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 Forum index » Diversions » TimeWasters
Puzzle Experiment #3
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Omega
Unfettered


Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 430
Location: Utah

 		Puzzle Experiment #3
Beginnings of a Vampire
It was a kiss. A gentle caress against my neck, a haunting breath, her fangs tracing every pore of my skin. My heart pounded, desiring to produce the fluids that she would take. There was not a single hair on me that did not beg. She wanted me, and she would have me. Please. Please...

Ecstasy could no more than shadow the rapture of the bite. Electricity became me. How I sparked, my lighting striking far beyond the very heavens of my mind. Were I music, I would have harmonized the universe.

I began twisting into darkness, trembling. I could feel her still with me, still draining my essence. We smelled of ivory. Taking her head into my hands, I tugged, pressing her mouth deeper. With my final ounce, we echoed, "Enjoy me."


The afterimage of a shudder started at my shoulders then ruptured into my spine, hips, legs, toes. I could feel satin, and silk. An arousing vapor abducted the air. I stirred, my vision establishing the dim lighting.

Around me was a bed as red as sin. I had tumbled in its sheets before, made love. I had existed before that moment as well, but not lived. Everything outside of one minute ago was destroyed.

She was standing over me, observing, fangs dripping. My sweat boiled for my master, that much I knew. I found it impossible to repel the strength of her presence.

"A vampire is more than power," she began. "We are a pathway, a road to truth. The dark gift of immortality is never the solution, but it is a means, demanding discipline and training."

I rose to her words, not by choice but by compulsion. She was the radiant illusion of someone I once remembered. Eyes streaked of black, her body's surface had a pale yet inviting allure. The willowy strands of her hair screamed of passion. I imagined my fingers running the length of her back, my chest pressed tight against her. Cinnamon was the taste of her lips, and her breasts...

She tilted at me. "Pay attention," she said, and I did. "We are not murderers. Our lives require the souls of mankind. The blood of humans is to be shared, not stolen. Never kill for pleasure. I will remove your heart myself if you betray that bond." For a moment, she adored me.

"Above all," she resumed, "a vampire is wisdom. Understand that knowledge and logic are commodities that can neither be purchased nor bartered. Intelligence ensures survival. To that end, I have prepared a set of trials for you, to begin you on your passage." She turned and pointed past the bed towards a rusty, barred obstruction. "Beyond that door lies a question. When you have answered it, return to me and we will continue your beginnings, childe."

I was in a basement, I realized, with shoddy cement walls withholding the bulk of the planet. The narrow stairs to my right suggested I was at least two stories down.

As directed, I moved immediately to the slanted protruding gate and opened it. I proceeded forward into a hallway in spite of fear or anxiety, discovering that I no longer possessed any of either such emotion. From ahead in the corridor, a rush of stale flesh ushered into my nose. The belligerent odor of the dead was my first memory as a vampire. My first trial was this:
trial1.gif
 Description   Symbols I found engraved upon a wall.
 Filesize   26.67KB
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trial1.gif
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:44 am
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pancito
I Have No Life


Joined: 24 Feb 2008
Posts: 2095
Location: In my happy place.

 		Okay, the obvious. "I" is now a vampire (or on the road, since according to Dracula one must drink the blood of a vampire to become one,) and has been given a set of puzzles. He is in a crypt, charnel house, something similar. The Lair. It's a standard test, since it's graven in stone. Details from the story may be necessary.

I don't know what to make of the quote except 1/4 of 10 = 2.5 (duh). There are seven symbols in the inscription. In an easier to manipulate form:

AB C AAD C AE. AE C AAD C F AD. AAC AC AAF AE
AA AE AAF C. AB F AA AAF AE C. AA AC. AA E AC AG C
AB AC AA. AC H. AA E C. D AD AC AC B

The periods represent the long spaces for now. A Z or something may be more appropriate... Obviously not a simple substitution cipher if we are actually manipulating letters here. Could be numbers in base 4? with math symbols thrown in, or something else. Octal? I may be entirely off track here, obviously.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:05 am
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Big_Larry
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Joined: 28 May 2007
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Location: Not there... maybe somewhere else.

