IdiotBoy wrote (May 02, 1997):
Treasure 138 or 139, depending on who you believe, has been found! Attached is the message which located the treasure.
The revealed map was, as follows:
The first player to say "I will bet that IdiotBoy did not bury a treasure" shall find this treasure.
As game custom is, I will allow /dev/joe to recount his hunt for the treasure, while I look abashed at my typing skills.
/dev/joe wrote (May 02, 1997):
I'm quite involved with treasures today, with one of mine having been found, another buried, and now I've found IdiotBoy's.
The first paper had the number 1307 above it, separated from the assorted smaller numbers by the header "Paper Three". I looked at rule 1307 and proposal 1307, and tried various things with the text of these, with no success. Some time later (when IdiotBoy posted a clue pointing to R1307) I went back to work on this, and finally tried using the first letter of each word (i.e., the 6 4 8 2 23 = the first letters of the 6th, 4th, 8th, 2nd, and 23rd words) and it decoded to (using * for the smudge which I never paid off):
OFFER TO GET ONE PFTECHNO FEOM SNTWGO* IT IS INTERESTING
The E in FEOM was from the word "eir"; the T in SNTWGO* was from the word "to". These were the highest numbers in the code; apparently IdiotBoy changed to using last letters on those last few words.
I did so, and IdiotBoy sent me the second paper, and I tested this with the few rules IdiotBoy had written and found that Controlling Interest gave a halfway sort of message with that:
VBEW TCE GAO& HOW BPC/WA*D OF FS TO CATE ET (3 smudges: &, /, and *)After idiotboy posted a clue pointing at that rule, reminding me of the treasure hunt, I tried interpreting this as "view the gaol how backward of us to have it" which required substituting 6 letters which were one off word away from the given number, and one that was 3 away. I viewed the gaol (and half the rest of ackanomia) and idiotboy sent me the third paper. He also commented that he skipped section numbers when doing this, and this accounted for some (not all) of the errors.
This one I had trouble with. I tried plugging in the gaol rule, as well as other rules and sufficiently long proposals IdiotBoy had written, in the same manner, and I tried the Gaol rule with last letters instead of first letters (going on the "gaol backward" thing from the last paper) and also the initial rule set (going on the fact that PFTechno and "Lucky Ball and Chain" [from the foolishness rule] had already been clues to this hunt, and the Original Rules Manuscript was the third part of the treasure). Because this one was longer and had more repeated numbers, I also tried solving it as a standard cryptogram (but one in which more than one number can stand for the same letter) and I tried substituting "treasure" for the first 8 letter word but the other 8 letter word wasn't making any sense (they were encoded as 38 22 56 51 14 74 1 13 and 38 1 25 53 13 6 1 13, so if the first is treasure, the second is tr--e-re) so I gave up for a while. Finally when IdiotBoy posted some drivel today (which I still don't know the meaning of) I went back and tried using the last *words* of the gaol rule (backward, i.e., 6 was the 6th from the last word) and this time it spelled:
THE FIRST PLA-ER TO SA- I WILL BET IB DID NOT BUR- A TREASURE SHALL FIND THIS TRASEURE
Thus my comment when I posted my "finding" message. IdiotBoy buried a traseure. :-)
IdiotBoy wrote (May 02, 1997):
There were actually several cluses which I gave, intended to put treasure seekers on the right path to solving this thing. The first is the description of the treasure. It is based on the description of the Treasure known as "Beale's Treasure", which used a similar encoding scheme. Other clues included my Foolish proposal "Mr. Beale", and my "Begin each Ackanomic line easily / 1 2 3 4 5" post. > OFFER TO GET ONE PFTECHNO FEOM SNTWGO* IT IS INTERESTING > > The E in FEOM was from the word "eir"; the T in SNTWGO* was from the > word "to". These were the highest numbers in the code; apparently > IdiotBoy changed to using last letters on those last few words. > No, apparently IdiotBoy typoed, much as he did throughout the clues in the puzzle. :-) The only other player to get paper 2 was snowgod, he made an attempt (and in fact succeeded) to buy PFTechno. I took no chances and sent him the second paper. He's probably still puzzling over it. :) > I did so, and IdiotBoy sent me the second paper, and I tested this with > the few rules IdiotBoy had written and found that Controlling Interest > gave a halfway sort of message with that: > > VBEW TCE GAO& HOW BPC/WA*D OF FS TO CATE ET (3 smudges: &, /, and *) > > After idiotboy posted a clue pointing at that rule, reminding me of the > treasure hunt, I tried interpreting this as "view the gaol how backward > of us to have it" which required substituting 6 letters which were one > off word away from the given number, and one that was 3 away. I > viewed the gaol (and half the rest of ackanomia) and idiotboy sent me the > third paper. He also commented that he skipped section numbers when > doing this, and this accounted for some (not all) of the errors. More Typo Stories. I feel less bad about this now that I know /dev/joe was using a Python program to try to extract the text. I had to encode them by hand for God's sake! > This one I had trouble with. I tried plugging in the gaol rule, as well > as other rules and sufficiently long proposals IdiotBoy had written, in > the same manner, and I tried the Gaol rule with last letters instead of > first letters (going on the "gaol backward" thing from the last paper) FWIW, I tried to encode my last message using this scheme. There weren't enough unique letters in the last letters of the words to make any kind of intelligible message. > and also the initial rule set (going on the fact that PFTechno and > "Lucky Ball and Chain" [from the foolishness rule] had already been clues > to this hunt, and the Original Rules Manuscript was the third part of the > treasure). Because this one was longer and had more repeated numbers, I FWIW, I also considered doing this. :-) > also tried solving it as a standard cryptogram (but one in which more > than one number can stand for the same letter) and I tried substituting > "treasure" for the first 8 letter word but the other 8 letter word > wasn't making any sense (they were encoded as 38 22 56 51 14 74 1 13 > and 38 1 25 53 13 6 1 13, so if the first is treasure, the second is > tr--e-re) so I gave up for a while. Finally when IdiotBoy posted some Wow, perhaps my typos paid off in slowing down the master for a few days! I'm not sure how this came to be, but it's just as well. > drivel today (which I still don't know the meaning of) I went back and Today's drivel: if you take the rule number of the Gaol rule (709) and add the Treasure number (138 or 139), you get 847 or 848. The key was going to be the x + y thing. A post was planned for tomorrow called "Why Me?" (hopefully pointing to the Y) lamenting the fact that my treasure had 2 different numbers on two different pages.