PF Treasure Hunt - Solve the Clues & Crack the Code!

[chroot]

buried not praised

So we're looking for a dead scientist who wrote something but was not recognized for it... maybe von Neumann? Still thinking.

Hmm.

- Warren

 

[NoTime]

Hmmm Thinking

(II) Macduff’s unique qualification
Not of woman born

 

[Moonbear]

II. If this refers to Shakespeare's Macduff, then his unique qualification is that he was never born of woman, but ripped from his mother's womb, which allowed him to kill Macbeth. I have no idea how that fits in with the rest of the puzzle.
I. Since II got me thinking about Shakespeare, a hot time makes me think of summer, as in a Midsummer Night's Dream.
III. A google search of the phrase "buried not praised" came up with a headline for Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

I could be way off, since I don't know how any of that would have helped in deciphering the first code that chroot already cracked, other than once the code is cracked, it could also before telling us to look to Shakespeare's works for the answer.

These are tough!

 

[chroot]

I believe Caesar was the first to popularize the cipher exemplified by Gokul's clue.

(NOW it all makes sense! )

- Warren

 

[chroot]

Bonjour? Gokul's journal reveals this:

G : "Go to this quetion !"

U : "Which quetion ?"

G : "This, stupid !"

U : "This ? What's 'This' ?"

G : "Figure it out. AS*TO=THIS"

- Warren

 

[Gokul43201]

Okay chroot...time for you to give it a rest. See you later !

 

[chroot]

Okay chroot...time for you to give it a rest. See you later !

Yes sir!

- Warren

 

[Moonbear]

I believe Caesar was the first to popularize the cipher exemplified by Gokul's clue.

(NOW it all makes sense! )

- Warren

Aha! Yes, that does finish putting the puzzle pieces together!

 

[Gokul43201]

Good work, NoTime and MoonBear. But the hints have not really been solved yet (Shakespeare was not the keyword)...though the keyword has been obtained almost independently, as a result of working backwards.

The keyword is CAESAR, save it for later.

NoTime,MoonBear : What one word might you use to describe Macduff's birth/delivery ?

MoonBear : The summer is a warm time for everyone...why did I exclude certain types of people ? Think 'month'.

P.S : Didn't seem unusual that I was numbering the hints using Roman Numerals, eh ? Perhaps, not really !

 

[Gokul43201]

Chroot, don't leave yet. You owe folks an explanation of how and where you found the third clue.

 

[Moonbear]

Oh...d'uh! Beat me over the head with hints and I'm bound to figure something out eventually!

Macduff's delivery would have been a Caesarian section.
My first instinct was a month, not a season, because of the exclusion of the Southern hemisphere, but I couldn't figure out which one. Now I realize it is July, named for Julius Caesar.

 

[chroot]

Chroot, don't leave yet. You owe folks an explanation of how and where you found the third clue.

Here:

Some of the repeated letters led me to think it must be an encryption where every other letter is part of the plaintext. Gokul's last line "(What are the odds that you’ll crack that ?)" seems a bit cheeky at first, until you realize it's an easy cipher and he's telling you to consider the 1st, 3rd, 5th letters -- the odd letters -- as part of the plaintext. The even letters don't happen to spell anything special. Imagine my surprise if they had instead read "no, the other letters!"

- Warren

 

[Gokul43201]

And chroot, how did you know what to do with the plaintext, and what did you do ?

 

[chroot]

And chroot, how did you know what to do with the plaintext, and what did you do ?

Er, well, I... well, I uh... I read the plaintext. And didn't know what it meant.

- Warren

 

[Gokul43201]

Huh ?? So how did you know where to find the third clue ?

 

[chroot]

So how did you know where to find the third clue ?

Ohhh THAT third clue. You said not to look in Nature or Science (the names of two highly-respected scientific journals), but to look in your (journal) instead. So I did.

- Warren

 

[Gokul43201]

Okay folks, there you have it. The third clue is revealed (as this is getting solved really quickly, and I'm rapidly running out of ideas, I think you are now nearly halfway through ).

To repeat, the Third Clue is :



G : "Go to this quetion !"

U : "Which quetion ?"

G : "This, stupid !"

U : "This ? What's 'This' ?"

G : "Figure it out. AS*TO=THIS"

 

[Gokul43201]

Tenali, you're back in the game. Chroot, you're out.

 

[Moonbear]

I think these are getting harder as we go along!
okay, it's obvious I'm supposed to go to the "Ask a Stupid Quetion" thread, but I have no idea what to do once I get there.

AS*TO=THIS Okay, that's a puzzle to solve, I guess something similar to those puzzles in the Google quiz in this forum, but those were addition and this one is multiplication...much harder if that's what I'm supposed to do.

Bonjour? I suppose something to do with French.

