unforum

[rowan]

[TRAILHEAD] Monster Hunter Club

[Nescirianguest]

Here's a transcript of the faded handwritten puzzle. It's a bit ambiguous in places, feel free to correct if necessary. I believe this is correct.

8-11-6 6-8-4-6-7-5-8

7K^ 4P> 0EV 1U> 1R^ 4S<0R> 7CV $I> 8H^ 9E^ 9T<
3SV 0D<4D> 3RV 0DV
0EV 0L<9E> 5E< 1P^ 4U 5SV 8HV 8SV 0A< 2H^
7UV 0RV 0D< 4S< 8S< 4L<
0H<

[Axys Denyed]

Puzzle-y goodness

[molecularr]

I've been checking this one out too. At the end of the trailer, the tag reads "Monsters are Real: www.monsterhunterclub.com".

Since Derek is talking about some footage of a mysterious water creature here, it seems that one main idea may be the real existence of the creature(s ?) from The Host.

(Edited to remove double post)

The certificate itself is discussed here as some sort of inside-joke among sailors: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq92-1.htm .

But the code is something else. My first thought was to take the third character of each group as a direction. So if you imagine a tabula recta type grid, you could start out with one the letter in the set (say, K, in the first one) then move the number of grid spaces indicated by the numeral in the direction indicated by the arrow.

That didn't get me anything useful though.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

The Enhance Yourself site is interesting, but freaky and not for the squeamish. Good excuse for the lack of old comments! ..and Jon Paine is missing...could this be a missing person ARG?

EDIT: The tattoo convention appears real, at least it has it's own site, and looks genuine. Strange though the guestbook is closed, so how did Amie get a look at that entry? Also why is the date of the entry 6 days after the convention?

[molecularr]

Derek's friend Sun-Yi has a myspace page which includes a video blog and mentions a screening of The Host at NYU (I think) on Feb. 12th. Live event? Anyone here an NYU student?


EDIT: A couple of observations about the code that might get someone thinking along the right lines:

There are 10 numerals in the row across the top. ( 8 - 11 - 6, etc.) And among the number-letter-arrow sets, the numbers are all single-digit (ranging from 0 - 9). Perhaps theres a relationship between those two such that a 1 in the lower section somehow relates or is modulated by the 8 in the first row (because its in the first position).

If that's the case, the positions could either be counted 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. I tried my tabula recta offset idea with both and still came up empty.

[Cross_]

How to deal with the wraparounds though? The lower left thing is pointing left for example, so do we stay in the same row or go up one ? If we move rows, then what about down arrows in columns, do we move on to the next column as well?

[rowan]

I'm not sure how much this is going to help, but it at least gives some sort of background to the puzzle.

The document is supposedly written by John Wheeler, the late grandfather of Matt Wheeler. Matt runs the the website Rainbow of Death which he started find out the truth behind the deaths of his father and grandfather. It seems that his grandfather was working on a project for the US government in Thailand known as Project Rainbow. Matt believes that his grandfather found out something that he wasn't supposed to and was killed. Years later, Matt's father, John Jr., tried to follow in the footsteps of John Sr hoping to find out the truth - and ended up dead as well.

This is a link to the scan of the certificate on the RoD site. Matt also links to a bunch of journal entries by his grandfather, but I don't know if they will help decode the certificate or not.

[Cross_]

Minor correction in transcription, second row should be a "B" instead of "E".

[molecularr]

Well, I've read all of the journal entries, but John Sr. doesn't mention the certificate at all. He would have crossed the 180th parallel (making him eligible for the certificate) between the 2nd and 3rd journal entries, but he didn't mention it.

It seems clear, though, that this is some kind of communication from John Sr., so if there's a clue to solving it, it must be in the material that Matt is finding. It might be something he has not yet scanned and posted, or it might be something there already that has more to it than meets the eye.

I really can't tell.

The journals do mention that John Sr. has an interest in filming some of his locations, so perhaps some of that footage will turn up?

For now, though, I'm stuck on this one. I thought about using the arrows as some kind of modulated semaphore, but that got me nowhere. Is anyone else working on this?

[DeusExMachina]

Ok I am new at this and have been trying to work this code for a bit now and feel like i have made no progress. The only thing that seemed to make any sense is the the numbers at the top could relate to dates....
8/11/66 and 8/4/67 both of these wold be around the time of the journal entries but none of them match up.

I sent Matt and e-mail asking him if he could give me any other information at all. He only responded that he is working on updateing his site and right now what would help him most would be working on the code. Then he linked me to the monsterhunter thread on the code.

Not that it is much help but here is his responce...

Hi,

Thanks for your offer to help. Internet searches have yielded nothing for me as well. I'll be uploading some more stuff to my site soon, it's just taking me a while to get it organized, digitized, etc.

For now though, I could really use some help figuring out what the handwritten stuff on the back of that "Domain of the Golden Dragon" certificate means. If you have any ideas, you can post them on my friend Derek's site:
http://monsterhunterclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=88

Thanks again.

So right now that is where i am stuck....

[ALISDAIRPARK]

could this be a book cipher, based on either the entries, or the text on the front?

[molecularr]

No answers yet, but here's my latest brainstorm that may get others thinking. First, we're assuming that the encoded message is from John Wheeler Sr., and since the certificate was found among a box of other things from him, it's logical to guess that the intended recipient of the message was Matt's grandmother (Grace Wheeler).

She gave her husband the journal with the first few pages already filled in with some nice "missing you" kind of poetry, and I think that may the key to the code -- some kind of book cipher perhaps. Within the narrative, it makes sense because the poems were already a kind of secret surprise for John Sr. when he opened the journal on the plane ride, and assuming Grace still remembers what poems she transcribed, they provide a useful key that both parties have in common.

I'm trying to find the sources of the poems since they're kind of hard to read, but notice that the poem "Return" has underscore marks under the author's name: Winchell. Don't know what that means, but I haven't yet found an original source for that one. If we can't find one, maybe someone can read that script well enough to transcribe it.

And I like the ideas of the top numbers being dates. That does seem right, somehow, so maybe Matt has entries for those days but hasn't posted them yet.

[Rorschach]

Also working on it. Have shared thoughts on Book ciphers, as well as semaphore. My feeling is we need more data to find the key. Will keep hunting.

[rowan]

Here are the transcripts of the poems as I read them. The only one I was able to find a source on was the Dedication by Robertson, which I found here