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Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: This Is My Milwaukee

[INFO] "Milwaukee: A Reasonable Haven" Informational Booklet

Page 23 of 36 [537 Posts]

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Envark
Greenhorn

Joined: 08 Dec 2008
Posts: 4
Location: Virginia

Envark wrote:

Could it be that the 180 on page 8 refers to rotating the page/book 180 degrees?

Perhaps it plays back into page 3 where the stegosaurus and triceratops first appear...

Sorry, I am just throwing out some ideas while I look over the book for the hundredth time. Smile

I decided to register.

Anyway, I the caption above the Worker's Tale on page 2 also leads me to believe that rotation is involved:
...he turneth to enjoien the sighte of the pye... (emphasis mine)

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:18 am

Oshi
Boot

Joined: 04 Dec 2008
Posts: 29

Envark wrote:

I decided to register.

Anyway, I the caption above the Worker's Tale on page 2 also leads me to believe that rotation is involved:
...he turneth to enjoien the sighte of the pye... (emphasis mine)

Hmm. At the end of the book, "If there is anything in this tome you find confusing or unclear, we urge you to reread it several times, perhaps from a different perspective ... or maybe after a good nights sleep?"

Also, in art, perspective is the way of portraying three dimensions on a two dimensional surface. Perhaps that was the "perspective" they were referring to? I'm not sure how it would relate but...

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:31 am

Big T
Boot

Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 57
Location: NYC

Fuel Gauge?

Oshi wrote:

Envark wrote:

I decided to register.

Anyway, I the caption above the Worker's Tale on page 2 also leads me to believe that rotation is involved:
...he turneth to enjoien the sighte of the pye... (emphasis mine)

You know... if you flip the photo of the volcano upside-down, it looks like a fuel gauge.

Put that together with the Dinosaur=Oil theory and everything Russo said about not addressing the subject directly, and I think that was intentional.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:45 am

mrbass
Boot

Joined: 03 Dec 2008
Posts: 33

Re: Fuel Gauge?

Big T wrote:

Oshi wrote:

Envark wrote:

I decided to register.

Anyway, I the caption above the Worker's Tale on page 2 also leads me to believe that rotation is involved:
...he turneth to enjoien the sighte of the pye... (emphasis mine)

another thing i noticed...if you flip the map of active cities upside down, the paths (minus the path from wichita to decatur look like a godseed fragment...don't know what to do with that but something maybe of interest.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 1:44 am

landtuna
Boot

Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 25

Page 27 chart

I need to go to bed, but here's where I am with the Page 27 chart. First, take the cities in the long walk: Wichita, Decatur, Milwaukee, Duluth, Decatur, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee.

Here are their zip codes. There are multiple zip codes for each city.

672?? 6252? 532?? 558?? 6252? 495?? 532??

Assuming you can't use a letter with a higher subscript before one with a lower subscript, and assuming the 7 has to come from one of the blanks, the first zip has to start with [RWA]G[HEK]. (Brackets mean it's one of those letters.) The next group can be [RWA][HEEKU][MRS][HEEKU].

Using grep on unix/linux to search /usr/share/dict/words, pretty much the only thing that the first zip can start with is AGE.

I'm not sure where to go from here, but I did find it interesting that it's easy to fit "MEET" or "STREET" into the Milwaukee zip code.

There seems to be a lot more room for whittling down the possibilities with some deductive reasoning. (As you use up letters, you can cross out letters in subsequent groups.)

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 1:49 am

Atropanocturna
Decorated

Joined: 09 Nov 2008
Posts: 240

Quote:

Nathan,

That booklet leak almost cost me my job. And I'm sick to my goddamn stomach of Larose treating me like a child. You want to know something? You've got the right idea, sure, but you're missing the finer point. People don't LIKE to talk about things that have bothered them, or ruined them, or threaten them. So they skirt around the issue, or describe it out of context, or with numbers, or, even worse, use these stupid euphemistic allusions rather than confront the real issue. Clearly you have to apprehend what I'm indicating.

