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[jessie1326]

[jessie1326]

Double post to mention that I just provoked this response from @FelicityVelius:

[cherrytree98765]

So I'm gonna kinda be harsh, but I think the PM needs to help us find out if we've done Step 1 correct. There are so many ways you could fill the grid it's not even funny. You could fill it by going down in each column or down, up, down, up etc. or the reverse. You could also do the same with the left right. Also we don't know how to fill the letters which gives us even more variables.

I've tried multiple methods of solving the grid. I always feel like I'm getting close because I do sometimes am able to get some plaintext words like "So" and "the" but then gibberish.

I've tweeted Felicity to see if my path of thinking may be correct so I'm gonna wait on that before I say anything more.

[oraclle]

Right, for the PM:

We tried the easy way and got nothing. The problem is we have data, but no context. There is no indication of what to do with the blog posts once they are in the grid.
I know this must be intuitive for you, you know what the answer is. Our bumbling around not seeing the obvious must seem a bit silly. However, given the vast number of things we could do*, we need to know where to start.
K.I.S.S. and some seemingly random numbers aren't cutting it, I'm afraid.





*Just like the book cipher - I still can't figure out how we were supposed to guess that the book had changed from the Aenid to Dante's Inferno.

[jessie1326]

[thebruce]

Also, response to @soulgig's question: "Should we maybe "play" with it more?"

[enaxor]

If you use the 416 character blog post which starts with "Hello again Virgil..." as the text in the 16 x 26 grid it looks like a message could be forming with the two sets of numbers Felicity has given so far. Hopefully I populated the grid correctly.

14/4=T
10/6=R
6/8= U
10/10=T
12/14=H
10/4=L

[thebruce]

hm. That's about the best we've got so far, but it means we can't solve it until we have all the numbers.
Unless those number pairs are available to us right now, and she was just nudging them along for us...

But to get that, as a quick overview, we need to populate the grid with the blog text horizontally for:

[jessie1326]

But doesn't "writing letter for letter top to bottom" imply that the grid should be filled the other direction? Or...does it mean across in rows top to bottom?

[thebruce]

IF enaxor's on the right track, perhaps she meant it as in cross-reference row then column.
But ya, getting mixed signals, unless 'truth l...' is just coincidence

eta: row/column also seems to stick to the 'book cipher' style we've been following, but applied to the blog post(s) letters

[catherwood]

"The message is in my first two blog posts. See how they look when you use the table letter for letter."
"...stick to writing letter for letter top to bottom until my message is clear."

I notice that it's not "letter by letter" but "letter for letter" in both cases, which reads like a hint for substitution to me -- but that's just my grammar talking. If this is a simple table look-up, the clues are misleading.

The latest thing I've tried is writing both blog posts into a single table, putting 2 letters into each cell, one from each post, letter by letter. It started out with WHEELLCLOOMA and degenerated from there. (And yes, I did try the flow in both directions, but no, there was nothing formed by the verticals either.)

[enaxor]

Felicity has yet to answer my twitter query, so guessing that "truth l" is just a coincidence and big fail. Back to lurk mode.

[cherrytree98765]

Well I'm happy the PM took my request to heart. Anyways the positive response to my tweet is good. Though now I'm not sure if she knew what I was actually referring to so I've sent a second one to make sure the context was taken right.

Anyways back to the grid.

Edit: Welp scratch one idea:

[thebruce]

"truth" has to be a tip. I've been looking at what enaxor's done, seeing if there's ANY way to get the number sequence, or a pattern, without requiring F to tweet them to us.

If that's the proper solution, then we need to know what comes after those 12 'lucky' numbers so far...

[oraclle]

Ok, so I think I have the progression:

14,4,10,6,6,8
a,b,a,b,a,b

a follows the pattern: 14, 10, 6, 10 (repeat).
b follows the pattern: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 (repeat).

This gives garbage when followed, however:

TRUTHLLNTTHRGTMLLNJT

But it does make a 9x9 pattern in the grid.

It's late here, I'm going to hit the hay and take a look again tomorrow.