Malenkai wrote (Nov 01, 1996):
"spoken in tongues"
is this prayer of deliverance I have unintentionally, unconditionally, and unharmoniously transcribed from the text of the ancients.
The ancients, in calculating the circumference of the earth, have calculated pi for us to a whole lot of places, and generally thought pi was the key to deliverence, among other things. My own calculations of pi have produced a slightly different value, but the ancients were probably right. Their litanies, in addition to pi, often mentioned walruses and large marine life as well, but I did not see the need to transcribe those prayers at this time. Perhaps next month.
3.13 749 106 594 5 1 93 6 11 322 51 322 3 13 8 590 39 372 -20 647 -92 93 35 50 18 960 -15 554 34 964 3 4 4 524 12 1038 23 651 17 818 52 896 -3 5 15 5 21 5 18 57 -1 1 -21 16 26 14 -2 14 -1 651 17 770 28 208 3 458 83 340 146 254 42 254 61 254 0 254 66 254 26 254 -27 254 27 254 -25 254 29 254 11 428 5 102 24 1063 29 57 -1 109 34 30 -9 ...
I should conclude my prayer that it is possible that a trancription error has been made, and, if you point such to my attention, I shall gladly research my texts for you.
Malenkai wrote (Jan 23, 1997):
Jason Orendorff wrote: [about a Tammany rewrite] > > > way, because then your money essentially counts double. It's not real > > important, but if it doesn't make things too complicated, I'd like to see > > SILENT kept. > I'll keep it. It's not so bad.
Good. Although not required for one of my Treasures, the hunter might become confused if the option were not there.
Mohammed wrote (Jan 26, 1997):
Malenkai! I must with some regret inform you that your doom is eminent. Ackanomic's esteemed treasure-hunter and pirate-caliber swordsman /dev/joe wishes to challenge you to a duel.
His reasons for this are that he believes you are leading Ackanomic on a wild Goose chase with your assorted Treasures and fabricated Parade descriptions.
/dev/joe also wishes it to be known that 573 18 1199 -9 308 9 1086 17 18 654 7 701 -9 .
Guy Fawkes wrote (Jan 27, 1997):
Be it known that Malenkai scoffs at your bumbling attempts to find the Treasures of Jara, and that he accepts the duel, and that I am his Second.
He also wishes to reply to your meaningless scribbles of numbers.
>Perhaps you meant to say 573 18 1199 -9 308 9 1086 17 561 33 654 7 701 -9. >With such obvious ineptitude, it is no wonder you come fishing for >clues, thinly disguised in the form of a duel. > >You shall have your duel, but only if I'm vanquished shall I be goaded >into helping you any more than I have here. Otherwise, when I am the >victor, ... :).
Malenkai wrote (Jan 28, 1997):
T'was a treasure hunter so lame
Despite his undeserved fame
Desperate for clues
Goads me into these duels
When he should be watching Parades
/dev/joe wrote (Jan 28, 1997):
Malenkai buried lots of stuff
With no maps and clues that were tough.
The numbers he's teasin'
Have no rhyme or reason
And I think they're nothing but guff.
/dev/joe wrote (Jan 27, 1997):
I am going to the Monument to Futility.
After admiring the statues there (including a statue of myself) for a while, such a prominent thought comes to mind that I must speak it aloud: "Quietly vote for the yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee mongoose."
I still don't understand what this means, though, so I continue to sit there admiring the statues, and wondering what it means.
/dev/joe wrote (Jan 30, 1997):
I have waited 3 long days in the Monument to Futility. My research here has revealed to me this bit of insight:
I wish to bribe Tammany to vote silent on the proposal that contains the words yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee and mongoose. (Proposal 1705)
Malenkai wrote (Jan 30, 1997):
However, the map to Treasure 103 had some gizz in it. It simply read:
Publically announce that you wish to bribe Tammany to vote silent on proposal X, where X is a proposal under consideration, and X contains the words yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee and mongoose. You need not actually bribe tammany, but you must make the public announcement.
