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[LOCKED] [META] Kick Start?
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Omnie
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Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 772

 		Hmm.
http://www.geocities.com/sherry_a_nelson/poem.html

These all generate 20 lines of text...our dear friend's "ignominous" post contained 19. That (or something very like it) is almost certainly where it comes from... the same words are used repeatedly. This would sound like on of the googlism posts, if only these darn things weren't randomly generated.

Hey, randomly...Randomly generated? Does he just go around using different random generators on the web? WHY? Where's the hidden message?

*bangs head against wall*
(figuratively...heh. a concussion would not noticably help the situation, me thinks)

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 1:56 am
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bagsbee
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Joined: 21 Oct 2003
Posts: 417
Location: NYC

 		Yanka wrote:
Quote:
Well, it seems that we are in the in-between-puzzles period again


There is one outstanding puzzle. I ashamed to admit how much time/effort/brain power I've devoted to this one. Or has it been decided that this is not really a puzzle, but a sort of "get-ready-for-some-weirdness-welcome-image", like priming the brain?

Another thing that just popped in my mind is Cairo:
- Phil's Metadex notes - "Look into lodging for Cairo"
- Random's cryptic message
- Somewhere else I can't recall, I could swear I saw it.

What about Metacortex logins? Has this even been attempted? If so, can someone point me to a thread? I think it's worth investigating. So much effort has been poured into other areas of the game, if we just made a concerted effort....then again maybe the logins aren't "ready" Wink

Also...there are 2 sites that from DAY 1 have not changed - paranormaljournal.org and cascadevortex.com. EVERYTHING means SOMETHING...

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:02 am
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Azathoth666
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Joined: 09 Oct 2003
Posts: 321
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 		Metacortex logins are out at present: I forget who it was (but will happily give kudos where they are due) but someone deked the Flash in the Metacortex site and found that there are currently no valid logins there. All will be revealed in due time, I'm afraid.

Cairo is good though: we've all forgotten about Cairo... and the whole REALMS of pain that that extra Mythology can bring us...

As for Cascadevortex... I've got no idea ATM. Could be a tie in with Beth, could be where she's headed. Who knows? The shadow knows...

I need sleep...
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:07 am
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yanka
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Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Posts: 1214
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 		Omnie,

That RoboPoet thing (that I can't beleive I called 'robocop') was found a while ago here.

Before then, I thought that Random's nonsense sounded like some IQ tasks - you know, they give you sentences with unknown words, translate one, and you have to translate the rest.

Then I thought of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". It uses nonsense words, and, also, it has been translated into Latin (you can see it here).

No clues. No hints of clues. No %$*#ing way to know if there should be clues. Which is why I asked certain people to wink our way.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:26 am
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Omnie
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Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 772

 		Whoops...yanka, sorry, didn't mean to do that. I definitely read that at some point, must have somehow forgotten. My first trout? Very Happy

I have an idea of what could be done with that... the code for that random generator (from that webpage) is:
Code:
//copyright 1997-2002, by Sherry Nelson, raytracerSPLATacm.org, except where  noted
function NextRandomNumber () {
        var hi = this.seed / this.Q;
        var lo = this.seed % this.Q;
        var test = this.A * lo - this.R * hi;
        if (test > 0)
                this.seed = test;
        else
                this.seed = test + this.M;
        return (this.seed * this.oneOverM);
}
function RandomNumberGenerator() {
   //this function by Bill Dortch in Special Edition Using JavaScript
        var d = new Date();
        this.seed = 2345678901 + (d.getSeconds() * 0xFFFFFF)+(d.getMinutes()*0xFFFF);
        this.A = 48271;
        this.M = 2147483647;
        this.Q = this.M / this.A;
        this.R = this.M % this.A;
        this.oneOverM = 1.0 / this.M;
        this.next = NextRandomNumber;
        return this;
}

var rand = new RandomNumberGenerator();

 function Word () {
   var argv = Word.arguments;
   var argc = argv.length;
   this.list = new Object;
   for (var i = 0; i < argc; i++)
      this.list[i] = argv[i];
   this.count = argc;
   this.toString = WordString;
   return this;
}

