unforum

[mortality]

OK, I'm thinking that even if we figure out the way the numbers are meant to be used, I doubt that the letters will form an obvious name. So we need to figure out likely candidates for Allan to use as a title on WordPress.

I don't think it's likely that Allan would use both a foreign language and an anagram, so it will be one or the other.

Foreign languages will be tough. Other than the Finnish business card, Allan hasn't used another tongue. He did spend time in Canada, so maybe he knows French. Germain used Latin and Italian (the Rosicrucian quote plus the Umberto Eco reference). T.Petal is the one who directed us to the Spanish language store awning in Miami to find the KMQ Sunglasses blog. Thalberg is most familiar with Finnish because his girlfriend, Saarinen, is from there.

I think an anagram is more likely. Would Allan go back to biographical details as a starting point for the title? We really only know about hats, Karianne the love interest, and obscure techno groups.

FYI: if the letters pulled from the dots after using the numbers are still enciphered, he didn't use a Rot cipher.

[zizka]

I'm thinking anagram or finnish. Finnish is an unusual language, in that is doesn't share a common root with other european languages. In fact, it is linguistically most similar to Korean. Why I know that and how it matters are not really clear to me, but my point is Finnish is likely to look and sound totally alien, so this jumbled mass of letters could be finnish. I'll anagram some tomorrow.

Any guess as to which method with the numbers is the way? Do you think RT was leading us to the door, and hte last counting method is the one, or do you think there is another one? Also, did he count wrong on the last one, or did I?

I've been working on PYSEORDYKSI and SYKSYKAHVIO. One is derived using + as "up" in the body of the text and the other with + as down, then adding hte second number to the letter, as RT described at the end of his twittering. The first is attractive because of the "spy," and the second is interesting because the first three letters repeat exactly in the second three, but we've been chasing some equally promising looking leads before--"enemy prevention," anyone

How incredibly random is it that so many seemingly non-coincidental messages can be hidden accidentally in a text. We really are amazingly good at finding meaning in what is actually noise. So very good, indeed.

[mortality]

I don't think the order in which we were given the hints matters. I think we were just being pointed in the direction.

I spent a little bit of time finding anagrams for all the possible letter sets. Nothing really stuck out. One of the letter sets has "osprey" in it. The leftovers didn't really work out. That's kind of why I want to figure out if there are some keywords from what we know about Allan that might make a solution obvious. Stuff other than Osprey, Fractal, Visage and Promis.

If we're going for Finnish then I'd expect double vowels. The most likely letter set might be the one with two "U's". I don't know how good this is, but here's a Finnish anagram solver.

This is the best English anagram solver I've found.

[Coffeebean]

more twitter

[mortality]

I don't think that means it's Polish. That's just anecdotal evidence that Allan tried to pick up the language of the locations where he traveled.

The business card in his box was in Finnish. There was a map of Finland, info for Washington, and Alberta, Canada. I think we're looking for Finnish. And maybe it will be a Finnish anagram, as annoying as that is.

I had no luck finding a website after running the letter sets through the Finnish anagram solver.

Maybe the letters we get from using the numbers are still ciphered? Could the dotted letters then be used as a key?

[gott_sei_dank]

Although I said I had given up with this, I still check in but lack the skills needed for deciphering.

Anyway I believe it was Polish mathematicians, who had early success in breaking the Enigma code www.avoca.ndirect.co.uk/enigma/index.html

I don't know if this helps in anyway.

[Abraxas]

I agree with mortality, it has to be Finnish. Which is indeed annoying. Especially with about 5 people actively trying to solve this.
I bet if they had more players this would be done with a few hints. But it looks like it's too tough even for a larger crowd to get it in a reasonable amount of time.

Sorry, I'm not trying.

[zizka]

 pendent opera interrupta

[mortality]

I'm pretty well spent on trying to crack it.

RoyalThames did express a wish to know which language it could possibly be. Why not feed RT that it's probably Finnish and see if that gets us anywhere?

[Coffeebean]

crypt2

[Coffeebean]

I killed Twitter, haha

[Coffeebean]

the letter

[Coffeebean]

still thinking out loud....

[zizka]

Re: I killed Twitter, haha

[TwistedLadder53]

Cant wait