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[rose]

[M. Johansson]

Well, this is a bastard of a puzzle.


We know kinda how to get data from the strings now, but the data that comes out makes no sense. There's gotta be more to it.

Looking at the xls created by isca, I noticed that a few of the paths ends up on the same street. Does this have any significance at all? Perhaps where the paths intersect has relevance? Could it perhaps be that the paths/players pass something along to eachother? Like some game of tag? So that we should just follow the player/path that is currently "it"?

What are the paths meant to represent?

[Afgncaap5]

Newbie here, looking to aquire trouts.

How much do we know about Key Square itself? I know we're told some generalities about it on the back of the card, but nothing specific.

I only ask because I was looking through a few links to various PXC sites, and noticed that the PXC Police Department have a station based in Key Square.

Not that I think this is a crucial aspect of any puzzle, but if we know more about what's there it might help us put the puzzle into a new context.

[Scott]

well hey, if you're *looking* fFor trouts .... here you are my fFriend! yum

but in truth, you ask a perfectly reasonable question which hasn't really been addressed.

Key Square is a significant outdoor public space in the city. It is mostly important due to it's location, at the center of the government district. This prominence has made it an exemplary staging area for all manner of people with political agendas. Two major protests have taken place here, as well as a number of open-air political assemblies (including one notable assembly by city council leader Darth Earlywine). In general, one does something at Key Square if one is looking to get noticed in a big, public way. As fFar as we know, there is nothing especially magical about it, except fFor it's locale, and interestingly shaped pool.

[James Siegesmund]

Looking at isca's .xls, I noticed an unusual pattern; in the number of times a particular letter # of the end-street name is used from each data point:

First, let me explain what I'm talking about using the paths that lead from the northwest corner (starting point 1). The 11 paths that begin at that point use letter 1 of the end-street four times, letter 4 of the end-street four times, letter 3 of the end-street twice, and letter 2 of the end-street once. For brevity, I will write this as

"1- paths use 4 (-1), 4 (-4), 2 (-3), and 1 (-2)."

now look at this:

2- paths use 4 (-2), 4 (-4), 2 (-1), and 1 (-3)
3- paths use 4 (-1), 3 (-4), 2 (-2), and 1 (-3)
4- paths use 4 (-1), 3 (-3), 2 (-2), and 1 (-4)

Odd patterns here:
--Each starting point with 11 paths uses end-street letters in a 4, 4, 2, 1 pattern.
--Each starting point with 10 paths uses end-street letters in a 4, 3, 2, 1 pattern.
--Each starting point with 11 paths uses its own "starting point number" as the "end-street letter #" four times, and uses (-4) four more.
--Each starting point with 10 paths uses (-1) four times, the other starting-point-with-10-paths' number three times, (-2) two times, and its own number once.

Of course, this could all mean nothing. Seems odd to me, but as usual, I have no idea how to use this information.

[AtionSong]

[James Siegesmund]

[Scribe]

[Afgncaap5]

Thinking outloud, if there are patterns that deviate from each other, might we get different, potentially more significant, paths if we could try to eliminate those deviations?

[Wyllo]

Completely random thought from someone who hasn't had time to investigate this themselves - do the end points of the paths make any shapes in a join-the-dots stylee (like in

[Scribe]

[Scott]

actually what might be useful would be if Daffy were to map out the pathways on the city map. Other stuff has been charted out in the past, so I know it can be done, but I don't know how difficult it is at all.

Mind you, I *say* "useful". In reality, perhaps not so useful afterall, since we now have a string of text, and possibly should be concentrating our efforts on making sense of that. But I dont have anything useful to contribute there either, so ignore me.

[themandotcom]

I tried to do this from other places on the map, but there is no good place to start. The Acadamy makes you end up in water, and Amedek court doesn't work. Those are the only things that I tried, which don't work.

Thus that means that Key Square IS right. So, we either need a different approch, or we need some SUPER cryptoanalysis skillz to get the real data.

[Scribe]

Hmm, a quick recap before I'm busy wrapping presents, to get my brain in gear...

So far we've used the first number to work out the starting point, and the last digit for the letter, but the only 'clue' to ordering we've got is CT's previous message. So the question is, why would s/he bother to give us an order if it's wrong?

Theories:

1. CT's order was 'random', and we're supposed to work out the order from some other means, e.g. the direction that you end in after following each path (n.b. i had a quick look into this idea, but all the paths ending in "2.5" certainly don't make a handy word.)

2. CT's order is deliberate and we need to "post-process" the letters. But in that case, how would we have known that we had the correct order if we had (somehow) worked out the order of the strings without CT's help?

3. CT's order is some other hint. S/He hinted at the use of the PXC map for the strings in the same message, so maybe the order is simply a way, somehow, of telling us to look at that map.

I still find some of the path shapes odd, as though the whole path, or the final direction, matters.

[Kalt]

No readable cleartext with the playing card order from the puzzle cards, used with a saved version of the Solitaire encryption/decryption tool that used to be on http://cif.rochester.edu/~la002k/solitaire.htm (site provided in case you folks want to look it up on a web archive).

Playing card order used: