave her a spare copy of End of the Line (but not the name of the wood), refuelled at a chip shop, bought a fork and a flashlight from a garden centre, and headed north again.

It was early evening when we arrived, but already dark so we felt confident in openly carrying a full-sized fork and spade with us as we returned to the spot. Had we been challenged by Forestry Commission officials we were going to throw the tools into the darkness and claim to be studying moths. Marching through the black, silent forest felt horribly like the start of some cheap slasher movie, but I kept telling myself there was nothing there. Probably, that was true - I don't think Ixalon had arrived at that point Wink

We didn't waste any time, but methodically set about sampling ground with the fork to see if it was soft, and digging anywhere that seemed likely as a result. We took the view that the clay on the correct side of the path was so hard that any hole previously dug in it would be detectable by that method. The other side of the path was less obvious, but we tried anyway. For about three hours we covered all the likely-looking areas 10 meters away from the wrong post - when we drew a blank behind it in the likeliest spot of all I was reduced to howling "why aren't you *here*?" At about 9pm we admitted defeat and left, happy that we had given it our best shot but wholly convinced that someone on Saturday would see our diggings (impossible to totally clear up and hide when working in the dark) and find the Cube.

We think - we're not totally sure about this - we think we saw a torch in the distance on the way back to the car. It might have been Team Alice. It might have been our imaginations. We'll probably never know.

Parking the car at home, just before midnight, it hit me what a bloody fool I'd been. Why the hell had we been digging by the fencepost on the main path when CT had sent us a photo of a quadruped as a clue? It was obvious - the Cube was 10 meters behind CT's post, exactly where it should be if you took a left off the path there, turned your back on the post, and strode forward the required distance. The directions on End of the Line were, in the end, extremely precise - inch perfect if you followed them correctly.

So that was where the Cube was. But we were 114 miles away, and we weren't going anywhere on Saturday.

Someone else's turn.

Incidentally, I'm not stringing this out for the sake of it - it's just taking a long time to write. I'm assuming anyone who thinks it's going on too long is voting with their feet, or drafting a rude note to send me...
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 9:37 pm
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bit1313
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 		Not at all! It's interesting to hear the inner workings of what really happened.

(I have to say that the story from one Cube Hunter about his girlfriend peeing on top of the cube was pretty funny!)

Besides, we have 2+ week until Season 2! We have plenty of time. Smile

bit1313
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:28 pm
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DarkHuman
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 		Rand0m, this is the story everyone WANTS TO HEAR take your time, it's like totaly badass that we get to hear a player tell us the endgame from the ingame clues. Personaly I think you need to take all 4 parts(or more if it takes it), and publish a view from earth (50 free points!)
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:03 am
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