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[krystyn]

Dang it, Woody, I was so close last night. Jinxie was probably totally laughing at me, because I nearly did what you did. Nearly. With the math, and the shifting to the right. Dang. Nice work!

ETA: Thinking back, I think ThaJinx's hint about "missing a step" means exactly that. We'd stepped to the left on the keyboard to get that message, but then our next natural step would be to the right.

Here's a bit on the Arecibo binary transmissions that might be useful/interesting (along with some ... 'conjecture' ... - you'll notice the citation at the end thanking Art Bell, heh heh):

http://amo.net/contact/

And then there's always Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

[darkphan]

Did some work on binary.gif (i am supposed to be working...but happened to check the forum today):

[johnny5]

Perhaps the only binary needed is that which is covered by the square named beneath.gif.

Reading down-up maybe? That would be 11x21 for 231 chars /7 yields 33 "words"

I'm at work right now and can't work on it much, but there's a thought for you.

[Le Tuna Man]

[krystyn]

arecibo.gif is the guide, and binary.gif is the puzzle.

if you look at ThaJinx's arecibo.gif (I did spot-checking), it is identical to the original binary sent out in 1974, which means we don't need to solve it. So, why is it there?

To provide the rules for solving binary.gif.

binary.gif is 391 characters long, which appears to have very few factors, pointing to a very important rule about the Arecibo transmission - in order to signal to aliens how to construct the image created from the 1's and 0's, it was useful to use prime numbers as factors of the total number of characters, to indicate how many rows and columns to break the string into.

After downloading a small factor-finder program, I found that 391 has factors of 1, 17, and 23. I first broke the string into 23 rows of 17 digits each, but was still getting too much noise, with some clumping.

When I broke the string into 17 rows of 23 digits, on the other hand, two images began to emerge: a key near the top, to show me I was getting a message, and then the word "zing":

http://www.ryanjoseph.com/~tunajinx/head2heel/zing.html

Have at it, kids! Whew.

[darkphan]

more coords:

From page source: 35.492504 -94.885783
From present.gif: 39.775118 -91.900312
From desktop.gif: 41.878660 -87.635705

[Le Tuna Man]

[krystyn]

the zing solve, FYI

[Le Tuna Man]

hehehe, yeah, I went and did it on my own in notepad. He is very tricksy, this Jinx. What's with this Zing page? I got nothin other than the presence of the word "present," which is the name of the image as well as where his mouse cursor is on said image where it says "All pieces present."

[Le Tuna Man]

I have this odd feeling that all the pieces are present. I'm looking at the map, now with all the coordinates plotted, and I keep trying to connect the dots in a way to make some kind of shape or symbol or anything, but I'm having trouble. Anybody else want to try this? Because I can't really see anything that needs solving on zing.html. Combine that with "All Pieces Present" and, well, I think we just about have it.

[Wiser]

[krystyn]

As I mentioned to you in IRC, that last one is the Sears Tower.

heh.

[Tonamel]

Just stating for the record that zing.html is again two images. present. gif and desktop.gif

Present.gif covers the bee on the flower. I don't know if that's useful, but we all Love Bees, right?

[Dasro_Kast]

So what are we left with here? zing.html and the list of coordinates? Trying to get up to speed.

[darkphan]

Maybe the points map out a constellation...