Today, we present this very special edition of the ACK financed by JT's auction bid and celebrating the completion of my thesis today and the archive of the ACK at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/2525/theack.html
Volume 1 issue 9 August 25, 1998
by /dev/joe
I put all my knowledge about a number of Acka's treasure maps here in one
place, in the hopes that (a) people will find some treasures, (b) more
people will be interested in treasures after reading this, and (c) maybe
somebody who has another bit of a solution to one of these, which I have
missed, but who still can't find the treasure, will work together with me
to find it.
Treasure 121 (buried by Red Barn on January 27, 1997; contains the trinket
Sceptre of Penguin Power worth A$75). The only clue is a long sequence
(about 1000) hexadecimal digits with a smattering of X's interspersed.
I examined it several times and threw all my common tools at it, but I
could not make any sense out of the hex digits, the X's, or the thing as
a whole.
Here is the clue:
Treasure 135 (buried by Calvin N Hobbes on March 14, 1997; contains the
trinket Alien Shaking Ball worth A$20). The clue for this one is a long
sequence of numbers, separated by (-) and (+) signs in parentheses as
they are shown here. The numbers are certainly not random; though they
vary in magnitude from 0 to over 13 billion, there is a lot of repetition
and a lot of common factors, i.e., most of the numbers have 11 as a factor,
many have 101 as well, and some have other interesting factors in the same
vein (i.e., 3*37 = 111, and 41*271 = 11111).
Here is the clue:
And here is a hint given soon afterward:
There was once a treasure buried One of Robert Sevin's web pages is at http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~mitcharf/
but it is not the page that he had when this treasure was buried.
In case anybody can make anything out of these numbers, here are the
factorizations:
Treasure 147 (buried by Habeous Corpus on May 7, 1997; contains the trinket
Wouf Houng, worth A$1). The clue for this one is a long sequence of
zeroes, ones, and twos, which I have not been able to decode.
Here is the clue:
This one is quite confounding, as there are exactly 703 digits in
the list, a number which does not factor into anything normal.
If you break it into triples, and assign them as 000=A, 001=B, etc.
you can get a 1-1 assignment into letters, and 222 is the only triple
which does not occur when they are split that way, but there is an
extra 2 left over at the end, and I have made no sense of the
resulting mess.
Treasure 169 (buried by Alfvaen on June 18, 1997; contains two trinkets
worth a total of A$55). The clue for this one is a string of 132 hex
digits. Again I have no idea what these mean, but recent messages by
Alfvaen suggest they may be somewhat Vigenere-encoded. I went through
his remaining prayers for deliverance after solving the Lucky Ball and
Chain treasure recently, and didn't find any hints for this one.
Here is the clue and the burial message:
Having buried the Exquisite Dead Guy, and finished the Tagline Attribution
Quiz, I am now burying the H****t [ed. - I can't seem to get my terminal to
enter this word correctly :-) ] Feathers and the Five Hundred Misplaced
Ackadollars--just cause I got another treasure map idea. I am revealing the
following portion of the map:
Here is the recent hint:
Treasure 178 (buried by two-star on July 19, 1997; contains the trinket
Curious Clock of Uesticlox, worth A$65, and A$2, for a total value of A$67).
The clue for this treasure is the following graphic:
Even before two-star gave clues to this effect, I realized that half the
columns in this structure consist of nothing but *'s and tromino go
symbols.
Separating these results in the following pair of grids:
I assumed that the puzzle was to reconstruct the tromino go game, and the
play of the game determined how the letters in the other grid were to be
read (either in the order pieces were played, or sorted by what letter was
on the corresponding tromino go space, etc.) However, the info provided
did not seem to be enough to uniquely fill in the grid, and the fills
I finished did not lead to any obvious meaning in the other grid. I have
since lost this grid to wilma's crash, but I will reconstruct what I can
here.
Note the tromino go rules require that each piece be played adjacent to
at least two units of edge, at least one unit of edge of an opponent's
piece, and not adjacent to any edge of the same letter, except the first
four pieces, where the first obvious has no adjacency requirement, the
second must be adjacent to it, and the third and fourth must be adjacent
to the previous piece without touching that player's own previous piece.
The fourth piece, an 'a', could touch the first piece, an 'A', and this
is the only way that could happen. Pieces are played in the sequence
A, b, C, a, B, c, repeating until 30 pieces are played (the game has not
reached that number yet -- there are 84 spaces used or 28 pieces in the
grid, so we expect to find 4 c's, 4 B's, and 5 of each other piece, if
there have been no passes). It is unlikely but possible (especially in a
specially-constructed puzzle) for a player to have no legal play on some
turn, and thus pass, skipping that piece in the sequence. A round ends
when a piece or connected group of pieces belonging to one player has no
connection to the outside edge. It is possible that the game has ended,
but if there are multiple enclosed segments, they must all have been
enclosed by a single piece, the last play made.
So first, we notice the piece which extends farthest to the left must fill
those three *'s that are farthest left, and must be an A or a because it
touches a b and a C. However, there are already parts of 5 distinct A's
in the grid, so it must be an a, unless there have been enough passes to
already create 6 A's -- 3 passes, which is implausible. The next * right
of this piece touches a complete C, a complete a or A, and a single b, so
it can only be another b.
The a piece at the lower left must be completed with the one of the two
adjacent *'s. If the upper one is used, the other * cannot be filled in.
I assume that all the *'s are meant to be filled in with tromino pieces,
since the letter grid has a letter for each of them. Also, a pair of A's
just right of center can only be completed by one nearby *, so I have
filled that in. Also, a pair of B's below and left of center can only be
completed on one *, out of 2 adjacent ones, because the other is next to
a b.
