snowgod wrote (Dec 13, 1996):
[ackabt31.txt, which cannot be rendered in HTML]
/dev/joe wrote (Dec 14, 1996):
Actually, I am already hot on the trail of the no tea, but I have to wait for something else to happen before I can find it. In any case, I am carrying my Exquisite Dead Guy home with me now, and displaying him in a window of /dev/house.
Mohammed wrote (Dec 14, 1996):
> I thought I had it, but
[garbage snipped]
> Means nothing to me!This looks like it might be a bit of code, but it is
> too garbled up for me to translate! Wanna give me a hint?
Got the documentation for uudecode? Sure you do. Look up the -please option. That should help.
Mohammed wrote (Jan 12, 1997):
The map was just as I wrote it in my original message (quoted below). The message looked a lot like a uuencoded file of some type... but in fact, the trick was to ignore the Ms at the beginning of every line and everything else that was not a letter. This leaves
helloworldsubmitaproposalco ntainingthenamemohammed andthetwosecretwords thesecretwordsarean tonymsobtainedbytakin ganantonymofseldoma ndathreeprongedwo rdandthenaddingthesamel ettertothebeginningofbo ththosewordsthe treasurewillbefoundbyt heauthorofsuc haproposalwheniv oteforittillthenshhhh hhqzOr, a little more cleanly:
Hello, world! Submit a proposal containing the name Mohammed and the two secret words. The secret words are antonyms obtained by taking an antonym of seldom and a three pronged word, and then adding the same letter to the beginning of both those words. The treasure will be found by the author of such a proposal when i vote for it. Till then, shhhhh.
The qz at the end were meaningless.
There were two early tries at this map (the magic words are 'soft' and 'strident') but I didn't like either one, so I voted NO on them. What I really wanted was a *fun* proposal... but settling for what I could get, I voted YES on Proposal 1616 and /dev/joe thus found the Treasure.