Return to Unfiction unforum
 a.r.g.b.b 
FAQ FAQ   Search Search 
 
Welcome!
New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.
Website Restoration Project
This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.
Announcements
This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.
This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.
  

The time now is Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:25 pm
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)		 View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum
Calendar
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
Confirmed solve: location of Receda Cube
View previous topicView next topic
Page 6 of 10 [144 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10  Next
Author Message
Rand0m
Decorated


Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 271
Location: London

 		Part 5: the end
at last...
There isn't actually a textbook for what you do next when you've just dug £100,000-worth of highly sought-after metalwork out of the ground. Beloved Other Half's advice was short and to the point: "don't waste time talking to me, get out of there NOW." Not a bad idea but, being my mother's son, I ended up fussing for the next quarter of an hour about how I was going to avoid ruining my rucksack while carrying a very muddy blue plastic bag, some clay-caked tools and a pair of gloves so filthy that I haven't dared look at them since. In the end I turned the bag inside-out, bundled everything muddy into it, and strapped it under the lid where I hoped it wouldn't be seen by any other Cube hunter armed with the photos from the Library of Babel. The Cube itself I dropped into the rucksack, away from the mud. It's just a shame I forgot to take out the metal secateurs that I'd brought along to deal with tough tree roots. If you ever see the Cube, and it has ugly scratches on its highly-polished surface, don't blame the Third Power, blame the fast hike out of Wakerley Great Wood as the two bits of metal in the otherwise-empty pack banged against each other and against my kidneys.

As everyone now knows, I'd left behind me the hole, unfilled, and a copy of End of the Line propped up by it. Leaving the hole open seems rather sinful, looking back on it, but I can't truthfully say it ever occurred to me to fill it in. It wasn't just a hole, it was *the* hole. The card was left there for a purpose. I'd been carrying it since Thursday and consulted it often, so there was no question of bringing it especially to leave there - we'd talked about maybe burying a box with a notepad and pencil or rubber stamp, like a Dartmoor letterbox, but organising something like that in advance just seemed too much like tempting fate, too arrogant, so we made no special plans. I'm not the only one who had it mind to leave something, according to the forums. Ixalon, bless him, planned to leave a gold card in a waterproof box as a runner up prize - and if he wasn't on the list for a silver leitmark already, that level of generosity ought to put him right up there.

What I had in mind was to send a signal to whoever came to the spot next. I wanted to say yes, you were right, you've found the right place and here's something from the game for you to pick up and hold, a signal that the person who was here before you was a player and arrived in this place by making the same journey you just have. I also wanted to indicate, without broadcasting to the world in explicit detail, that the game was over. I feared that if the find wasn't in some way announced, people would be wasting precious annual leave by booking days off from work to come and search or perhaps spending money they couldn't afford on train tickets or petrol. I even had fears of American players crossing the Atlantic to search for a Cube that wasn't there any more.

And, let's be honest, perhaps I wanted to show off a bit, too. But only a little bit.

There's a line early in season one of Buffy where Cordelia says "excuse me, I have to call EVERYONE I have EVER MET". Having the Cube, and no-one else knowing about it, was a bit like that. On the way back to the car I kept having to fight back the urge to stop random strangers and say to them "this is going to mean absolutely nothing to you but..." I didn't, of course, since everyone from Violet downwards was telling me to keep quiet.

So I did. Very quiet indeed. You see, I knew that once I told anyone official - Mind Candy being the obvious people - everything would change. It's peaceful, being the only one who knows where the Cube is. There are a lot of good things about being the winner of Perplex City, but one thing it's not is peaceful. And while the Cube may be a bit too solid to be really arty, it's still an object of wonder to have on your shelf. The longer I had it, the less I wanted to give it back. The longer things were quiet, the less I wanted them to get noisy.

So I didn't email Mind Candy on Sunday. That's why Adrian came onto the Perplexorum to say metal detectors would work - he didn't know the Cube was already on a bookshelf in Middlesex. I didn't even look at Violet's secret page, for fear of leaving a recognisable IP address (rightly, as it turned out - the source code for the page has a Google Analytics script in it). I thought about posting some photos, so everybody would know it had been found, and then fading quietly away with it still in my possession. I thought of anonymously returning it to Mind Candy. It didn't help when I finally used an anonymiser to visit Violet's page and found that it said:

Quote:
This whole thing's going to go wild pretty soon and there'll be interviews and parties and all sorts of things. But for now it's just between you and me. I buried it and you found it.


It's a wonderfully moving (and frightening) passage when you know it's directed just at you, capturing as it does a moment of calm that can't last, and it nearly cost Mind Candy any chance of seeing their Cube again. On the plus side, they would have been £100,000 to the good. I don't like to think what the minus side would have been, with investors to please, season two to promote and 50,000 curious players wanting to know what happens next. That was a big reason for finally handing it in. It would have been selfish not to. From what I saw later, they had a plan for everything - except the possibility that their winner might prefer the Cube to the actual prize.

