Cryptos

[kuang]

Yup - not been too well recently though, hence the relative lack of profile. Got a few ideas about this, and the one that's the most compelling is actually staring everybody in the face. There are just a few tiny bits I can't quite make work but the coincidence is striking.

[Jase]

oh ok ... hope you are feeling beetr ... feel free to share a tidbit

[fred]

Hey, Kuang. Hope you're feeling better. We need help, as usual. I thought X-Files was staring us in the face but the reaction to that has been like a lead baloon. Someone mentioned the double use of the word potent, and I liked Jase's nemetic lighting, even though it didn't seem to comport to any set of rules. Of course, I was delighted that I found Douglas (christmas tree) A. Smith(economics) who had been in the cast of several X-Files shows, but none of these deductive breakthroughs have taken us anywhere. What do you have in mind?

[kuang]

My thinking is far more simplistic, based on context. In a situation like that, with clues scribbled on a post-it note, I wouldn't imagine there was any great deal of complexity to the solution.. a bit like the weird 'shop advert' clue a few levels back.

I couldn't help but notice that if you take the capital letters in the first part of the clue before the hyphen, you can anagram them to get MAGNET or even MAGNETIC, with the letter L left over. I wondered if the last part meant that you should still use the initials ING but either append them to the end as they are, or anagram them but keep them in the final three positions. I'm assuming that the smear represents one or more missing capitals, but I haven't had any joy with pattern matching.

[fred]

OK. That would suggest that putting the "potent wireless network to good use" would NOT involve any Internet googling. I'll check the advert level and see if that helps. I don't like anagrams that are partial.

[armadillo_pie]

Level 35 - Amantillado, anyone?

I find Kuang's line of thought interesting. I, too, noticed

that the capital letters could be anagramed to MAGNET/MAGNETIC, and I also believe that the ING is meant to be used as a suffix.

I also find interesting this phrase from the Cryptos page: While pondering your oxymoronic fate...Why oxymoronic? It's an unusual choice of words, as there is nothing immediately apparent to me in the situation that is oxymoronic. I think it's a clue to the phrase we are meant to find, which will be the solution.

An oxymoron is a self-cancelling phrase -- two words that when put together in a phrase have the effect of canceliling each other out -- like "jumbo shrimp", "military intelligence", or "open secret".

Also interesting, is that there really isn't an opposite of "magnetic".

Hmmm....

[kuang]

Unless the answer it gives indicates a course of action to disable the door that must be researched? TBH the wording you've indicated makes me wonder if I'm barking in entirely the wrong forest too

Magnetic is it's own opposite in a way - it encompasses both positive and negative polarites. I don't think it's possible for something to be anti-magnetic as such, as a similar magnet reversed negates the effect.

I think oxymoronic may refer to dying from lack of sustenance in a place used to store drinks.

[armadillo_pie]

I think oxymoronic may refer to dying from lack of sustenance in a place used to store drinks.

I'm not so sure, yet. If so, it's a poor choice of words from someone otherwise clever in the use of language. That situation is better described as ironic.

[fred]

Since the door opens as we solve the puzzle, perhaps we need an 'open sesame' kind of phrase. We can have a command verb phrase with an -ing suffix, such as "Get going." "Starve alone in the wine vault" does suggest the source of 'oxymoronic', and the word magnetic is explicitly invoked, aong with the double use of potent. Can a wireless network be used to create a magnetic field, perhaps to cancel the magneitc field that holds the door shut. Is this what "overthinking" means?

[kuang]

Wireless networks use radiation on a tiny scale, far less than a typical phone and certainly not enough to do any damage to anything. A magnetic door lock usually consists of two metal plates, one of which has an electromagnet attached to it - as long as there is power to the magnet the only way to open it (other than the key!) is to muster enough force to separate the plates by a given amount so that the distance reduces the effect.

[fred]

In that case perhaps all we need is a simple instruction to enter the now-opened room. I hate to abondon all that clue content when we are told that we put the wireless network "to good use solving the odd series of clues."

[armadillo_pie]

Random observation

If you take the odd letters from Middle Initial, you get MDLIIIL, which translates from Roman numerals into 1603. William Gilbert (aka Gilbard) died on Nov. 30, 1603. He was famous for his investigations into magnetism and electricity. A unit of magnetomotive force is named a "gilbert" in his honor.

Does this mean anything? Very unlikely, but I'm stuck and since no one else was impressed with my thoughts around oxymoronic phrases, I'm trying anything.

[fred]

Love it! Sounds like me getting Molybdium (MO) from the middle letters of the first two clues. Its atomic weight is 42, a mysterious number referred to from time to time in X-Files, whixch was neat when I thought -ING was a substantive clue. I swear, you can do anything with letters, words and numbers. None of which is getting us to level 36.

[Jase]

i have tried using just capitalswith anagram plus 1 nada, counting letters gives me
6 7 9 4 9 6 6 7 6 7 12 which turned to alpha is f g i d i f f g f g l then with ceasar shift get nothing even after anagramming ... so anything else with just whats written there?

[armadillo_pie]

Still stuck @ Level 35

Nope. I got nothing. I went back a few pages in the game to see if there was anything that might inspire an idea.

There is a real company in Singapore called C***** S******** that provides wine storage, and the description on its website sounds very like the place our hero is trapped. I learned a little about wine storage there, but nothing helpful to me.

I read up on WiFi at howstuffworks.com, and from there did some cross-referencing. I learned from Wikipedia that "Christmas tree" is a name given to a kind of packet that can be used to probe a network. I know I'm not explaining that correctly, but someone smarter might want to look at "Chrsitmas tree packet" at Wikipedia. There are related references to "nuke", as in thermonuclear. I tried a lot of related terms as answers, but no joy.

I'm not sure about Fred's idea that no Googling is being done by our detective. If there's a WiFi in the building that he can access, shouldn't he be able to access the Internet through it? Or maybe he's smart enough to dig into the security system and somehow unlock the door remotely. How? Turning up the temperature in the vault? Triggering a fire alarm? Ugh, this makes my brain hurt.