unforum

[Bakers_12]

Directions are all very well and good , but you still need a starting point to use them. Think we need to know where the cube got to Earth. that's my spec to be touted for the day.

[arnezami]

[arnezami]

[jonc]

[arnezami]

[jonc]

[Antony C]

In response to arnezami's theories, I agree that the blobs could correspond to something within a country, rather than the UK, as has been postulated previously. I think they are districts of a city. I've been trawling the Internet for district maps of major cities in the UK, but as yet haven't really found anything exact, but some are close.

I also thought about (although the magnitude is immense) east coast USA states, due to all of the straight lines.

Just my pennies worth. (head explodes)

[arnezami]

This now begs the following question:

IF the only purpose of the Risk hints and outer digits is to make clear the middle digits represent directions (and which direction is which) then could they (in principle) have made the puzzle with less than 42 strings with the same result? Or more than 42?

In other words: is the "42 times"-bit really essential now to the deciphering of the middle digits? Or is it simply an arbritrary number only influenced by their choice (of the game Risk) to make clear what each middle digit represents: a direction. If the number 42 is simply a Risk "artifact" (and has not much to do with the middle digits themselves) what does this mean for our understanding of the middle digits?

And why are they in pairs? One being up-side-down? Was it necessary to have an even number of strings to create this puzzle?

Hmmm. Will have to sleep on that.

arnezami

[BBuck]

One other thing to think about: where's the cannon? We've the horseman and the infantry.

[c1023]

I think there is a shape on card #222 Instigator under the Perplex City logo.

[Agent Lex]

[arnezami]

Here is my go at it (card #222):



Its in the same orientation and scale of all my previous ones. Its really hard to get it right. But I believe somebody with lots of photoshop experience can do a much better job than I did.

Here is an unaltered version if you want to give it a try:



I know it looks like black but I can assure you it isn't .

As already mentioned the similarities with the one on card #253 are striking:



Why two blobs of (nearly) the same shape? That doesn't make much sense if they are pieces of a puzzle. Or did they do it because they were afraid the one on card #222 wouldn't be detected? Since there is no card for this meta puzzle there is no way for them to post any corrections for the puzzle. Maybe we will get a correction via "other channels"? Can we contact somebody?

Anyway if my count is right there are now 14 shapes (with the above two being the same there would be 13 unique ones). And just a thought: 4 times 13 equals 54...

arnezami

PS. @BBuck: the missing cannon. Yeah. And why groups of two and three infantry? Is it simply random with no special meaning (just for us to identify it as risk)? And do the dices still mean something? And why are they split over two cards etc? Just to make it more difficult or is there some other deeper meaning to it? I have no idea what that could be (well: the dices are maybe split in two times 3 full dices + 3 halve dices). The whole split in two thing could be a theme.
PPS. I think the wiki should be updated with this new blob.

[sixsidedsquare]

Here's a bit of a cleaner version:


I'm still wondering where all this is going, at the moment it's like we have pieces of a puzzle scattered all over, it's just a matter of how they all fit together. Maybe we should sum up all the wave 4 mysteries in one place, like the micro text and all the odd UV bits.

[FranG]

Take a look at the elephant on #40 Baby on Board. If you use a magnifying glass the edges of the grayish spot in the middle are too smooth for it to be part of the shading.

[Curlytek]

Spot on FranG, definitely a shape there in that elephant on #40.