On Monday I went to work at a client's office as usual, but got little done. I was watching the Perplexorum chat logs when Chippy came in to announce glumly that he and Hawk had found the hole and the card, and I watched the word spread outwards from there. It was time to email Mind Candy on the ifounditSPLAT address. Even then, I used a newly-created account to mail from and didn't actually give MC any way of getting back in touch with me apart from that address until Tuesday, when I spoke to Adrian (witholding my number as I did so) and decided everything was probably going to be alright.

Sorry about the wait after that - I really couldn't break my work commitments for Monday through Wednesday, which made Thursday the first possible day I could take the Cube to Mind Candy, sign the paperwork and let them make the announcement. I watched opinion harden on the forums, and had to keep my mouth shut as people drew the obvious (but false) conclusion that a very neat hole and an unknown winner meant someone with a metal detector had done the treasure hunting equivalent of sniping an eBay auction and snuck in to steal the Cube from under their noses. I couldn't blame people for thinking it and being upset - it fitted the observable facts and, as a player, I would have been gutted if the game had ended with the sort of mess that has spoiled the memory of Masquerade.

I was due at Mind Candy's offices at Noon on Thursday, which just left time for the Cube to make one final journey. My parents live near Ampthill, where Masquerade's Golden Hare was buried, so I stayed Wednesday night with them, and on Thursday morning in the snow the Cube made a pilgrimage to where it all began, the point where Catherine's long finger overshadows earth.

After that I took it to Battersea, where Adrian and Guy greeted me in reception and led me to the Mind Candy offices. Amid cheers, party poppers and champagne glasses, I handed the Cube over.

Whatever happens to it next, it's someone else's problem now.

I just hope they look after it better next time.




SOME STUFF I LEARNED THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW - SPOILERS AND TIAGNESS ABOUND FROM HERE

Various silvers
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Of the silvers, they seem happy with the way Billion to One is going and confident that 13th Labour will be solved if we just carry on as we are.

The story on Riemann is the same as it ever was.

Shuffled, we all know, was not meant to be as hard as it's turned out to be, but Adrian said that when they came to re-examine it they could understand why it had turned out as it had. Naomi said there's a clue they could give which would rapidly lead to a solve - but it seemed pretty clear that they don't want to give it and are hoping one of us will make the mental leap.

By design, the Broadside flag signals can only be solved with information not available via Google.

It seems there was a silver that was supposed to be as hard as Shuffled has turned out to be. That was Polar - properly researched and tied into an obscure but discoverable anecdote. Who knew?

edited for clarity


Characters
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
There's a major revelation yet to come about one of the more important characters, which careful reading of the leaked emails might allow players with the right antennae to anticipate.


Cube location
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Serious consideration was given to burying the Cube outside of the UK, while one alternative location in this country was on a small island. Any location close to where anyone involved in planning the game had ever lived was automatically banned, to prevent Masquerade-style cheating.


Roaming identity
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
otpaaworldtdnia 1.56.29 should be pretty easy to reverse-engineer when people start to think about what information needed to be given to us. Some correct steps have been taken on a couple of occasions towards solving it the way it was meant to be solved.


DNA stuff
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Looking at the threads discussing the DNA / amino acid stuff, and knowing how that's supposed to be decoded, it's astonishing how close people got to cracking it without actually doing so. From what I can see there was too much emphasis on trying to force it to produce a place name.

_________________
How the Cube was found - my Season One endgame microsite. Arrow

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:11 pm
Last edited by Rand0m on Fri Feb 16, 2007 3:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Bravo, Rand0m, bravo.
_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:36 pm
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
Mico
Boot

Joined: 09 Jun 2006
Posts: 66
Location: Leighton Buzzard, Beds

 		Nice one Rand0m. Well done, sir. That was a great story.
Oh, and I just happened to be up at this time; I wasn't waiting up especially... well, I don't think I was??!!!??

Have fun,
Mico
_________________
Lisa: "But who polices the police?"
Homer: "I dunno - the coastguard?"

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:54 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Tomby
Boot

Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 29
Location: Sydney, Australia

 		Congratulations Rand0m, and a great job of telling the tale afterwards.

I just wanted to ask you about the RNA/protein decoding solution

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
I think I can reverse engineer the solution to produce the long/lat of Wakerley Great Wood (I suggested in another thread that the 14 amino acids represented co-ordinates).

Splitting the amino acids into groups using their chemical properties, and then assigning each group a number: S = 0 (hydroxyl); F/M/L = 2 (hydrophobic); A/G = 3 (small); R = 4; D/E/Q = 5 (acidic plus derivatives).

