View topic - SOLVE: "Horshack" journal entry puzzle

unforum
a.r.g.b.b

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.

Our Esteemed Contributors

The time now is Wed Nov 13, 2024 2:31 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: General » ARG: (Mnemosyne and) The Widow's Son

SOLVE: "Horshack" journal entry puzzle

Page 1 of 1 [3 Posts]

Author

Message

Perko
Guest

SOLVE: "Horshack" journal entry puzzle

Hello, first a little introduction, since you don't know me. I'm new to this particular site & this ARG(?), but I am a former Cloudmaker, and I've just very recently started poking around into this scene again. This is the first of the current games that I've really taken some interest in (started yesterday).

Anyway, I have solved the "Horshack" message puzzle! I first noticed the curious appearance of a couple of non-alphabetical characters and 2 numbers and a couple of capital letters. I quickly guessed that this was some sort of keyboard key transposition scheme (i.e. use one letter to the left/right/up/down on the keyboard, etc.). I tried a few simple ones, but all that failed to generate anything useful.

I was looking down at that QWERTY of mine, and the idea struck me that this afterall wasn't the only keyboard type out there! The next best known one called the "Dvorak" layout, and its keys are arranged differently for faster and easier typing. This seemed a promising thought, but I wanted some sort of confirmation that I'm on the right track. Well, rereading the rest of the message again, it didn't take long to realize that "Horshack" sounds a hell-of-a-lot like "Dvorak"! So I was pretty sure I had the right trick now.

So I had to find a picture of a Dvorak keyboard layout so I could try some out translations. It turns out there are different arrangements of some of the non-alphabetic keys which caused me a couple of small issues, but the one that comes from the #1 google link works well:

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html

The rest of it was a simple matter of translation of the message, character by character, looking up each character on the Dvorak layout and recording the character appearing at the location on a QWERTY layout. This accounts nicely for all the weird characters and even the capitals, which just represent "shifted" keys. I immediately had a "http://", so I knew it was going to be a URL of some sort. So, is it? Well, it may disappoint some and perhaps intrigue others:

dyylSzzurpgmovgbucjycrbvjrmzurpgmozkc.,urpgmvldlZu]59
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=59

So the link is right back to one of our forums right here! Which forum? Well, the CTW interaction forum! As in "Chasing the Wish"!

As I said, I'm new, and I don't follow CTW (although it looks like I might now have to start). Therefore I'll leave it up to the veterans to tell me what this might mean. I know there was already speculation that "Flagmonkey" is part of CTW or another game, perhaps this is the best evidence yet that it may be so?

I hope Grimace is still updating that Guide, things are starting to get complicated, and there's a lot of unsolved or weird stuff out there now.

Perko

Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 12:30 am

vpisteve
Asshatministrator

Joined: 30 Sep 2002
Posts: 2441
Location: 1987

Well, IMHO this seems more and more to simply be someone playin' around with us. Player based, Celia type mind games.

Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but stuff like this is just starting to irk me.

Nice work, though, Perko Smile

Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 12:40 am

reesylou
Guest

SPEC:link to CTW

I have wondered (briefly) before... but never thought it worth mentioning... perhaps Dale = Ewan, Sarah = The Sparrow girl/lady

Maybe Spock Vulture is a guide... or numbered one.

Do the times Dale/Ewan are in and out of Klepsydra match?

Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 12:54 am

Display posts from previous: Sort by:

Page 1 of 1 [3 Posts]

Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: (Mnemosyne and) The Widow's Son

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