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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[Update] The Ooze Zone- 16th June 2006 - Dolor Sit Amet
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CherokeeParkes
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Joined: 03 Nov 2005
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 		[Spec] When I saw the word life emphasised my first thought was the phrase "Ten to life" As time in prison. Even before seeing the noting on the emphasised words it appeared to me that Nev is looking to say something important yet his hands are tied, cause if say V or someonelse knew Nev was talking they might try to stop him permanently. [/Spec]

Edit

One other thing, kind of a link to the old Alias related ARG. But does Nev seem a little like Marshall in how he greeted Caine.

Edit again

Just one more random thought but was anyone involved in the hunt for the Nameless Novel. Another ARG based on the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Just wondering if there is any familiar Crypto.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 6:24 pm
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_izzy_
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CherokeeParkes wrote:
Edit

One other thing, kind of a link to the old Alias related ARG. But does Nev seem a little like Marshall in how he greeted Caine.


That's who Nev reminded me of! thanks it had been annoying me! Very Happy

PostPosted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:12 pm
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spugmeistress
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CherokeeParkes wrote:
Just one more random thought but was anyone involved in the hunt for the Nameless Novel. Another ARG based on the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Just wondering if there is any familiar Crypto.


the hunt for the nameless novel wasn't really an ARG, just a cleverly done website. and since the puzzles there are aimed at the same audience as the books (kids) the cryptography wasn't exactly the same standard as we would expect of the perplexcity academy cryptology department. but hey, i like lemony snicket too :)

by the by, i emailed caine about what i thought nev was hinting at, and just to have an excuse to say hi to my favourite character, not heard owt back yet.

rach =)

PostPosted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 8:12 pm
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Nodmeister
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 		Just a thought to throw in here, but Nev's exact words contained the phrase "not speculate about" and was referred to again afterwards. Doesn't the word "about" as used in cryptic clues call for a re-arrangement i.e. an anagram... perhaps of "not speculate" ???
I tried a few and got something comical including Sente....... but I'm rubbish at anagrams.
Just a thought that's all......
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:02 pm
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perplexed
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 		I'm sure we could make Nev's words say something if we fiddle with them enough, but we don't know what we're looking for...

<OOG> MC could well have put a puzzle in there for us and overestimated are ability to puzzle out the obscure, because we haven't had an update for a while. </OOG>
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:15 pm
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duckiemonster
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perplexed wrote:
because we haven't had an update for a while.


Um... except for all the crypto stuff?

And can I ask that you all stop tagging stuff "TINAG" and "OOG" and "SPEC"? It's kind of obvious when you're talking out of game, speculating or whatever, and the tags give me a headache Sad
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:33 pm
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perplexed
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 		That was 3 days ago.

<spec> maybe I like using the tags, and they make things clearer for people </spec>
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:51 pm
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thalamus
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Nodmeister wrote:
the phrase "not speculate about" and was referred to again afterwards. Doesn't the word "about" as used in cryptic clues call for a re-arrangement i.e. an anagram... perhaps of "not speculate" ???
I tried a few and got something comical including Sente....... but I'm rubbish at anagrams.


sente culpa to

which is aaalmost latin for 'sente is totally to blame'

...but not quite Wink

thalamus
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:54 pm
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Antony Corbett
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 		Think Greek??
Shouldn't we be looking for something greek rather than latin?

PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:06 pm
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Scott
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 		See, and here I was thinking to myself "ahhhhh, fFinally! A perplexian who talks and thinks like me! fFinally!! A normal person who speaks like a normal person!"

Cos, see, I know exactly what Nev is saying. I will attempt to translate:
Nev wrote:
Work at the crypto labs is becoming more difficult, because we are constantly subjected to mystery and obfuscation about our work. I am afraid to ask about my work because of possible dangers to my job, or possibly my life. And more potentially dangerous, secretive work has been fFlooding into the department recently, causing some consternation among peers.
Something is lost in the translation, of course. But that's about as complex as he is getting. The, you know, big secret is simply that the higher ups in the department, the people who assign work, are assigning an awful lot of very top secret work, and isn't that strange?

Nev isn't one to speculate, but he couldnt possibly say it any more clear. He thinks his bosses in the department are doing something underhanded. So perhaps Caine should see who is in charge of that sort of thing.