This then gives N 52 34 25 W 00 35 55, which is pretty close to the Wood. Is this the correct solution?


PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:14 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Rand0m
Decorated


Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 271
Location: London
Tomby wrote:
I just wanted to ask you about the RNA/protein decoding solution


Woe Sad Your solution is elegant but, unfortunately, isn't the right method and therefore isn't the right answer.

For what it's worth, right up until the end when the significance of card #30 became clear, I believed the last clue would be a GPS co-ordinate. It seemed such a logical, high-tech way of going about it.
_________________
How the Cube was found - my Season One endgame microsite. Arrow

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:54 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
bit1313
Decorated


Joined: 10 Oct 2006
Posts: 164
Location: Western PA USA

 		Re: Part 5: the end
at last...
Rand0m wrote:
There isn't actually a textbook for what you do next when you've just dug £100,000-worth of highly sought-after metalwork out of the ground.


You see, this actually is not true. Looks like CT and Rand0m have been busy at work. They put together a story "For the Rest of Us" Wink


_________________
"Curiouser and Curiouser" exclaimed Alice, which wasn't very good English, but it did get her point across.

Trout, Trout - Pretty Little Trout.
One more splash then come right out

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:42 am
 View user's profile Yahoo Messenger
 Back to top 
Rand0m
Decorated


Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 271
Location: London

 		Oh my... just, oh my.

That's absolutely classic, mate. Laughing
_________________
How the Cube was found - my Season One endgame microsite. Arrow

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:55 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
UKver2.0
Decorated

Joined: 09 Feb 2006
Posts: 270

 		Re: Part 5: the end
at last...
Rand0m wrote:
Various silvers
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
...Naomi said there's a clue they could give which would rapidly lead to a solve - but it seemed pretty clear that they don't want to give it...
Thank you Jesus!
_________________
Naomi: We did joke that we’d end up have to go round to your houses with shovels, drive you to the location and tell you to dig.
Andrea: Paint a little X on the ground with spray paint..
Naomi: and then you’d try to anagram 'shovels'

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:07 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
hobyrne
Guest


 		Awesome. Just awesome.

Sincere congratulations, and much thanks for sharing the endgame with us. You did a great job, and then you did a great job telling us the story.

Kudos to that man.

And... I am glad you did decide to return the Cube! If you didn't, it'd seem like the Third Power had beaten us!!

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:07 am
 Back to top 
volvox
Veteran


Joined: 24 Aug 2006
Posts: 86
Location: Candy Mountain

 		Re: Part 5: the end
at last...
Rand0m wrote:

Various silvers
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
By design, the Broadside flag signals can only be solved with information not available via Google. The silver that was supposed to be as hard as Shuffled has turned out to be



Concerns Broadside:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
We have to recreate the battle of Trafalgar, don't we?

Man, I totally agree with that comparison to Shuffled. I know some players contacted naval historians in regards to this card, but they didn't know the unknown flags either. I wonder what the non-net resource is that tells what they are.


PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:12 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
_izzy_
Veteran

Joined: 05 Apr 2006
Posts: 99
Location: Hertfordshire, UK

 		I just want to say wow! Reading this thread and re-living your journey to winning perplexcity S1, finding the cube was amazing, thank you so much for taking the hours to share your story with us.

Many Many Congratulations on finding The Cube.

PostPosted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:34 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
Atys
Boot

Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 34

 		I'm almost a total newbie to ARGs and this forum, but I'd like to add my congratulations; my parents stayed up many a night working on Masquerade and have passed on the puzzle bug, so I can empathise somewhat.

Roll on Series 2!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:00 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
alexhalliday
Guest


 		CONGRATS!!!! Had to happen sooner that later!
Enjoy the £££ and catch you on season 2!!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:24 pm
 Back to top 
The_Farwall
Guest


 		 Congratulations
Well, reading through the various threads on the site it's sort of comforting to know that, even if I had put a little more in to it when I first picked up some PXC cards so long ago, I would have never been the one to solve it. You lot are all way better at this than me and massive congrats to Rand0m. I'm still jealous though Wink

PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:49 pm
 Back to top 
AndyAndyO
Veteran

Joined: 09 Aug 2006
Posts: 70

 		Hey Rand0m.... Full marks for finding the cube and for telling the tale! (so eruditely!)

As for the other discoveries....

"By design, the Broadside flag signals can only be solved with information not available via Google."
It's nice to know Google doesn't know all the answers, but actually Broadside was solvable by inspired guesswork (I should know!!!) - and, judging by the number of people who have since solved it, the actual solve must be far too obscure and clever for us - funny how these mysterious silvers are far too complex for mere mortals to solve, even with the aid of mankinds most popular search tool!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:07 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 6 of 10 [144 Posts]   Goto page: Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10  Next
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group