-MR

I think we should definitely take into consideration what exactly Mike has been telling us in these last two emails. I believe that he is saying we are on the right track, but what we are looking for isn't going to be as blatant, maybe. Basically, like the rest of the book, it's going to be put through a Blackstar filter. And we are going to have to figure out the more subtle meaning.

_________________
Looking for something that sparks my interest.....
Mourning:ThisIsMyMilwaukee

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:19 am

MatMali
Boot

Joined: 05 Dec 2008
Posts: 15
Location: Missouri

Re: Fuel Gauge?

Envark wrote:

You know... if you flip the photo of the volcano upside-down, it looks like a fuel gauge.

I've flipped every damn page of that book every direction, mirrored them horizontally/vertically, and skewed them every which way with no significant result. Of course, the only program I have to work with is paint, so that could be what's standing in my way. Skewing them in paint doesn't really work very well. Makes 'em all pixelated and whatnot.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 12:57 pm

Big T
Boot

Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 57
Location: NYC

I know we've all worked that second graph to death, but I had an idea on the bus this morning that "simple... and direct" could stand for "simple substitution cipher".

I did a wikipedia search for "simple substitution cipher" and the result led me somewhere interesting:

First here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher

Then I found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_machine

Quote:

In cryptography, a rotor machine is an electro-mechanical device used for encrypting and decrypting secret messages. Rotor machines were the cryptographic state-of-the-art for a brief but prominent period of history; they were in widespread use in the 1930s�1950s. The most famous example is the Enigma machine.

Even as I post this, I feel I should say the following things that kind of shoot down my own idea:

1) I really doubt the whole M-Rotor could have to do with a rotor machine (as described above). I'm a much bigger believer that the M stands for "magnetic" or this "M-Brass" (that whole post a page or two back about the Go.D.S.E.E.D. being a "north only" magnet really made sense to me). Still, it could be a substitution cipher where A=M, B=N, C=O, etc.

2) In working with these letters myself trying to do both a substitution and anagram, I find it difficult to believe that there should be a substitution. There just seems to be the "right amount" of vowels and common letters to lead me to believe that A=A, B=B, etc.

Still, I just wanted to throw a different idea into the mix.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:08 pm

MrCthulhu2U
Boot

Joined: 26 Nov 2008
Posts: 35

Big T wrote:

Quote:

Yeah, I was considering the possibility this am based on Russo's drunken message about the graph being out of order that it could be like Enigma with the alignment solution being zip code based. I've been trying to see if the grid even has the proper numbers to give coverage to the zip codes for the 5 cities but it seems a bit off...more work to be done though.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:20 pm

taylor
Boot

Joined: 26 Nov 2008
Posts: 28
Location: near dallas

looking at this all wrong?

of course it's easy to speculate that what everyone is doing is incorrect when we have no clue what we are looking for and even less of a clue as to what it will be...but maybe mike's emails and the text from the book regarding "re-reading using a different perspective" should be taken more literally.

if we think about the previous clues and solutions, they really werent that difficult to solve. the first, obviously, was the MTC video. it clearly invited people to think about its meaning and ponder what exactly is going on though offered (so far) no real puzzles. the second was an obvious html comment in the homepage source code. no real puzzle there. once we saw the second video, we were blatantly given a clue/puzzle to decode, the NYPL book. there was a simple number to letter conversion that needed to be done, but nothing as complicated as some of the things being brought up here.

as mike and the emails state, maybe we are looking WAAY too deep into everything. if the previous clues and puzzles are any indication of the skill level of the PM or the assumed skill level of the players by the PM, then we are way off base with what we are thinking about.

i have been an ARG lurker for years but never really played one (never got in on the ground level) so i may be naive into thinking that the PMs would never use actual physics equations, military-style encoding, etc, but i could be wrong. can anyone think back to another ARG that had the collective stumped like this? once the answer was revealed, was it a slap in the face or was it truly as difficult as the players made it? maybe some seasoned veterans can chime in and give some perspective...because im at a loss Razz

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:24 pm

EnsO
Decorated

Joined: 28 Nov 2008
Posts: 205

Big T wrote:

Quote:

nice call.

one problem:

this brings us right back to the age old problem of the blanks v. dashes question and the debate over whether the numbers are the heart of breaking the code or are the letters/ superscript the key?

