unforum

[Salkunh]

[Nik_Doof]

[Rob_Riv]

[Mike213]

As far as I can see, the creator of the site, lunartik (definitely out of game), uses similar-ish music on other pages, so I wouldn't make much of it (the music, that is). In one of his other sites it says the tunes are by "nevercake". Going here and mousing over the blue thing above the snail says "nevercake" and a search of them didn't show up much. Maybe there still could be puzzle here, but it seems this is just another site to enhance the reality of Perplex City (for now, at least...)

[Violet]

That could be true, but it seems a bit odd to have The Sentinel, The Academy and then an ice cream website (with extremely limited info on it in comparison to the other two) as our sole access to info about PC. It just seems like a strange choice: "I know, we'll give them access to a newspaper, a renouned centre of learning and a place that sells ice cream that makes you clever and has all the calories of ordinary ice cream!" So although you're probably right and it's just enhancing the PC image I can't help but be a leeetle suspicious, and the trees playing the opening bars to Unchained Melody makes me the most suspicious.

[POTUS]

WhipSmartIce.com
1.1) The first three bass tones are A, B, C in the key of CMaj.
1234567 (Chordal tones i,ii,iii,iv,v,vi,vii=1 Maj scale)
CDEFGAB (The natural scale of C Major)

1.2) When I go to Pastures Green I see "Transferring . . " in the Status Bar.


PerplexCityAcademy.com
2.1) The Academy website was live for the first day or so with only the message "Transferring . . ."

2.2) The background color attribute value = "FEFDDF." These are all hex sure, but they are also musical notes (CMaj, FMaj).
FEFDDF (Background color on the Academy "Transferring..." page)
434224 (Chordal tones relevant to CMaj iv,iii,iv,ii,ii,iv)
171661 (Chordal tones relevant to FMaj i,vii,i,vi,vi,i)

I can't help but think of the "Bar None" card with the first initial of each computer name beign an anagram of Anna ABCs.

It's like the cards are all related somehow . . . I wish I knew how!

[Violet]

POTUS - not sure what you're trying to say honey, du you think the notes on the trees are important?

Sorry, am having a thicky day/week/year

[Leeravitz]

Confused me a bit as well (but then, it's fairly technical...)

I assume the point that we're all groping towards is that, based on musical notation, we're pretty much left with codes/ciphers that could incoporate ABCDEFG (and some basic number progressions).

And that isn't a great deal of help in spelling the majority of English words...

But, if there were puzzles relying on, say, map reference codes (A4) or binary polarities (A=on, B=off), or algebraic codes (A + B= C) or some such, then we might be closer to finding a useful isomorphism between music and codes...

Maybe...

[Violet]

basically, I know very little about how music could translate into a code. If u need any notes I can tell you what they are, but I haven't heard of any precedent for musical codes, except something about a da Vinci lock that opened with notes played in the right order...but I only see two reasons for the trees to play notes:

1. they are there for fun, which would explain why there's only 3 different prominent notes

2. they are there for a reason, but I wouldn't have a clue what the reason was

There's only two ways of playing notes on the site and that's the trees or the rainbow twinkly thing/ice cream flavours. The milkmaids do their own thing!

Perplexcity doesn't push music as a big thing at the Academy. We've only heard of one musical group, RFD, which is v odd as think about how many we hear about everyday? Is music even significant? It seems to be a majorly big difference in our societies

however, I might just want it to be a code because it's the only thing I'm any good at - I'm terrible with numbers over 100!

[Leeravitz]

I'm not sure that music isn't important at the Academy - it seems to be Caine (from the Project Team's) area of particular expertise, and, although I can't recall all the details, I am sure there are Academy scholars listed who have an especial interest in musical projects. There isn't a Department obviously listed to oversee Music, granted. But then, neither is there really one for Archaeology, and I get the impression that there are a number of scholars with interests in those areas, too (Anna giving a talk on cave paintings, or some such thing).

I agree that it's hard to see what musical codes might emerge (even harder for a non - musician like me to appreciate, probably). I'm not convinced Whipsmart offers anything much in this vein, the progression seems far too simple, even to me. But that we could be faced with some musical problems to crack further down the line doesn't seem impossible.
I'm partly a sucker for all this because of things like Douglas Hofstadter's 'Godel, Escher, Bach,' which is full of references to Bach encoding his own name into his notatons and so on (for the record, apparently, in Germany - 18th century Germany, at least, - a B was an H, and a B Flat was a B, which was how he got away with it! A progression of B Flat, A, C, B)...

Straws in the wind, perhaps...

[Violet]

Doesn't it strike you as a little odd that music isn't more important to them? Maybe they're a society of entirely left-brained people, so they can't appreciate music on the same level as us. It'd explain why they're so good at maths and things!

[kayellehear]

Not sure that it isn't. Remember the Academy purely deals with puzzles, rather than subjects and perhaps they just prefer their puzzles to be left-brainers!

I would imagine that one of their universities or the college even might offer music as a subject in its own right. If music had no importance then RFD etc certainly would have no place in the Sentinel.

I agree with earlier post that whipsmart site /colours/notes etc may prove to be of use in other solves, rather than being a puzzle in itself. They had to give us something to keep us occupied anyway didn't they?

[Violet]

but as I said before, the Sentinel only really mentions one band, music isn't in their headlines as much as ours. I just think it's a marked difference between us and them - their analytical approach to everything must mean there's at least a chance that they only see music on a logic/mathematic level, because it's possible to learn it and learn it instead of, say, a Hendrix who could never read a note and just felt music instead. They hold their puzzle solvers as their most talented people. They don't seem to have a big sports or musical obsession like we do, they're really one-track minded when it comes to intelligence and what that means. The only celebration of achievement in PC appears to be for people who are very good at left-brained tasks, there's no creative right! I just think that's significant in trying to establish what sort of puzzles we're going to get in the future, as well as whether we've missed one on the Whipsmart site!!!

[PuzzledPineapple]

I would disagree about the lack of musical headlines in the Sentinel. We've heard a lot about RFD, but Joya is described as a singer and it doesn't seem like she's in RFD, and just today there's a bit at the side about a band called Ludivan. It's not a high proportion of articles, but given that we're only seeing the highlights of the paper, I think it's about the same proportion as you would see in any earthly newspaper. We've also had that damning review of a play as well, so I think it's fair to say that the arts are getting fair coverage. They do like adding puzzles to everything, by the looks of it (sculptures and all), but 'The Lab' suggests that they still like to turn off their brains once in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if RFD is similar entertainment.

[misteraitch]

This one has been doing my head in for too long now!

All weekend I've been whistling the milk maids yodel, which eventually struck me as being made up of two parts - one containing 5 notes, and the second containing six

[#####] ###### another mobile number leading us to another site perhaps?

I haven't the foggiest as to how it could be converted but I thought I'd pass the thought on to those of you who can