unforum

[Leeravitz]

Yep, that's right. This is only a hypothesis, I don't consider it absolutely conclusive, but it just doesn't seem to me like the letters that are 'missing' are anything other than the letters that I would expect to be missing in most short English sentences. In what I have just written, for instance, 'z' doesn't appear, neither does 'x', neither does 'q'. 'J' is there a couple of times, but compare that to say, 't', which gets used about eight times in the first line.

That's all I'm saying...

In truth, I've always been better at analysing 'unlikely' solutions than actually coming up with likely ones *sigh*.

So, if we identify all the letters that *aren't* included in either the phrase 'Sayings of Gyvann', the actual quote 'Only that which is absent etc...' and the various actual words, and we find that these letters include 'z', 'x', 'q' etc., then I say, that tells us nothing useful.

[brat-sampson]

I thought I'd try and look at this from a different angle.

This puzzle is designed to stop non-recons accessing their keys while also, I would assume, allowing recons easy access. I doubt they'd want to spend a few hours going over a brand-new puzzle every few days just to get access to the keys and also that would do nothing to prevent non-recons solving the puzzle just as easily.

Surely it's more likely that their key-access puzzles follow a basic system so that any recon (who would know the system) would be able to look at the list of words (whatever it happened to be) and get the answer reasonably quickly whereas non-recons would have a very tough time trying to work out the answer as they wouldn't know the system. This would do a far better job of protecting the keys than simply putting up a whole new puzzle every few days that anyone who saw would be capable of solving.

I wouldn't be surprised if Violet kept updating us on the changes to the puzzle over the next few weeks until we could figure out the system for ourselves and get the answer easily next time we saw the new list.

[Violet]

that'd mean Violet going back in an awful lot though

[springboard]

[spaceXplorer]

[Mikeyj]

I'm a little reluctant to go for this as I don't like the link between the recons and the futures. They seem to be a separatist cult, using the Futures of the (external edition) of the Sentinel would be odd. Unless Madame Bianca's a recon.

Actually...forget that. Recons might just know about signs of the zodiac without having to consult the paper... . But anyway, Archer isn't the only one that doesn't fit, what about the Spider, Work link?

[Mikeyj]

Delete double post

[cassandra]

*sigh* At this point the puzzle is eating into my productivity, so I'm just going to go with the 'eye' "solution" - as in, the lack of i but the presence of "eye." The end.


...who am I kidding. I'm not going to be able to stop looking at those seven words all day.

[londubh]

Trout me or tell me I'm going too deep into this if you must, but...

What if we just pretend that Madame Bianca knows enough to be trying to give us hints - humour me here. After all, there was that tough Futures-based puzzle a while back, right?

OK, so we look at the futures column and see under Spider:

[akama]

I wonder if the cards will be released when we have solved this!

[Spankit]

[catherinek23]

Just a thought but I think you can also read "only that which is absent must be sought" as implying that we already have the solution. In a slightly irritating zen-type sense that is!

Which to me may mean that the answer is already present in the text/words given, although I'm no further on with working out what that might be!

P.S. I'm also thinking that the Futures may be a totally red herring, it just doesn't seem to fit with their beliefs, although I know we don't know much about these at the moment. To me this would be like fundamental christians consulting their horoscopes.

[catherinek23]

Me again, when comparing the list of words to the quote the letters that are included in the words but missing from the quote are:

kfkf in order, from "shake", "face", "work" and "fly".

Does this mean anything to anyone??!

[sledgecallier]

Again, the problem seems to be that we simply have no way of testing theories. We could have stumbled on the correct answer hours or even day ago and not know it!?

[spaceXplorer]