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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Art of the Heist » The Art of the Heist: Interactions

Emile from Stolen A3

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rose
...and then Magic happens

Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

Emile from Stolen A3

yes, I wrote to him to try to get information about the wordsearch puzzle. His reply which quotes my message follows:

Quote:

Dear Emile,
I just found your posts here asking about Nisha. I worked with her and can PM you more about her tonight while I am watching the meeting with Gunter in Chicago.

This is the thing, most of the Retrievers are not fans of Virgil. I have always found him, and his site, intriguing. His complexity is evident in his rant and roll posts, and he has a rare self-revelatory style - he is fascinating and unique. I am his biggest, but not only fan among the Retrievers.

We have found some hidden files on his website, you may have seen them referenced on this stolena3 forum. But there are some password protected pages that we haven't been able to access.

Ordinarily I would completely respect a person's private passwored protected files. These are part of his "unfinished game"- the flower one, and the password page says Finish It! So, I think Virgil is inviting us to solve the username/ password.

This is the link:
http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/mastersofart/ITSBTCTHT.swf

It followed this puzzle which we solved:
http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/mastersofart/m101.html

which followed this entry point:

http://virgilkingofcode.com/mastersofart
Game word: VANGOGH
Login word: artistry
User: potato
Pass: eaters

We have worked very hard to solve this puzzle and are close. We found

http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/forthcoming

where we are, quite frankly, hopelessly mired.

Do you have any hints, suggestions, insights?

Thanks so much,
Rose

PS. Don't you find it odd that Nisha hasn't been on motion capture at this point. I have a secret hunch that Virgil is really making the Electronic Ourboros (now playing) and isn't really intent on finishing the Nisha Chronicles.

Heh, Virgil is "fascinating and unique," alright! I can see how he would rub certain people the wrong way, though (myself included, sometimes.) He's a good guy, though.

I actually wasn't aware of the puzzles on Virgil's site since I've been so mired in production work, though it does seem right up Virgil's alley to test his fans, to see if they're as "clever" as he is. He's enjoyed toying with people like this for pretty much as long as I've known him. Of course, Virgil would never reveal the solution to a puzzle like this, even to me, so I wouldn't even bother asking him -- he conducts himself in the manner of a stage magician, whose tricks would be spoiled if people took a peek behind the curtain at what's really going on.

In the spirit of "quid pro quo," though, since you're willing to help me out with feedback about Nisha for the game, I'd be more than willing to take a look at the puzzle myself and see if I can give you any insight. I can't make any promises or anything, but I will do my best. By the way, you can go ahead and post your insights about Nisha in this thread, rather than a private message, in case your thoughts might spark some new inspiration in others who've dealt with Nisha, maybe get a brainstorm going.

And yes, I do find it quite odd that Virgil hasn't had Nisha in for a motion capture session yet, but as far as him not being intent on finishing the game...that would be news to me! From my experience with and knowledge of Virgil, I'd say he's VERY intent on finishing the game, obsessed even...but with Virgil, no one can ever really be 100% sure what his intentions are -- the complex ways in which his mind operates, I've given up trying to figure out years ago! I think Nisha's absence from the mo-cap lab probably has more to do with...well, I don't really want to say that Virgil is out of his element, but let's just say the scope and scale of video games has changed quite a bit since Virgil's heyday, and some of the processes used for his more text-based games don't really apply. But that's why he hired me, right? Just wish he'd done it a bit sooner...

Anyway, I'll give this puzzle a look and see what I can come up with. I look forward to your feedback about Nisha!

Thanks,
Emile

_________________
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Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:36 pm

rose
...and then Magic happens

Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

Emile's hint

Quote:

Rose,

Wow, there seem to be a number of fascinating things going on with this puzzle, I'm not sure where to start. I've gone through some of the research your fellow puzzlers have done though, and noticed something you might not have picked up on...in the word "ALMOST" going down through the cube, I noticed that if you continue down into the cube one more letter (to the seventh grid), you hit the "I" that starts a word going down and on a diagonal towards the right and stopping at the bottom edge ("INFATUATION"). I'm not sure I saw that one posted anywhere.

Similarly, you and mssphinx might be on to something with your repetitive word lists. I noticed if you think of "able" as "A", and from that advance the value of every square of that layer by 1, one of my boss's favorite words leaps out at you. It would be just like him to do something recursive like that.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for your great feedback on Nisha.

_________________
I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:33 pm

xnbomb
Unfettered

Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

Emile is a good guy

After checking out Emile's hint and finding a serious inconsistency with where/how INFATUATION can be found (see Rowan's post), I PMed Emile myself to see what was going on. He replied:

Emile wrote:

I took a peek at the cube again, and you're totally right. Trying to visually look for patterns in that cube is tricky, and I got fooled. I saw the first five letters of the sequence, hopped to the end of the line and saw the end of the word and considered it solved. Didn't even notice that I changed lines in the process. Just the kind of shortcut that Virgil loves to punish!

Out of curiosity, I did a quick grep on those portions of the server I have access to, looking for references to the word infatuation. Incomplete clues are another of Virgil's favorites. I did find one thing that looks kind of odd (http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/missingyou/), but I'm not sure there's anything to it.

I wonder if this puzzle was made as some kind of training exercise for TatumThink employees. Maybe that vacation request form that no one seems to be able to get their hands on is hidden in there! That would be just like Virgil.

I wouldn't want you to think that Virgil has me out there planting red herrings for him, so I spent some time last night looking at the cube again trying to ponder the SIDEWAYS STARTS AT THREE and NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION clues. This time I checked my work (fool me once and all that) and it seems to me that a word that you've already found actually fits that STARTS AT THREE clue � EXPEDIENCY which starts at (10,11) on grid 3 and ends at (19,2) on grid 12.

Not a whole lot of help, I know, but "expediency" is a frequent request from Virgil to the rest of us in development meetings.

The link leads to a funny 'wrong answer' type page.

_________________
My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:01 pm

rowan
Unfictologist

Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 1966

Re: Emile is a good guy

xnbomb wrote:

The link leads to a funny 'wrong answer' type page.

Especially since the error is 202020 Confused

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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:05 pm

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