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	KISS, POE (long)
	Posted By: Grasshopper	Date: 6/6/01 8:18 p.m.
	Okay folks, I've been mostly in lurk mode, but it's time to talk. I've read all the incredible amount of work that's been going, here, on the Story page, and elsewhere. The level of sophistication is a marvel to behold -- almost as marvelous as all of us, PiD, Marathon, Bungie fans, not to mention our starry-eyed friends/relatives/pets that we're dragging into this adventure. It warms my heart that we've been able to dig so deep, in so many areas (from quantum physics to encryption practices, from ancient Mayan cultural practices, to state-of-the-art astrology), and there hasn't been a single argument, not a single flame war. You (we) all, methinks, deserve a big pat on the back. We're a good team, and I hope that once TCP/IP support for A1 is implemented (hint hint), that I'll get to play a co-op game with some or all of you fine folks. You rock (Let's hope I didn't jinx anything by saying that!) That said. I've three conceptual points to make, which I think are important or at least relevant, and several observations about the dials, which are less important, but perhaps relevant. Conceptual stuff first. The first problem I see at work with our conceptual approach is that we're NOT LISTENING TO CHELSEA. Chelsea Bridge has been giving us clues all along, and we should be paying attention. We're taking the clues into consideration, certainly, but not closely enough, methinks. CB's latest message to the Story page AGAIN makes mention of "three rooms," "three locks." We should be all over that. Does that mean that the seven dials will somehow give us three answers? What three answers? It's pretty hard to look for an answer when you don't know what the question is. In this case, finding out what the question is is part of the challenge. CB and Claude have posted maybe twenty messages since this thing began. I wish that all of those, no matter how trivial, were all assembled in one place so that we could refer to them. In our search, CE and CB's words are of paramount importance, because they know the answers. So -- could someone has brains, time, and a decent Internet connection (I lack all three) consider volunteering to hunt for every single CB and CE post on the subject, and assemble them in one place? I for one would be extremely grateful. Hip's page has been invaluable, but we can't expect him to do EVERYTHING for us... Once it's all in one place, I bet that passing a fine comb through this text will help us. (Putting it all together will certainly help the old timers like myself, whose memory is fading by the minute...) :) And this brings me to my second point, POE. I've read several very insightful posts that link the Glyphs deep within Marathon, PiD, etc. I read, somewhere, a post where Claude stated that the goal resided within Marathon (goal=reward), but that the PROCESS of getting there was NOT related to Marathon. (Claude, if your'e reading this, could you confirm/deny/no comment on the alleged post please?) If that's the case, fine. As much as I love digging deep within Marathon's terminals, if the solution to the glyphs ain't there, great, END OF STORY, both Chelsea and Claude know the solution, I don't, so I can focus on something else. In other words, let's put to work my old Classics professor's second favorite methodology for figuring out reduplicating perfect verbs in ancient Greek, PROCESS OF ELIMINATION. (Could you believe it, Keep It Simple Stupid was his first) In other words, we've been working hard at BUILDING theories, let's see which ones we can agree on ELIMINATING, that'll leave fewer paths for us to concentrate on. One last word -- can it be CONFIRMED, once and for all, that the Mayan numeral on G7 is indeed 74 and NOT 3141? I've read in a few places that Claude confirmed this to someone. Can we settle on this, once and for all? Keeping KISS and POE in mind brings me to my third point. I know of several Marathon players who look for secret doors/areas not by hitting every wall they see, but by anticipating where a mapmaker might place it. To note two, Fm has his style of mapmaking, so does Greg K. Sure, you can hit your action key at every wall you see, and you'll eventually come up with all the secret areas, but it might be quicker to try and place yourself in the mapmaker's shoes for a moment, and think "where is the secret room." That said, I would have NEVER discovered the secret term on Smells like Napalm if it weren't for the MSG. :) Nevertheless, despite my lack of expertise finding secrets, I know that there are many here who can and have, so allow me to propose the following: •The glyphs were placed a long time ago on Bungie.org's site, in the hopes that someone would notice them, get intrigued, and get "hooked." How do you get someone "hooked?" •In order to get "hooked," anyone reading the Glyphs would have to solve one or two of them and KNOW (this is crucial) that he/she was on the right track. I think that at this point, the only thing we know for sure is that the Mayan numeral on G7 is 74. How do you tell someone they're on the right track in this kind of puzzle? •Either with numbers or letters. With numbers, you'd provide the solver with a recognizable pattern. Folks, we have pulled these numbers apart, we've twisted them, reduced them, serialized them, turned them into letters, ASCII, hex, and that's just the beginning. Two nights ago, I actually made a table of numbers based on 7, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, etc. (My reasoning was for G2, with 32 over 7/10ths. Using this system, counting to thirty two gives you twenty six numbers, the exact amount to create an alphabet table). But that's silly. As someone pointed out, we need to focus on the inner picts. Once we solve a few of those, perhaps the uses of the outside numbers will become apparent. Until then, we've neither the software, the hardware, or the decryption experience necesary to perform the kind of number crunching that's needed to work with those numbers and so many unknowns. More importantly, CHELSEA TOLD US in a post "If only I were more mathematical..." No. I think that the way for us to get on the track is think letters, think words. There's always a way to convert numbers (I'm thinking of 32 and 74) into words (CB? GD?), and words (Threonine) into numbers (309) then back into words (C0I). The immense advantage there is that we'll know when we're wrong right away. For instance, once of the things that I played with for a while was to try and simplify the glyphs into a sentence, starting with G1 = "I see" (I C). The whole sentence read something like "I see 32 (bars? degrees?) East South East Threonine (amino? 309?)..." etc. Let's plug away and see what we come up with. Let's make the numbers make letters, make the letters make words, and the words will tell us when we're wrong, and when we're right. -grasshopper [cross-posted]

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Replies:

	KISS, POE (long)	Grasshopper	6/6/01 8:18 p.m.
	Could all of you do me a favor? :)	Miguelito	6/6/01 11:39 p.m.

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