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Post by wortelboer on Apr 13, 2017 12:34:03 GMT -5
OK, this is REALLY grasping at straws, but bear with me. Going back to the idea that the missive locks may have something to do with this, I went back to some of the e-mails and noticed that one of them mentioned the following: "Where the next puzzle will appear is a bit of a mystery. The Professor may pass it to us to print in the next missive, or it may only appear on Facebook." As far as I know, none of these puzzles "only" appeared on Facebook; I believe they were all both posted to Facebook and sent to us via e-mail. So I went to MPC's Facebook page, and discovered a post, made in late January, that referenced this article: www.atlasobscura.com/places/library-of-congress-card-catalogNote the following : Library of Congress (one of the libraries on the list), coordinates from Atlas Obscura, and a card catalogue that has been digitized. Could very easily be nothing, but who knows... So, to really grasp at this straw....one could suggest this based on what the article says here: The Library of Congress card catalog system dates back to 1898. By 1901 the LC Card Division was producing vast quantities of them for sale to libraries across the country. Every book in the collection had a standardized card listing, relevant metadata, and cross-referenced topics. So maybe the locations marked are all libraries that still have the old card catalogs available...and all use the cards sold to them by the Library of Congress (in that case they would all be identical). Maybe something...the call number, the metadata or the cross-referenced topics listed on the cards for the relevant books is what needs to be looked at. BUT, I can't image though that any library still has old card catalogs taking up valuable space anymore.
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Post by wortelboer on May 6, 2017 18:17:35 GMT -5
So I just downloaded the free book of Little Women...and looked at the names of the chapters. Is anyone surprised that one of the chapters is entitled "Harvest Time" ? Diving back into the rabbit hole.
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Post by dmikester on May 6, 2017 18:32:43 GMT -5
Also, just to add a tiny bit of info that may or may not help with solving this, I can confirm that the Sun Dial "unlocks" as soon as the Daytime locks become available. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with any specific puzzle being solved or the Missives being solved.
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Post by wortelboer on May 7, 2017 7:27:34 GMT -5
Well, now that I have the chapter contents of "Harvest Time" I spent hours last night and a couple early this morning staring at the numbers and coordinates from the webpage trying to come up with ideas as to how to apply them. I am again at a complete standstill. If anyone comes up with an idea, would love to hear it. My current working theory is: I am assuming a scytale is involved. That would mean just entering a string of the text from the chapter. That would mean any volume of the book is fine to use...as they would not change the author's words Still don't know the diameter or length of the scytale, but if MPC used the scytale decoder at www.dcode.fr/scytale-cipher - I wouldn't need that information.
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Post by k80 on May 8, 2017 6:31:41 GMT -5
Well, now that I have the chapter contents of "Harvest Time" I spent hours last night and a couple early this morning staring at the numbers and coordinates from the webpage trying to come up with ideas as to how to apply them. I am again at a complete standstill. If anyone comes up with an idea, would love to hear it. My current working theory is: I am assuming a scytale is involved. That would mean just entering a string of the text from the chapter. That would mean any volume of the book is fine to use...as they would not change the author's words Still don't know the diameter or length of the scytale, but if MPC used the scytale decoder at www.dcode.fr/scytale-cipher - I wouldn't need that information. Welcome to the Wall. That's where everyone is stopped. We were able to brute force the answer, so we know what but not why.
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Post by wortelboer on May 8, 2017 11:05:22 GMT -5
Well, now that I have the chapter contents of "Harvest Time" I spent hours last night and a couple early this morning staring at the numbers and coordinates from the webpage trying to come up with ideas as to how to apply them. I am again at a complete standstill. If anyone comes up with an idea, would love to hear it. My current working theory is: I am assuming a scytale is involved. That would mean just entering a string of the text from the chapter. That would mean any volume of the book is fine to use...as they would not change the author's words Still don't know the diameter or length of the scytale, but if MPC used the scytale decoder at www.dcode.fr/scytale-cipher - I wouldn't need that information. Welcome to the Wall. That's where everyone is stopped. We were able to brute force the answer, so we know what but not why. Maybe they will throw us a hint in Volume IV as to how to solve this one..I keep thinking we are missing a piece of the puzzle.
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Post by wortelboer on Oct 6, 2017 12:38:51 GMT -5
So I'm back. Another idea occurred to me today. And I realize this is a leap...but until this is solved I guess I will continue to come up with some bizarre ideas for solving it.
Raskovnik - According to the legend, the raskovnik could unlock any gate or padlock, regardless of its size, material or key. It could also uncover treasures buried in the ground: in Bulgarian beliefs, it could split the ground at the place where a treasure lay so that people could locate it.
So the libraries are locations...maybe if we find a book or a dictionary at those locations that contain the word raskovnik there will be something there?