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:25 pm

Atropanocturna
Decorated

Joined: 09 Nov 2008
Posts: 240

Random thoughts:

*Did we ever come up with a substitution based on the Tequila=Vermouth thing?

*In Mike's email he seems to imply that we are on the right track with the "work in the sun, grow your family tree", but to me, it seems like he is saying that the answer might be veiled.

Quote:

People don't LIKE to talk about things that have bothered them, or ruined them, or threaten them. So they skirt around the issue, or describe it out of context, or with numbers, or, even worse, use these stupid euphemistic allusions rather than confront the real issue.

So maybe the anagram approach is correct but we've found the wrong one? Or maybe, even, we found it...but it can then be translated to mean something else. I am just speculating at this point.

*I feel as if the zip code idea might be taking it too far, but more power to those who think they have got something with that. He does mention using numbers in the email.

_________________
Looking for something that sparks my interest.....
Mourning:ThisIsMyMilwaukee

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:03 pm

GMcG
Boot

Joined: 26 Nov 2008
Posts: 51

Atropanocturna wrote:

Quote:

I noticed Mike capitalized LIKE. I guess it could be for emphasis, but I've been staring at all of this stuff too long.

I agree that tequila/vermouth/quati is important, but I have a gut feeling there's something obvious that we're missing.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:38 pm

MochaPixel
Boot

Joined: 02 Dec 2008
Posts: 49

Re: looking at this all wrong?

taylor wrote:

I agree with you 100% on this. I think some of us are spending waaay too much energy into breaking down and over-analyzing that first table when Mike even said something along the lines of it not being important just yet. They've given us what we need to solve this puzzle (the second table), we're just overlooking it. It is a pain that we don't really know what we're looking for, but I think we'll know it when we see it.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:50 pm

Big T
Boot

Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 57
Location: NYC

EnsO wrote:

Big T wrote:

I know we've all worked that second graph to death, but I had an idea on the bus this morning that "simple... and direct" could stand for "simple substitution cipher".

...

1) I really doubt the whole M-Rotor could have to do with a rotor machine (as described above). I'm a much bigger believer that the M stands for "magnetic" or this "M-Brass" (that whole post a page or two back about the Go.D.S.E.E.D. being a "north only" magnet really made sense to me). Still, it could be a substitution cipher where A=M, B=N, C=O, etc.

2) In working with these letters myself trying to do both a substitution and anagram, I find it difficult to believe that there should be a substitution. There just seems to be the "right amount" of vowels and common letters to lead me to believe that A=A, B=B, etc.

Still, I just wanted to throw a different idea into the mix.

I think that's a problem, too. I've tried to play with those numbers in several ways to no avail.

I have a hunch, like GMcG does, and my hunch is that extra information is going to get leaked out that's really going to help us solve this. I am beginning to believe that it's meant to be unsolvable. I'm crossing my fingers for a real-world drop where we find, say, the torn-out page 9 from the handbook (wouldn't that be awesome?), which will unlock a lot of stuff.

I'm going to keep working in my little pockets of spare time. I've always loved cryptograms. But, there are still the fax numbers that have not been used, and we're waiting to see what comes of the Facebook and Twitter accounts. I agree with taylor that it should not be this hard, considering the other puzzles so far.

Not giving up, though.

P.S. Pardon me if this was already mentioned - but has anyone tried the idea that the large numbers could help determine how many letters are in each word of the anagram (i.e. 10 words total, word "0" has at least 6 letters, word "1" has at least 2 letters, etc., with the dashes being all "7"'s or "wildcards")? I've been testing that theory, but no results so far. Anyone else go this route?

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:08 pm

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