function WordString () {
   var i = Math.round((this.count - 1) * rand.next());
   return this.list[i];
}
var verb = new Word ("exhales", "sucks", "smotes", "sheds", "stoops",
      "sullies", "shrieks", "usurps", "vexes", "whispers", "boils",
      "capitulates", "crashes", "craves", "looks", "defies", "defers",
      "defines", "envelops", "entombs", "falls", "sighs", "languishes",
      "mars", "nags", "overflows", "burns", "dies", "concocts",
      "nourishes");

var noun = new Word ("feces", "body", "coma", "rider", "sack", "sheep",
      "party", "summer", "vein", "vessel", "vowel", "vortex",
      "laundromat", "dream", "agitation", "battle-axe", "chivalry",
      "condescension", "concubine", "corduroy", "creationism",
      "degeneration", "street", "entry", "enticement", "language",
      "life", "light", "dope", "nothing");

var adj = new Word ("foul", "broken", "gray", "ignominious", "plastic",
     "throbbing", "sharp", "stout", "soundless", "traveled",
     "tribal", "uniform", "unhoped", "upright", "vibrant",
     "vestigal", "aggressive", "agnostic", "baleful", "boastful",
     "dark", "capricious", "concrete", "deliberate", "narcissistic",
     "dingy", "drunken", "undisciplined", "perfect", "perforated");

var adv = new Word ("grimly", "unholily", "triumphantly", "suggestively",
      "immortally",
     "sleeplessly", "angrily", "uncomfortably", "finally", "balmily",
     "hysterically", "thinly", "dryly", "perfunctorily",
     "terribly", "bleakly", "irritably", "dazzlingly", "expectantly",
     "impersonally", "abruptly", "awfully", "caressingly", "completely",
     "undesirably", "drolly", "hypocritically", "blankly",
     "dimly");

function makepoem(form) {
   form.poem.value = "";
   for (var i =0; i < 20; i++)
      
      form.poem.value += adj + " " + noun + " " + verb + " " + adv + ",  ";
}


Now, I'm not particularly great at programming (that is, I took a year of BASIC in high school, heh...), but it seems to me that the program takes a random number and chooses each word based on that random number, right? I checked, btw, all the words in Random's post are included in the above code. I was quite excited when I thought maybe there were extra words that could spell out a message, but...nope. So, the only thing I can think of to do with this thing (it's gotta be *something*, right?) is to assign each word the number that it would get from the script, and then see if that would allow us to decode some kind of message.

For example, the first line (Ignominious vowel whispers completely) would be 4 11 10 24. Is this at all possible? Unfortunately, I know less about cryptography than I do about programming... and it's also time for me to go to sleep... I just thought I'd throw it out there. Is this way too much of a twisted stretch? I mean, we also have to consider that this is a message for Random's hacker friends, so they'd presumably be able to figure it out without spending much time on it...basically, same reasoning as worked for the tarot image, right? Heh...

EDIT: Credit where credit is due Smile Replaced copyright statement -- AnthraX101

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:39 am
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bagsbee
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Joined: 21 Oct 2003
Posts: 417
Location: NYC

 		trout?
[OFFTOPIC]what constitutes a trout-able offense[/OFFTOPIC]

What, exactly, is a trout?

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:59 am
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yanka
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Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Posts: 1214
Location: undesirable
Azathoth666 wrote:
What worries me about Random is that we could literally spend days, weeks even of solid effort tearing her posts apart (I've decided Random has to be a woman, simply because we men arent that devious... <----- JOKE!!! No flames, please! Wink )

I don't know how you could possibly expect there to be no flames


bagsbee, don't worry about trouts - it's an archaic (and self-defeating, IMHO) practice of letting someone know that that question has been asked before.
As far as Cairo (the 3rd), I think you might have seen it in the "carelessly" thread... someone thought there was a pyramid in the background of .graffle Question

Omnie, I'm sure you're onto something... though I'm not sure what; I just felt like saying that, I don't really mean it [edit] the part after ... [/edit]. Actually, tomorrow, after I get my healthy dose of ignominious nightmares, I'm going to see if it's possible to determine which 4 words were omitted. The problem is with repeating words, though. Or maybe there is an input of 1 variable each that can generate that particular string... Ok, I'm beginning to sound random... i should go to sleep
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 3:31 am
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xnbomb
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Silvia.ypt index values
Omnie wrote:
So, the only thing I can think of to do with this thing (it's gotta be *something*, right?) is to assign each word the number that it would get from the script, and then see if that would allow us to decode some kind of message

It seems like a very good idea. I've gotten started on it. I'm doing it in Excel ... not the most elegant option, but it works.