 		Pancito beat me to the explanation (except that there are nine symbols, not seven). I don't have any idea what the quote means, either, except that maybe it's there to make the puzzle harder than it actually is.

I broke it down like this:

Code:
AB C AAD C AE  AE C AAD C F AD  AAC AC AAF AE
AA AE AAF C  AG F AA AAF AE C  AA AC  AA E AC AH C
AB AC AA  AC I  AA E C  D AD AC AC B


Each group of letters equals one letter. The long breaks are breaks between words.

And the message says:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Never reveal your true nature to those not of the Blood


For the record, I really like this puzzle. Not only was it straightforward, but the narrative set it up beautifully, and it made sense in the context.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:10 am
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Rogi Ocnorb
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
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Location: Where the cheese is free.

 		I got the same.
Spent too much time, initially looking for some of the symbols on symbols.com and then thought, "I'll try it as a simple substitution." while thinking there wouldn't be a chance it'd be that easy.

I get the feeling that there was supposed to be some kind of methodology to the construction that we bypassed and am eager to hear what that was.

It that's the case, this is a great example of those times when the developer spends much more time creating the puzzle than it ultimately takes to solve.

Nice mood setting, though, if that's not the case.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:47 am
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pancito
I Have No Life


Joined: 24 Feb 2008
Posts: 2095
Location: In my happy place.

 		Good solve. Actually we're both wrong. There are eight. I can't count and you mismatched AB as AG in the second line. So, question. Did you treat each symbol group as a distinct letter and run a frequency count? I'm guessing the story helped with the solve...
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 5:33 am
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tabster
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Joined: 03 Mar 2008
Posts: 244
Location: Ohio

 		Wow, i think i could've solved this if i didnt see what you guys did. what i was gonna do (before i saw it was solved already) was basically what pancito said. Im pretty surprised at myself. i usually cant solve for shiz. lol

ETA: except i probly wouldnt have treated each group as one letter so id be SOL there
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 5:40 am
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Tenchizard
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Joined: 22 Sep 2007
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 		Ok, I was thinking the same, that each "group" of symbols could be a letter.

Anyway...
don't you see a first tradition there? Razz

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 5:55 am
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Rogi Ocnorb
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 4266
Location: Where the cheese is free.

 		The puzzle had nothing to do with the story as far as solving it goes. Unless the symbols have some meaning in arcana that I don't see.
It was just a simple substitution and the symbols were assigned to the letters in order.
A-J were singles
K-T were those same symbols with the one that has 4 dots as a prefix.
U-Z were the same, but with 2 preceeding 4-dot symbols.
Untitled.gif
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Untitled.gif
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I'm telling you now, so you can't say, "Oh, I didn't know...Nobody told me!"


PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 5:57 am
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catherwood
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee

Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 4109
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Big_Larry wrote:
For the record, I really like this puzzle. Not only was it straightforward, but the narrative set it up beautifully, and it made sense in the context.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with the issue of context. The puzzle might have been good on its own --i didn't take the time myself to work thru it-- but it is a stand-alone puzzle. The paragraphs about vampires are what I call "flavor text". Could you solve it with just the image? Rogi says yes.

If we're judging the presentation in terms of ARGs, I think the puzzle needs to evolve from the story and depend on details that can only be gleaned from the world where it occurs. This one still feels like the puzzle was created first and a story wrapped around it, or the story was written with a justification for a puzzle that was plugged in later. This one would feel right at home in the MIT Mystery Hunt or the CISRA puzzle challenge.

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:29 am
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natas
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Joined: 06 Oct 2007
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Location: Northwest Indiana
catherwood wrote:


If we're judging the presentation in terms of ARGs, I think the puzzle needs to evolve from the story and depend on details that can only be gleaned from the world where it occurs.


The puzzle does evolve from the story. The story is about vampires and whatnot, the puzzle is an image engraved on the wall that was placed there by some sort of "vampire clan".

Quote:
This one still feels like the puzzle was created first and a story wrapped around it, or the story was written with a justification for a puzzle that was plugged in later.

I disagree. I don't think the puzzle was created first because of the decryption. Why create a puzzle like that, then think "Hey, there's a neat story I can write using this!!" It just doesn't make sense.

