I hope this doesn't go against the spirit of Wired's May mystery issue, but I figure since they've already spilled the beans on the metapuzzle, it's probably time to do the same with the LOST puzzle on pages 104-105 since the season finale it relates to has already aired.
Page 104 was solved by Steven Bevacqua (also the first person to solve the metapuzzle), who used a Vignere cypher to decrypt this message:
U S E L E T
T E R S B A
C K W A R D S F
R O M E N D
Steve credits Nick Tierce for the idea that the page was an alphanumeric code. I had nothing to do with solving this page and merely used the clue that they unearthed.
Page 105 solution:
In the recent LOST episode "The Variable," there is a quick shot of Wired issue 11.08 from August 2003. Scott Dadich's twitter hint led me to the time travel article in that issue. The part of the article on Thorne Plates refers to the "Casimir Effect," which was also referenced on LOST in the past. In order to USE LETTERS BACKWARDS FROM END, count the letters backwards from the end of the Thorne Plates portion of the article. So, count 4 letters back (the "t" in "trip"), then 34 letters back from that (the "h" in "happen") and so on. The final solution is:
T H E F O U
R T O E D S
T A T U E I S
T A W E R E T
which refers to one of the reveals in the Season 5 finale of LOST.
-Jon
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Spoiler Alert! LOST puzzle solution from Wired's May issue
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8 comments:
good job!!!!! this thing has been killing me! i was doing the backwards counting thing all over the place. just not that one section. oh well...
But what does "T A W E R E T" mean ?
Nevermind, Google -> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taweret
Holy crap. I just NEVER understood these puzzles at all. I was about to make fun of you for having way too much time on your hands, but then I realized I would do them if I knew how. Kudos.
Nice work!
OK, this was pretty obscure to find and to solve. You had to find a
specific passage in that magazine that really had nothing to do with
any of the red herring "ENDs" (The Ruscha art, the End of Cancer article, thEenD dancing men cipher) and then it wasn't an indexing, but
rather an moving sequence. (Start with 4 letters, then count 34 more
letters back, etc.). So the common numbers in the cipher (the 1's or the 5's) weren't the same letter.
Can anyone explain all the remaining loose ends, like the JJA logos or Violet Sedan Chair and the hidden tracks? Is there more to solve out there? I hope someone will give us a hint whether to keep going here, because I'd like my life back...
Well done! I wouldn't even begin to be able to solve that. I am disappointed though, because if the statue is really supposed to be Tawaret then they've done an appalling job researching it.
There are still a number of loose ends in the issue: the JJA logos and the Hidden Tracks features, for instance. Is anyone still working on these? Has Wired or anyone released any hints or suggestions that these aren't just red herrings? If they are real puzzles that need to be solved, I'd like to work on them, but I won't without some reassurance that they aren't just noise without signal...
New MetaPuzzle!
Hey guys I'm working on a new metapuzzle that someone at my office created. Clues are being released slowly and I'm posting them on my blog as they show up. Would love some help from other puzzle solvers out there. Thanks!
http://dot-dash-dot.blogspot.com/
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