First step, converting word values to index numbers in the word lists: First thing that comes up is an interesting fact: In the lists there are 30 adjectives, 30 nouns, 30 verbs, and 29 adverbs (!). Weird that the designer of that code would have 30 of everything but adverbs ... where's the thirtieth adverb? Even more interesting: The 30th adjective, noun, and verb (perforated, nothing, and nourishes) are never used in silvia.ypt. That's at least suggestive that it could be a code based on index values, where all types of words producing 1-29 values, not some producing 1-29 and some producing 1-30. It could be a coincidence that index 30 never came up ... but every other value is represented at least once. Anyhow, here are the index values:

Code:
 4 11 10 24
 4 22  5 22
26 22  6  8
13  9 22  9
 9 24  2 17
 3 28 10  2
 4 27 12 13
 9 16 26 17
17 19 23  6
 7 12  1 21
12  5 12 11
29  7 21 25
19 21 26  8
14 24 26 24
15 20 26 23
 9 26 29 24
23 14  7 19
29 18 14 15
21 17  8 27


First quick check would be a frequency analysis of the values produced. A quick count of the number of instances of each index gives:

Code:
Index Value Frequency
1           1
2           2
3           1
4           3
5           2
6           2
7           3
8           3
9           5
10          2
11          2
12          4
13          2
14          3
15          2
16          1
17          4
18          1
19          3
20          1
21          4
22          4
23          3
24          5
25          1
26          6
27          2
28          1
29          3

I dunno if that looks good. You might expect some value to appear more than just six times in 76 characters (say for the letter 'e'). There might not be anything in there.

Next would be mapping index values to letters. The fact that we have 29 values makes it a little less straightforward than 1:1 mapping of letters to numbers. Could the three extra values be special characters (like period, question mark, exclamation point)? Maybe ... I don't think there is a value for space since we have 76 characters in total ... if one of the index values were space, you'd expect a lot of those. It could just go sequentially and roll over (i.e. if 1=A and 26=Z then 27=A, 28=B, 29=C), but that's just one more way to handle it.

It's possible that there are different index to letter mappings for each type of word (adjective, noun, verb, adverb), but in the first instance it's probably better to keep it simple and hope that's not the case. I think I'll leave it there for tonight ... maybe someone can plug the index values into some handy crytogram solver (who solved the text on the Oct. 1 paintover image again) and see if they can get it.

------

And yeah, the content of these messages needs to be readable in the context of the rapidfire conversations ... could it really be a code? Our hackers would have to already be familiar with it to be able to read what Random says in a timely fashion, having a decoder ready (or they are superhackers ... writing little programs to solve Random's encrypted messages almost instantly).

Interesting to look at the messages in context: Carefully.ypt doesn't have to say anything in particular ... at that point in the conversation all that needs to be expressed is 'I am here', which Random could do with random text. It's hard to guess what Random might be saying in silvia.ypt and silvia2.ypt. We have a better shot at unjust.ypt, where the cryptic text prefaces some logger info. bigmclargehuge.ypt should be something along the lines of 'yeah caesar, what gives' and bigmclargehuge2.ypt should be responsive to .gif's request to shut up ... Random should sound hurt, and he/she does.

Maybe the idea is that Random just keeps generating random poetry using selected generators, and picks a result that has the right tone for the moment?

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:25 am
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Omnie
Entrenched


Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 772

 		Found the generator that Random used that last time...this one is great. Very Happy
Random Depressing Goth Poem Generator

And another - the one used for the rhyming poem. It was a sonnet. Who knew? Wink
Random Sonnet Generator

[Edit] And yet another. I think Random used this for two posts - the second Silvia and Unjust.
Random Poetry Generator
One more to go!
heh, did someone say something about going to sleep?

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 5:24 am
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edmnc
Boot

Joined: 28 Oct 2003
Posts: 10
Azathoth666 wrote:
Metacortex logins are out at present: I forget who it was (but will happily give kudos where they are due) but someone deked the Flash in the Metacortex site and found that there are currently no valid logins there. All will be revealed in due time, I'm afraid.