/dev/joe wrote (Jan 30, 1997):
In Malenkai's prayer to the weather gods at the beginning of November (re-used in January), the following sequence of numbers appeared: 3.13 749 106 594 5 1 93 6 11 322 51 322 3 13 8 590 39 372 -20 647 -92 93 35 50 18 960 -15 554 34 964 3 4 4 524 12 1038 23 651 17 818 52 896 -3 5 15 5 21 5 18 57 -1 1 -21 16 26 14 -2 14 -1 651 17 770 28 208 3 458 83 340 146 254 42 254 61 254 0 254 66 254 26 254 -27 254 27 254 -25 254 29 254 11 428 5 102 24 1063 29 57 -1 109 34 30 -9 ... I stared at these numbers many times, trying to discern their meaning. The large span of numbers (-92 to 1063), the preponderance of small numbers, and the long alternating sequence of 254's and other numbers toward the end of the message made it unlikely that this was ASCII undergoing some transformation, as was true of several previous treasures I have found. At some point, I had an inspiration that the large numbers could represent proposal numbers, and the smaller numbers represented offsets into the proposal, with the negative numbers being offsets from the end of the proposal instead of the beginning. (My recent experience in Python programming made this assumption a natural one; it uses this convention except that the offsets from the beginning start at 0 for the first item in a list, or first character in a string.) However, I wasn't sure if the offsets counted words, characters, letters, or what. Some of the offsets were too large to represent words within some of the proposals, and I couldn't imagine what message would alternate word 254 so many times with other words (and P340 doesn't even have 254 words). However, applying it to letters, alpha-numeric characters, all non-whitespace characters, and some other possibilities didn't make any reasonable message. A few weeks ago I was discussing this with breadbox, who also had tried to apply this sort of code to Malenkai's numbers and didn't come up with anything. Still, it seemed more natural for such a code to work with words, so when I requested a Duel with Malenkai, I posted a message in the first code I tried, one where large numbers represent proposal numbers and smaller numbers represent words within the proposal. I wrote: 573 18 1199 -9 308 9 1086 17 18 654 7 701 -9 Meaning: I know it depends on proposals somehow And Malenkai responded: Perhaps you meant to say 573 18 1199 -9 308 9 1086 17 561 33 654 7 701 -9. (561 33 is another possible "on" in the same code.) The fact that Malenkai rejected having two different offsets after one proposal number led me to rethink my ideas about the encoding scheme. I initial rejected the idea that the numbers were in pairs of proposal number followed by offset because some of the numbers that would be proposal numbers would be too small. Forced to reconsider this possibility, an idea that came to mind was that all the proposal numbers had 300 subtracted from them (i.e., for the purposes of the code, they were numbered starting with 1 instead of 301). This also solved the problem of the 254's. I quickly checked the date on proposal 1363 (the largest proposal number which would be involved in the code by this method) and I found it to have been posted before the code was first posted, so the method stood a chance of being correct, so I started decoding. I quickly found that the 3.13 at the beginning (which I had mostly ignored as dressing, as the numbers were posted as an approximation to pi) actually was the first pair of numbers. The message decoded as follows: 3.13 749 106 594 5 1 93 6 11 322 51 322 3 13 8 590 39 372 -20 a simple map to a key to a valuable treasure 647 -92 93 35 50 18 960 -15 554 34 964 3 4 4 524 12 1038 23 simply follow these directions go to the tallest tower 651 17 818 52 896 -3 5 15 5 21 5 18 57 -1 publically say quietly vote for the yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee 1 -21 16 26 14 -2 14 -1 651 17 770 28 208 3 458 83 340 146 mongoose wait 3 days publically announce that you wish 254 42 254 61 254 0 254 66 254 26 254 -27 254 27 254 -25 254 29 254 11 to bribe ***** to vote silent on the proposal that 428 5 102 24 1063 29 57 -1 109 34 30 -9 ... contains the words yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee and mongoose The "254 0" doesn't fit in with this code exactly, but the context makes it clear that 0 means to use the proposal's title, "Tammany". I wasn't sure if this meant Malenkai would make the proposal after seeing the first message, or if I was supposed to do it, but when the 3-day mark was coming around, having not seen the specified proposal, I made it myself.
Malenkai wrote (Jan 30, 1997):
The numbers translated to the following. The code was that the first number plus 300 was a proposal number, the second was an offset of the word number from the first or last word of the proposal. depending if it was positive or negative:
A simple map to a key to a valuable treasure. Simply follow these directions. Go to the tallest tower. Say quietly vote for the yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee mongoose. Wait 3 days. Publically announce that you wish to bribe Tammany to vote silent on the proposal that contains the words yeenewkleorrrrmeeesseilllllee and mongoose.