unforum

[Wang Guantao]

I must have missed something, from where do we know that Phil traveled 18 hours by car and 3 hours by helicopter?

an E-mail or what not?

[Ariana]

 I think I got it!

[Wang Guantao]

Spiffy!

The Florida thing fits quite well into what's been proposed so it could indeed be correct.
Only thing that's "unexplained" as of yet then is the Lunar Cycle bit.

[Ariana]

I think the 252 is the part based on lunar cycles. At least that's what the site I read said. -forgot to include it in my explanation above.

[notgordian]

The lunar cycle bit is explained by this solution as well--Nostradamus's definitions of glomes and liturgy are based on the lunar eclipse cycle of 252 years--for liturgy, it's straight addition while for glomes it's some strange form of pseudoscience, but both are rooted in the lunar cycle.

It's called the Saros Cycle.

But yeah....what Ariana said.

[Wang Guantao]

Well then I have absolutely no problems accepting this as the truth!
Good work =)

[notgordian]

Puzzle #8 is up, and Brackin's cryptic as usual.

[Nescirian]

Most of this is just summary from an irc chat with notgordian and xnb.
Definitely St Augustine, he probably walked in the general direction of Cape Canaveral, close enough to see Discovery taking off, per "the night launch of man's greatest exploration" and "A star rises towards the sky". Discovery took off around 9pm on December 9th, heading for the International Space Station, or "The nations united above the heavens."
Following what notgordian said about Key West being the southernmost point, it would make sense that he's following the broken circle of the Florida Keys to get to the place which is the shortest distance from Cuba. He has to travel in a curve to get there, but I guess the shortest distance isn't always a straight line.
Notgordian insidiously induced me to drop Brackin an email about all this, so we'll see what he says.

[Wang Guantao]

Well, surface inspection of Brackins travel route shows that you'd have to be on drugs to call that a circle, so I doubt that's what he's talking about.

Key West is definitely an option even if it seems super obvious.
I'm wondering a bit whether or not the incomplete circle referred to in the quatrain is the Gulf of Mexico.
That looks a bit like an incomplete circle (if you disregard the bit sticking out close to Cuba), and "completing the circle" made up by the coastline of Mexico, Texas Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, you end up near Honduras

Edit--
Hmmm Nescri beat me by a few seconds... damn you! =P

While we're not saying completely the same thing, we're both thinking of the same approach it seems. Map doesn't give much of an actual destination though, so I'm very interested in other ideas, or specifications to this one.

[Forgery]

From Foo:

[Wang Guantao]

Already did that in the Foo thread...

It spells out Madness

[Nescirian]

Maybe he just wants to hit every state/country on that circle in order, ending up back in Texas. That's what he's done so far.

[notgordian]

Brackin's new blog entry, containing what appears to be Puzzle #9

[WolfHawk]

I just made the following comments on the Brotherhood blog:

[notgordian]

Random thoughts to hopefully spur someone on--the only type of blackbird native to the Florida Keys region is the Red-Winged Blackbird. Attempts to find migratory flight patterns of said bird (to "complete the circle" of migration) has been unsuccessful so far.

I rechecked the words in the picture versus the words Brackin transcribed...as far as I can make out, it is probably the same. So the significance might be based on the positioning of smudges (I already tried destegging the image with variations on "madness", "tongue", and "pure tongue"

Also, the phrasing is the "root of evil", not the "root of all evil"--so perhaps it is referencing the origin, when Eve bit the apple in Eden. Which means...Brackin is going to sell apples for money?