Code:
// [Action in Frame 1]
var memberData = this.loadVariables("empdirectory/Members.txt", 0);


seems that empdirectory/Members.txt doesn't exist currently

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 7:28 am
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AnthraX101
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Joined: 18 Mar 2003
Posts: 797

 		Decompiling flash is usualy "out of bounds" in an ARG.

AnthraX101

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 10:01 am
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AnthraX101
Entrenched

Joined: 18 Mar 2003
Posts: 797

 		I'm not sure if this is out of bounds or not, but seeing as they seemed to encourage it with the carelessly files and the underscorehosting login, here is the "complete" quote:

Quote:
ignominious vowel whispers completely, ignominious degeneration stoops awfully, dingy degeneration sullies uncomfortably, unhoped vein sighs finally, soundless entry sucks irritably, gray light whispers unholily, ignominious life capitulates dryly, soundless battle-axe overflows irritably, aggressive concubine languishes sleeplessly, sharp vortex exhales abruptly, uniform sack capitulates hysterically, perfect party falls undesirably, baleful creationism overflows uncomfortably, upright entry overflows completely, vibrant corduroy overflows caressingly, soundless language concocts completely, concrete dream shrieks expectantly, perfect condescension craves terribly, dark chivalry usurps hypocritically
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
, aggressive party defies triumphantly,


The extra sentence was at the end, exactly where it is in the quote.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Start the web page at 20 min and 17 seconds exactly. Click "Make me a cut-up!" three times. This is generated. The code to brute force this generator or fool its timing mechanism is not very complex. I checked all possible initial random number seeds up to 60 generations of poems, and this was the only one to have those first four words.


AnthraX101

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 12:27 pm
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xnbomb
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Random Poetry Generators R Us
Omnie wrote:
Found the generator that Random used that last time...this one is great. Very Happy
Random Depressing Goth Poem Generator

Stellar work Omnie. That makes good sense to me ... Random needs to sound hurt, so just whip up a poem with the Random Depressing Goth Poet Generator Very Happy

And anthraX101 has determined what the missing sentence should be if RoboPoet is being used in a conventional fashion. Brilliant! I should just go to sleep and let others figure things out more often Very Happy

However ... is it reasonable to think our hackers could have determined the missing sentence in a fashion timely enough for it to be part of the conversation? I'm not so sure, not unless they have some code ready to play with any/all of the generators that Random uses. Thinking more about the frequency analysis result I posted above, I'm pretty sure it is not a simple index number to letter substitution code ... the distribution is too even. All I'm left with is that Random selects randomly generated results for tone, and there is no specific, hidden meaning in any of Random's messages.

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 1:09 pm
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Marl64
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Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 456
Location: Prisoner of Zion
AnthraX101 wrote:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
, aggressive party defies triumphantly,


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
This would have fit right in with the Big Mac files as it pretty much describes what went on there
- OK not actually a spoiler, but I figured it only relevant to people who were reading spoilers so posted it this way Very Happy

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(There is no spoon, oh wait, there it is)

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:17 pm
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Omnie
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Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 772

 		Re: Random Poetry Generators R Us
xnbomb wrote:
However ... is it reasonable to think our hackers could have determined the missing sentence in a fashion timely enough for it to be part of the conversation? I'm not so sure, not unless they have some code ready to play with any/all of the generators that Random uses. Thinking more about the frequency analysis result I posted above, I'm pretty sure it is not a simple index number to letter substitution code ... the distribution is too even. All I'm left with is that Random selects randomly generated results for tone, and there is no specific, hidden meaning in any of Random's messages.


Hmm. Well, what about texel's greeting? He used a long googlism and added a line, assuming that the others would know what it was and would catch the added line. It's not nearly as complex, I'll grant, but it's something of a precedent...

Heehee, and I think the hackers were supposed to have figured out the evil Eye See pic by now, so they're certainly more intelligent than all of us put together... Laughing

I think the problem with your theory about Random just using a "tone" is that it only works for the Depressing Goth poem. Everything else doesn't really have a tone. I mean, what was the tone of the sonnet? It would save everyone lots of work, but I don't think it really fits. Also, Anthrax's line (awesome job on that, btw) kinda fits into the flow of conversation...

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 3:59 pm
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