Is there significance to the GUGUG as well, or is that just "Gokul" and "You" with no more significance to it?

Better go get the plug for my laptop, the battery won't last until the end of this puzzle and I'm too addicted to walk away.

 

[Gokul43201]

No more significance. And this is moot now, but I was trying to get you to think along the lines of "Comment allez vous ?" or "Comment ca va ?" and that would lead you to look at the comments.

I'm hoping this clue buys me some time. Hope someone doesn't just write up a nifty piece of code to solve it in 5 minutes. I don't have very much more up yet...and only vaguely formed ideas about the remaining clues.

Fortunately, I believe I can stop y'all dead shortly, until I decide I'm ready.

(Duh...what a screw up...hope that wasn't caught by too many folks . I know it was noticed by at least one.)

 

[Moonbear]

Okay, I got some of it (maybe more than some, but I'm not sure if I've missed something):

I knew I had to go to the stupid quetion thread, but had to figure out which question. THIS is the solution to the cryptarithm which gives the number of the post to go to. But, there are many possible solutions. Once figuring out that the thread is not past 2000 replies yet, I knew T was 1. That still left too many possible solutions, so I started looking for clues in Gokul's replies in that threat approximating the time frame when the treasure hunt idea was suggested until now. Mysteriously, he replied to himself in reply #1504 (Now working backward, I could solve the cryptarithm: AS*TO=THIS; 94*16=1504). In reply #1504, wouldn't you know there's some hidden white text. It reads, "Find out more about for 3 to 0 won": ie., find out more about 43201...that's Gokul! So, what are we supposed to find out about you?

 

[Gokul43201]

Naw fair ! You were supposed to struggle with the math problem (as I did...it wasn't easy coming up with that )and give me time to maybe make another clue.

Moonbear, you're real close, but not quite there <phew> !

 

[Math Is Hard]

I went to another quetion type thread to look (the "Who is?"thread). Does the answer have something to do with the cartoon character Asterix?

 

[Moonbear]

Naw fair ! You were supposed to struggle with the math problem (as I did...it wasn't easy coming up with that )and give me time to maybe make another clue.

Moonbear, you're real close, but not quite there <phew> !

Sorry, I tried struggling with the math, but there were too many possible answers, so I decided to take a different approach.

Okay, I'm not sure what I'm missing, and I can tell you're not inclined to share lest we solve this too quickly, but I'll grasp at the only straw I can see:

Find out more about 43201...does this refer to the Member Photo thread where the origin of 43201 getting tacked onto your name was discussed? I think it's your zip code, but will go back and check.

 

[Gokul43201]

All I'm going to say now is that if you do figure out the intent of the discovered words, you should not be able to go any further, because of (I hope) a technical detail that I'm using to my advantage.

I could let you try, but you'd simply be banging your heads against a wall.

When I find that someone correctly interprets the message, I'll announce a break, so that you get to rest and I get to make a clue ot two more.

 

[Moonbear]

Slight modification to that answer:
It was in Tribdog's "What's in a Name" thread, that you revealed 43201 is your zip code, but also the largest prime number formed by the digits 01234.

 

[Gokul43201]

Moonbear, you're on a wild goose chase. Give it a rest (that's not an order)...you done enough damage already !

 

[Math Is Hard]

so I was on the wrong track?

 

[Moonbear]

All I'm going to say now is that if you do figure out the intent of the discovered words, you should not be able to go any further, because of (I hope) a technical detail that I'm using to my advantage.

I could let you try, but you'd simply be banging your heads against a wall.

When I find that someone correctly interprets the message, I'll announce a break, so that you get to rest and I get to make a clue ot two more.

Well, there is the technical detail that you don't have a journal. That was of course the obvious first place to look with the way the clue started. But that did seem far too obvious, so I thought it was intentional misdirection. I'm trying to figure out how you edited your Stupid Quetion reply when you did...do you have a conspirator?

 

[Gokul43201]

Yes, MiH - kinda like that train that Soul Asylum sings about. Hard luck !

 

[Gokul43201]

Moonbear, are you talking to me ? And I don't have a journal ?? I'm sure my journal has public access and that's where I hid clue #3 ! Now, I'm really confused.

 

[NoTime]

Playing with the spectrum?
->Anything to do with "REMO"

 

[Gokul43201]

Moonbear has figured out where to go...check out her posts.

And I've got no co-conspirators, yet.

 

[Moonbear]

Gokul:
yep, I was talking to you. I checked again and don't see a journal for you. :-( There's no way to search the journals either if it's hiding somewhere. I'll try one more time, but don't expect one to suddenly appear :-)

 

[Gokul43201]

Moonbear : How did you read the third clue without getting to my journal ? And it exists alright, else chroot wouldn't have been able to read it. There's just a simple trick involved in getting to it. So simple, you'll wan't to dive out a window, when you figure out how.