Oh, uhm, would you like a banana with your italics? fFer real, I talk just like that. I would also imagine he was waving his arms about as he spoke.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:28 pm
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thalamus
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 		Re: Think Greek??
Antony Corbett wrote:
Shouldn't we be looking for something greek rather than latin?


possibly both - although commonly called 'greeking', the lorem ipsum text has latin roots.

http://www.lipsum.com/

...although, as has been noted, we're probably reading too much into it ;)

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:52 pm
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Macavity
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 		Well, I just emailed Scott's summation to Caine (although I did tweak it a bit to make it easier to understand - some of the word order was a bit awkward).

Wonder what he'll make of that.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:10 pm
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Scribe
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 		So I've been away a week, and only just catching up, but here's some conversation anyway...

perplexed wrote:
I'm sure we could make Nev's words say something if we fiddle with them enough, but we don't know what we're looking for...


At first I just read the emphasised words as just emphasis in speech, but after reading this thread I'm not so sure. About anything.. Wink

Anyway, the way Nev is talking aout speculation without speculation, and the way Caine has written everything down and possibly hinted at something made me suspicious enough to write some Perl. If Nev wants to tell Caine something without telling him something, and make it look like normal speech, then it's going to have to be something small - a few words at most. He'd also try to get something vital in there - I'd guess a name.

So I took the emphasised words (I count 7 in total?) and compared each name from the Crypto Dept list to the letters in them, to see which ones would fit if it is an anagram.

I've limited it to full names so as to really cut down the remaining search space, which may be a mistake if he's just using surnames. However, maybe someone better at anagrams than me can see if there's anything in the remaining letters that might indicate Nev was trying to tell us something... Here are the names that exist in the emphasised words, plus the letters left over for each:

rowan ashford : buiessplesuetiminglie
hubert wolfe : sinsspasureaimdoinglie
deborah fowler : usinsspsueatiminglie
brandon powell : usissesurehatimigife
rupert gomes : binsslasuewhaidoinlife

(I also figure that this is biased towards people with common letters in their name, that is if there's no message at all...)

Speculation? You got it Smile

PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:47 pm
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Tintintin
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Scott wrote:
Cos, see, I know exactly what Nev is saying. I will attempt to translate:
Nev wrote:
Work at the crypto labs is becoming more difficult, because we are constantly subjected to mystery and obfuscation about our work. I am afraid to ask about my work because of possible dangers to my job, or possibly my life. And more potentially dangerous, secretive work has been fFlooding into the department recently, causing some consternation among peers.
Something is lost in the translation, of course. But that's about as complex as he is getting. The, you know, big secret is simply that the higher ups in the department, the people who assign work, are assigning an awful lot of very top secret work, and isn't that strange?

Nev isn't one to speculate, but he couldnt possibly say it any more clear. He thinks his bosses in the department are doing something underhanded. So perhaps Caine should see who is in charge of that sort of thing.

The thing that gets me about all this is why on earth (or in this case, Perplex City) does the Academy need a cryptology department? What are they having to encode or decode on such a regular basis that it merits a department? Are the normal quotidian puzzles and such created in great quantities by Perplexians for recreational purposes subject to Big Brother-style inspection in case of seditious hidden messages or suchlike?

I mean, if there was any evidence of hostile powers (and I mean obvious ones, not 3P) that threatened the city from whom things had to be kept secret, and whose secrets were in need of being discovered, then it would make sense to me. However, it seems that any military rivals to the City were Cube-nuked and razed to the ground centuries ago, and such dangerous organisations as there are, like the 3P, are so obscure and secretive that most don't know or even believe in them.

But, in a society where puzzles and codes are relatively mundane and in constant usage by the entire populace, and there seem to be no reasons other than leisure pursuits for these things to be used, why have a department of hardcore crypto-heads? Is it to ensure that No Puzzle Shalt Be Left Unsolved or somesuch?

Dunno

EDIT: Eh, upon further musing, I guess that the Crypto department is just the wing of the Academy that specialises in codes - I can answer my own question by presuming they don't necessarily have codes etc that they *have* to break or construct, they just study them on a more scientific basis, but have been increasingly presented recently with more mysterious work. Or something.

Wah, shooting down one's own spec-ish ramblings is no fun. For an encore, I shall go and trout myself silly. Wink

PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:18 pm
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DrKra37
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 		I think you're missing a huge application of cryptography, namely for commercial type purposes. No business wants their secret new project ripped off, so they would encode their documents. It's only natural in a puzzle-rich environment like Perplex City that the technology and sophistication of such codes would need to be a continually evolving thing, as each unsolved code is basically a challenge that some Perplexian is eventually going to solve.

EDIT: Oh noes! You edited even as I was replying Razz If it makes you feel any better, now I'll have to trout myself as well Razz

PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:26 pm
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