unforum

[RedHatty]

I think the peom is referring to Chernobyl

read the article to see how many of the factors fit

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Yup, totally agree, it's a total match. Good work!

[Shady]

Nice one RedHatty! The test began at 1.23.04 and the explosion occurred 43 seconds later at 1.23.47. This test had been tried before and had failed. I am assuming the four score and six refers to 1986 when it happened.

I am also with Alasdair on the IRS but am trying to tie in the 'my house' reference. I wondered if it meant Mark W. Everson who heads the IRS.
IRS also stands for Incident Reporting System which was upgraded after Chernobyl.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

The link with Chernobyl & death is fairly clear.

I can't see any link between death and the IRS, although now I think of it there's the saying nothing in life is certain, except for death and taxes, still not getting the house though. (Quote was by Benjamin Franklin)

No progress at all for Raph3. There's so little to work with:
Stamp - postage, letter, envelope, package, value, cost, price, fee

nothing? - 0, zero, empty, vacuum,

murder - kill, death

we've only got 2 days to solve it...

[evenlake]

Raph 3

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Good call, there could def be a link there, and it makes sense from a pysch point of view, i.e. consistent theme.

N.B. It says "nothing?" so it is asking a question, the stamp (if that's what it is) and murder are secondary clues, or possibly irrelevant.

[Shady]

I think that the words being related is bang on, but then I've spent hours with a thesaurus and wiki trying to find the word and failed miserably. Some of my attempts were: worthless, characterless, faceless, lacklustre, valueless and any other synonym for dull, monotonous, drudgery, boring. I'm at a loss now....and very tired!

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Yup tried all those and more, got no where.

My thinking (in case it helps anyone else) is the entity attached to Raph was imprisoned/ trapped and is now free. This ties in with the stuff in the blog about puzzles, etc, so we are looking for another word relating to the time it was imprisoned, probably similar to the ones above, but perhaps slightly different. Our clues are as I noted earlier, however I've just amended the associations a bit.

So my current line of attack is that it relates to the punishment, or lack of, for a crime. Punishment coming from the stamp cost, the crime being murder, the lack of being nothing? But is there a word for not being punished for a crime? Or one for wrongful imprisonment?

[RedHatty]

[ALISDAIRPARK]

looks like we're getting help as we're struggling. The Raph3 puzzle has more to it now, an additional background made up of the pics we received through the post

..and that's though to get the solve -

[Shady]

[RedHatty]

I think the second clue is referring to Solovetsky This was the monastery that began the GULAG system. The russian word (transliterations) become main directorate (or camp) administration
Which just happens to be part of GULag

First clue appears to be referring to the Great Brinks Robbery which occurred in Boston Mass, in 1950

[Shady]

GULAG is an acronym, meaning Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei....so that solves that as RedHatty says. One of the first Gulags was Solovki which was the shortened name of its location - Solovetsky Islands.

So now we have Boston and Solovki?

[ALISDAIRPARK]

escaping ..house again, reminds me of the IRS one...

I'm not convinced about the robbery being the Brinks, the number of men is wrong, and I couldn't see anything tying in with "A murder led to confession"?

[Shady]

I noticed that there is a new puzzles at rumi now. How do you communicate with each other?