unforum

[Emmitt]

Still don't know why some words are covered in the Mathematical Forecasting Initiative section, but...

It's obvious that the first word is Zambia (as stated before).
But the second and third words are tricky.

The 2nd word seems to be referring to a country (possibly in Africa) beginning with the letter "M". But I looked and none seem to match.

The 3rd word is the capital of that country. It's more legible. Seems to be "Stecvo"??? but there is no such city. Also, I looked at every capital from every country and nothing even seems to be close.

Alot of questions.

[adrenjarvi]

I am sorry again, I did apologize for what happened. I was simply saying that it was not " for the hell of it", I was not willingly trying to break the game, nor was I attempting to do anything unethical. I had figured that monster was in on it- perhaps this was my incompetence, and I am sorry for making it. I have stopped entirely with any monster.com dealings.

I do not want to be seen as a bad ARG player, I ( like pk1 and I am sure others) thought this was a logical step. It is my mistake. Please, forgive me

In terms of the spaces in the MFI - I noticed those blanks too. Zambia is almost certainly the first, but the second two do not seem to match to anything I could find.

Also - there are ads inbetween the Dutch-dj in the phone message and the verizon message service. one was monster.com and led us to this posting. I can make out 2 more, one of which appears to be sprite :/. Can anyone else find anything else about these?

[phil16]

[Miss Mental Health]

The first scratched-out word is likely Zambia. The second and third words appear to be a country starting with "M", and its capital, which ends in "o". The only country/capital pair I found that matches is Mali, the capital of which is Bamako. The problem with this is that the country name doesn't match. It looks too long to be Mali - perhaps it's even two words - but it's too short to qualify for Mozambique/Maputo.
Also: (spec, 1st season spoiler)

[Starf]

If you sort of jiggle the resize area of your browser, the white area covering the blanked words slip a little. The first word looks a little like Mare or Maro.

There is an area in South Africa called 'Mare' but I dont know about Maro.

Also a Mare island in the pacific apparently... if that is at all relevent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%A9_Island

of course, im probably heading off on a tangent here.

[cb]

Just noticed- is it just me, or does Thomas Mittelwerk's picture look like he's been pasted into a back ground pic? Probs just paranoia on my behalf, but someone check, 'cos otherwise i'll go insane!

[urthstripe]

Can we put any new finds, solves, and updates from the website in a new thread so this thread doesn't grow into a unwieldy behemoth that's a chore just to find the pertinent information? Of course, use your judgment (and the search button) to make sure that stuff hasn't already been posted before. Thanks!

[Starf]

I think he's standing infront of a printed picture of a window (as daft as that sounds) I dont think even the best flash on a camera would cast a shadow on a glass window looking out on a bright day. I could be wrong though.

[Yauch]

The unknown covered section on the MFI page is most likely two words. I took a screen cap of that section, and transposed other visible letters on top of the visible part of the unknown word. A lowercase f is to thin, and t, i, h, ect... are all the wrong shape. The letter on the new line is a capitol letter, and a rounded letter at that. That leaves us with C, G, O, Q, S and depending on the font, D, P and B. I again transposed these letters (except Q and S which aren't available) onto the visible area and came up with O as the only likely candidate, but because of my lack of photoshop at home (I used Paint.Net) I can't really rule any of them out.
I know this isn't all that helpful but this is my first post, and my first active participation in an ARG, so please be kind.

Also in contradiction of what I just said, a bit of far reaching speculation, on top of Starfs speculation above. Mare Island is part of New Caledonia, which i found on google maps 800 miles east of Australia, and appears to be directly in between Sydney and L.A.

[Obes]

It actually looks like 'More Soon'.

Using the windows magnifier, the first letter is definitely 'M' and the fourth is 'e'. The 6th and 7th are almost definitely the same letter twice.

Also, perhaps we should keep in mind other language's naming of countries?

Perhaps Dutch?


Obes.

[phil16]

Okay, i just got frustrated playing around with the covered sections and decided to take a more...technical approach. And volià, i was able to get the original hidden text underneath these sections from the decompiled flash file.

Now, since this is my first ARG i'm involved in i'm not really sure if this is considered "cheating"... if it's not i'll be happy to post what's really in there along with a hex dump of this section of the swf for those of you who want to see for themselves. If it is however considered cheating i'll just shut up and wait till we can figure it out the "regular" way.

So - wanna know what's in there?

[Faygelah]

Do tell....

[jonatj38]

[phil16]

Ok - this is the original text from the flash file:

[jonatj38]

[Update] Working