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[iheathen]

STILL Unsolved Wired / Lost puzzle! NEEDS YOUR HELP!!!

[cryptic3]

ed ruscha

[Caseys_Mom]

Is there any way that maybe it's simply page numbers. And maybe something on the page gives you a letter/word/clue?
Or maybe counting the letters on a page starting with the last one, instead of using the alphabet?

such as maybe:
4,8,15,16,23, 42 are the page numbers and use the other numbers for counting, beginning with the last letter of the page??

[Sarah B]

Has anyone tried;
ENIZAGAMDERIW
which is WIREDMAGAZINE backwards as a key for a vignere?

[Adventurik]

[Sarah B]

Is there anything else on the back page, apart from the picture?

117 suggests that you're looking for a series of text with at least 117 letters in... and possibly those give you your letters. It's a bit hard to solve this remotely without the magazine, lol.

*goes to find a copy*

[iheathen]

Most of my attempts at cracking the puzzle were based around the idea that the second set of numbers "wrapped" once they passed 26, so therefore A could be represented by 1,27, 53,79 or 105. And therefore 117 was the same as 13, so M. I have no idea if that's right or not, but based on that assumption, here's the letters that it WOULD translate to:

DHRCNO
BEFKJM
DKFSBVE
BAMBQAQ

Keeping with the "use letters backward from end" idea, I've tried Vigenere's on the above letters (both forward and backward... ie starting with QAQ...) using the following key ideas:

(also tried all of these keys forward and backward)
wiredmagazine
megalotto
megalottojackpot
scienceistruthfoundout
theend
QAVPHFTKRRJNGGERVGEFXOLMAH (the letters from the first set of numbers... I really thought I had it with the idea of using the letters from the first side of the puzzle BACKWARDS as the vigenere key for the second set... I thought that would be a really cool idea, but no dice... that made me really wonder if my transcribing of the second set of #s was done properly, simply because that idea really "felt right.")

I know we can do this!

As for other stuff on the back page... it just says "the end", shows the painting, says "by Ed RUSCHA" (that's case sensitive) then the page number which is normal "138 - Wired - May 2009) then in the corner in fineprint is the photo credit "Courtesy Ed Ruscha".

I really like the idea of page numbers... gonna look into that now...

[iheathen]

for people wanting to see what the puzzle pages look like, here's a link to view scans of them...

http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2009/04/lost_wired_puzz.html

The page on the left is the one that translates to "uselettersbackwardfromend".

That damn right page is very frustrating. I looked into the "page number" idea, but some of the pages that would be needed are simply ads in the magazine, and nothing else related to the puzzles in this issue had anything to do with the ads, so that feels wrong... back to the drawing board.

[intersect]

The fact that the pic on the last page is called "The End" seems like it might be relevant, I tried using the numbers to count letters on the phrase in the pic, starting at the end and going backwards, wrapping the big numbers "there's only 22 letters" but it gave me a nonsensical string that I tried to de-vignere or ROT, but never got anything from it. I don't have the string with me now, I'm at school, but I'll post it later just to have it

Aside: I totally forgot that this puzzle was in the magazine, I got that issue during finals and vowed not to try it until I was done with classes and totally forgot about it

[Adventurik]

wired.com posted today the solution to the magazine meta-puzzle.

Big Spoiler here:

[iheathen]

not a bad idea, i've tried "theend" and "end" forward and backward as vigenere cipher keys already to no avail. My main concern is still that we don't know if we've got the right letters to work with... is there anything else that could possibly be done with this second set of numbers other than translate them to letters via wrapping technique? Tha page numbers idea was a good one but it doesn't seem to pan out. Also, the left side of the puzzle was completely self-contained, so it makes one think that the right side is also solveable with only the given info, though who knows!

[iheathen]

intersect, you've got interesting ideas... can't wait to see what you're going to post later.

Also, as an aside, the link that was posted above to "the solution" is not the solution to this puzzle, it's the solution to all the other meta-puzzles hidden throughout the issue of the mag.

This puzzle exists separately from that meta-puzzle, and Wired seems to be giving us a few more days to solve it before they announce the answer.

[Adventurik]

[iheathen]

no problem! on the solution page (with the dancing men cipher) there was an email address on there originally, that you were supposed to email them... I sent a note to it, but haven't heard back yet.

Really good idea on using the end page online as part of this puzzle, I logged back in (they've now removed the link to the email address) and have been trying all different keys from the text on that page, but nothing's working.

[intersect]

Counting letters back from the last page "The End" and looping around for the larger numbers, I got:

DRNUSN
TNUUTT
FRUESN
UTOUCTC

I haven't found a key all weekend that makes it make any sense, so this may not be the way to go