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Post by dmikester on Oct 6, 2017 12:56:23 GMT -5
Ooooh, interesting. I did go to one of the libraries a while ago and looked in all of the books referenced in the titles of the issues and found nothing obvious. I think the problem with the whole going to the libraries theory is that it's just so hard to know what to look for, and in the case of a dictionary, there will be so many to choose from and there's no obvious clue as to which one to look in.
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Post by wortelboer on Oct 6, 2017 12:59:07 GMT -5
Ooooh, interesting. I did go to one of the libraries a while ago and looked in all of the books referenced in the titles of the issues and found nothing obvious. I think the problem with the whole going to the libraries theory is that it's just so hard to know what to look for, and in the case of a dictionary, there will be so many to choose from and there's no obvious clue as to which one to look in. True..it is a long leap...but at this point I'm taking pot shots in the dark and hoping to hit something.
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Post by Todd on Oct 6, 2017 13:12:05 GMT -5
Personally, I believe this is a typical Puzzle Hunt type of puzzle of the Identify - Sort - Index - Solve variety.
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Post by phraca on Oct 22, 2017 20:12:36 GMT -5
FYI, there was a recent TedTalk by one of the creators of... No mention of libraries though
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Post by Todd on Nov 30, 2017 19:49:12 GMT -5
The mention of A New Era of Thought in Clockwork Mutineers had been gnawing at me, and when it was brought up again in chat recently I did a bit more digging and have some observations, but not necessarily anything useful. Let's see what you all think... The bit in Clockwork Mutineers said something about how physical copies of A New Era of Thought are available at select libraries. I thought I'd see how many libraries on the Harvest Time list had a physical copy of A New Era of Thought. I found this site useful: www.worldcat.org/title/new-era-of-thought/oclc/4767184?referer=br&ht=editionImagine my surprise when I found that the four libraries in the first section of Harvest Time seemed to have this book, but none of the rest of the libraries did. That dovetailed into a theory that there are four sections to Harvest Time, and four issues, so perhaps each section pertained to an issue. So I moved on to the second section. The second issue was The Child of the Cavern. The libraries in section two were kind of odd compared to the rest of the sections. They were almost exclusively in Canada, along with one in Tokyo and one in California. Then I remembered... Jules Verne was French, and most of these Canadian libraries had French Canadian names. The In Good Company text adventure had a ledger of books that were checked out, and they made a point of saying that The Child of the Cavern was AKA Les Indes Noires. Perhaps the key here was that we were looking for these libraries to have copies of the book in French. The website worldcat.org didn't seem to have a lot of information on the catalogs of these libraries, so I went directly to those libraries websites and looked in their online catalogs. With two exceptions, every library in the second section had Les Indes Noires, including the ones in Tokyo and Los Angeles. The two that didn't seem to have it were Saint John Free Public library in Saint John, New Brunswick, and Bibliotheque de La Petite-Patrie in Montreal, Quebec. But I was not dissuaded. This puzzle is a year old now. Perhaps books were pulled from circulation or lost. But then things started getting complicated. The ledger in In Good Company identified the third book as The Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Underwoods). I can't find a book by that exact title. Undaunted, though, I looked at what I saw evolving. If the locations of the libraries weren't important (since they were selected because of books the had, and not their locations) then perhaps the number of libraries was what was significant. The first section has the number 15 in the header, and 4 libraries listed, and they all pertained to A New Era of Thought. Perhaps it's a book cipher, and we're interested in the 4th word on page 15 of A New Era of Thought... So I found a fully digitized copy of the book.. nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52778480/view?partId=nla.obj-241313304That would make the second section Les Indes Noires, page 72, word 8. But wouldn't that give us a French word? It doesn't matter, ride it out... And which edition of the book? Perhaps this one? gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58227861.r For the next section, The Complete Works of Ben Jonson, the page number is 1. I still haven't good a good idea of that book we're talking about. Perhaps it's simply telling us to pull the 7th word from the page that has the poem which contains the phrase "From Death and Dark Oblivion"? This poem: www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/underwoodsmisc42.htmWhat do we have? POWER LES (or PARSONAGGES, depending on if you count the partial word) THE.... not much of anything yet. The last section everything sort of fell apart. From the Mountains of Madness has a rather complicated publication history, initially being serialized heavily edited in a magazine and only finally having a full, definitive edition published in the 1980s. Depending on which edition we were looking at, we would have different words as the page and word count. My guess would be the Arkham House edition of 1964. So far I haven't turned up a copy. Does this stoke any sparks? I'm sure we haven't given up on it yet, right?
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Post by wortelboer on Nov 30, 2017 20:05:47 GMT -5
I like that idea. But if you counted by paragraph and then the word in the paragraph the edition You were looking at wouldn’t matter.
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Post by wortelboer on Nov 30, 2017 20:06:51 GMT -5
It could also be sentence and then word in the sentence.
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Post by ariock on Dec 13, 2017 19:26:21 GMT -5
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