Quote:
This one would feel right at home in the MIT Mystery Hunt or the CISRA puzzle challenge.
Maybe, but fits better with the story that it was created for.

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:40 am
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rowan
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Joined: 12 Apr 2004
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natas wrote:
The puzzle does evolve from the story.
Just because you give me a reason for a puzzle does not mean that the puzzle itself has an actual reason to exist. This isn't like Puzzle 2 where you couldn't separate the puzzle (who did it) from the story (the evidence provided) or even Puzzle 1 (you needed both the image and the captain's statement about the keypad). You can easily solve the puzzle without reading any of the text. And you could just as easily insert a new puzzle into the story without losing the idea of a trial (something like this from Puzzle Crunch which is actually a pretty similar construction).

To me, the idea of a 'set of trials' to test my wisdom/intelligence is basically just an excuse to throw in a puzzle trail. It's better than having a puzzle trail for no reason whatsoever. But just because you throw a top hat on a duck and call him your boyfriend 'George' doesn't mean that everyone else can't recognize that both of you are just quackers. </badpun>
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:24 pm
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Big_Larry
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Joined: 28 May 2007
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 		Whether the puzzle is standalone of evolved from the context and requires contextual clues to solve is not my point.

I understand the "puzzle put in and story wrapped around it" concept. I realize that this could be solved standalone.

My point is that the context -- the story -- was there at all and fit the puzzle itself. Omega gave us a puzzle that made sense in light of the story, as opposed to Puzzle 1 which had elements that simply didn't fit the context (floating numbers in space showing up on a scanner). I was merely expressing my appreciation of his effort in placing this puzzle in a storyline context.

Catherwood, while I respect and understand your opinion, I can't help but think that we are using the same terms to discuss two different factors of this puzzle. And Rowan, this may simply be an excuse for a puzzle, but it's a better one than some of what I've seen, and at least it's there, unlike the rationale and presentation of Puzzle 1. I'd much rather see this, especially as a trailhead kind of puzzle, as opposed to the overuse of ROT, Morse, and video trailheads.
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SPENGLER: According to this morning's PKE sample, the current level in the city would be a Twinkie 35 feet long weighing approximately six hundred pounds.
WINSTON: That's a big Twinkie.

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:51 pm
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rowan
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Joined: 12 Apr 2004
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Big_Larry wrote:
I'd much rather see this, especially as a trailhead kind of puzzle, as opposed to the overuse of ROT, Morse, and video trailheads.
Likewise. I would much rather have an established reason for a series of puzzles rather than none.

But at the same time, it is still just a series of puzzles. You can dress it up however you want, but there is a world of difference (imho) between a puzzle trail and a fully integrated puzzle. For one, it's much harder to seamlessly work puzzles into a story so that they make sense than it is to set up artificial challenges to move the story along.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I keep feeling like PMs are pushing puzzle driven stories along, rather than stories that just happen to have puzzles in them. I know there are a ton of people who only play for the puzzles, but there are just as many who play for the stories. And I would be willing to bet that you would get those people much more involved in the puzzles that were present if a: the puzzles felt real and b: the solve of the puzzles led to more actual story rather than just another puzzle to be solved.

I know this whole thing is entitled 'Puzzle Experiment' but I never read it to be 'Puzzle Trail Experiment' and if we're really meant to be treating these as part of an ARG, then I have to hold them to much higher standards.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 1:40 pm
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danteIL
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Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 1990

 		I guess maybe the point is that a better integrated puzzle would have been something vampire-specific? This one feels like the mentor-vampire (awkward term, I know) simply pulled it off her shelf o' codes. It was motivated as an 'intelligence test' so there was an in-game/story reason for the code, but the code itself wasn't particularly story-related.

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 7:46 pm
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Omega
Unfettered


Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 430
Location: Utah

 		You people are wonderful! I love you! Everyone's criticism so far has been awesome. Thank you all so much!

There are some points I would like to address, but I will withhold commenting until all the trials have completed. Until then, please keep on posting your thoughts and suggestions!

See page 2 for the continuation.
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PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:48 pm
Last edited by Omega on Mon May 05, 2008 11:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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