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[Joe]

Somebody should send their address. A week later we may get a clue.

[Marduk]

So I decided to run some anagrams of the capitalized letters, just to see what would come up, and here are some interesting ones:

Letters: TTNOLISAWTNAKISS

Anagrams:

SATANIST LINKS TWO
ATLANTIS SINKS TWO
ATLANTIS KIN STOWS
OWLS ATTAINS STINK
TWIT SLINKS TO NASA
etc. etc.

Funny, but not helpful.

[Marduk]

Here's something else I've been toying with, though there is no indication this is the right tack to take with the puzzle. I matched the XOs up with the text of the message and repeated the XO pattern as necessary to match up with all the text, excluding spaces and punctuation.

My thinking is that the main clue is "give me a KISS" and that is telling us that the next URL is going to be whatever XO code there is for "Cheryl" and "KISS." Of course, not only may I be totally wrong, but I may have the Xs and Os lined up incorrectly beneath the words.

[Guest]

I tried the morsecode and couldn't get anything out of it! I got a few anagrams but couldn't get anywhere.

However, the capitalized KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) somehow points towards a word-trick or some kind of HIPS (Hidden In Plain Sight). I've tried different anagrams or combinations of first letters, last letters, middle letters and so on. I tried the obvious ones of kiss.html, cheryl.html and so forth, no sucess.

The XOXs are suspicious, especially the last line with the extra o (or is it a zero?). Funny part is that the lines are 12, respectivly 13 characters. And if you count the Xs and the 0s, they add up to 13 Xs and 12 Os. Maybe just a co-incidence, but someone might spot something...

The verses scream "CLUE", but I can't spot anything, might just be a hunch though!

[Wild and MAD SPEC] What if we have to divide the number of letters by the number of lines and then multiply by the number of minutes we together have spent in different ARGs, complaining about difficult clues. After that, we have to take the number in question and take a percentage of it, which equals the amount of stupidity in the fact that we always complain about the clues and riddles, yet we always return to ARGs. That number would give us the telephone-number to a small, yet tasty resturant in Mexico where we all can hide out and start growing wheat.

(Buffpojken apologizes about his lack of discipline in keeping it simple to read, but forwards it to his secretary)

[Taladan]

Lurker

[enaxor]

Re: Lurker

[dishboy]

Wow, great job Taladan.
enaxor, should we have some spoilers around that solve?

By the way, two things to note: Dare picked up on the grouping of 5 way early in this thread, but wasn't on exactly the right track. Plus, it looks like the KISS theme was right - the fact that the card talks about

[Guest]

But what to do with these. Has anyone sent an email?

[InfinityWPI]

I'm guessing Bill's a lucky man... that is, if he figured this out...

[Taladan]

happy to help

I don't know if the N was my mistake or a mistake in the original cipher, haven't checked it, but I hope this helped you guys out


Tal

[BestFriendChris]

First of all, nice solve Taladan!

This is the first I've heard of this kind of cypher. Would it be possible that Ron used it to hide something in his personal website as well? I mean, on the example page of puzzlecards.net it says:

[Schnell-Davis]

Yeah, great solve Taladan and enaxor.

I've been working on this puzzle for a few days, and based on the answer, I still had quite a way to go.

If this is his idea of a SIMPLE puzzle, I'd hate to see one of the hard ones.

[enaxor]

[Taladan]

According to the example page on the puzzlecard site, that's supposed to be a card sent to the CEO of a Forbes listed company...

The only company that I know of that has a man named Bill whose wife is named Cheryl is Microsoft.

Bill Gates and his wife Cheryl McFadden Gates.


Hopefully this helps lead somewhere else?

Tal

[Nogwater]

I thought Bill Gates' wife name was Melinda.