Now, the three *'s to the left and below the B tromino we just completed
must be a complete tromino - there is no other way to fill the lower-left-
most of these. It must be a c or C, and as there are already parts of 5
other C's, it is a c. This leaves only one way to complete the a and A
trominoes adjacent to this one, which leaves only one way to complete the
b adjacent to that A, and the C at the bottom, and the c above the A.
Now, the pair of b's next to the piece we marked x can be completed with
either of two *'s adjacent to it. If we fill it using the lower one, we
get a chain-reaction forcing everything to be filled as follows:
If we fill it with the top *, we get:
In one of his clues, two-star says the description of the clock is
important. That description reads "An ornate antique clock with a brass
casing, the Curious Clock's main claim to curiosity is that while the
short hour hand proceeds clockwise as normal, the larger minute hand moves
counter-clockwise. It does not have a millenium hand or an eon hand. It
does however have a small grotz counter which allows it to detect if it
has been buried; while it is buried, it is frozen showing a time that has
something to do with the map according to which it is buried. While it is
not buried it keeps perfect Ackanomic time."
JT, Alfvaen, and Vynd all have received trinkets which are supposed to
be accompanied by private clues to this treasure, but I have not seen
any of them. Probably one of those combined with my above analysis is
sufficient to decode the map, seeing as two-star claimed they were
individually enough to find the map :-).
Treasure 207 (buried by Attila the Pun on April 5th, 1998; contains the
trinket "The Mu-Cow" worth A$100). Except for those who joined more
recently than this, there is hardly anybody in Acka who hasn't figured
out the gist of this map by now, even if they haven't figured out the
code. The clue reads "di,noy s [tp[sds; ejovj trvorbrd mp URD bpyrd smf
fprd mpy gso; wipti, yp gomf yjr <i=Vpe/". This code, also used for
a couple other treasures around the same time, involves shifting your
hands by one position on a standard U.S. keyboard. Thus, it says
"sumbit [sic] a propasal [sic] which recieves no YES votes and does not
fail quorum to find the Mu-Cow."
Treasure 212 (buried by The Gingham Wearer (now Mr Tambourine Man) on May 12,
1998; contains the trinket "That quick brown fox" worth A$75). This asks
players to send TGW a minimized sequential pangram. A pangram (in generic
terms) is a sentence or other text which contains all the letters of the
alphabet. Perhaps the best known pangram is "A quick brown fox jumps over
the lazy dog," which, at 33 letters, is quite short -- the only repeated
letters are r and 6 extra vowels. Shorter yet is "The five boxing wizards
jump quickly," with 30 letters, with 4 extra vowels and no repeated
consonants. "Waltz, bud nymph, for quick jigs vex," rates just 28 letters,
repeating only the u and i, and is about the shortest possible without
using obscure words.
This treasure asks for something slightly different. The "sequential"
requirement is that the 26 letters of the alphabet appear in alphabetical
order in the sentence. Obviously this requires a few extra letters; TGW
suggested it could be done easily in 45 and with some effort in as few as
40. The rec.puzzles archive is usually an excellent source for answers to
this sort of thing, and after only a minimal amount of work on the puzzle
myself, to beat the 45 mark TGW suggested as a starting point, I looked it
up there. I found this page:
http://xraysgi.ims.uconn.edu/rpa-output/language/english/sentences/pangram.s
which had lots of pangram-related stuff, but not the answer to this puzzle.
There are many regular pangrams, and there are word lists with all letters
in alpha order, but not *sentences* with the letters in alpha order.
Incidentally, another page in the rec.puzzles archive, http://xraysgi.ims.
uconn.edu/rpa-output/language/english/self.ref/self.ref.letters.s
(paste together the lines; sorry the URL is so long) lists some solutions
for the other type of pangram referred to in an Ackanomic treasure, the
self-referential one ("This sentence contains two a's, one b, ..."). Note
that it was proven in the solution to that treasure that no pangram could
be formed in the specified form and with the given beginning part of the
sentence; with other forms or sentence beginnings it is possible.
Treasure 218 (buried by the Razor Boomerang Party on May 29, 1998; contains
the trinket A Golden Boomerang Statue worth A$50). The clue is a series of
numbers of magnitudes from 560 million to 2.06 billion. Dividing these by
256^3 gives numbers from 33 to 122, so I considered breaking each number
into 4 bytes, and interpreting the bytes as ASCII. This gives the following
(which should be read as a single string; the returns are only so this
message doesn't break people's mailers or vice versa):
This tricky cryptogram reads (approximately):
thefirstplayerwhoisnotamemberoftherazorboomerangs,andwhocorrectlypoststhea
nswertothequestion'whatistheoriginoftherazorboomerangname?'shallfindthistr
easure.theanswermustbepostedpublicallyinamessagetitled'acka:razorboomerang
excavation'andthetextofthemessagemustcontainexactlythewords'i love x 'wher
exisreplacedbytheanswertotheabovequestion.aplayerwhopostsanincorrectrespon
seisthereafterineligibletofindtherazorboomerangtreasure.
It is not immediately clear which symbols fill in the spaces in the
quotation. JT hinted to me, upon realizing how far I had gotten, that
all the same symbols were preserved, and only at this point did I
realize the form the cryptogram (solved the hard way, beginning with
finding the sequence for "razor boomerang" in the text repeatedly).
The key is an alphabet shift based on the keyboard again, but trickier
this time. The keys have been shifted to the left two keys and up one
row, wrapping around, and with a different arrangement of symbols to the
right of the letters than on a US keyboard. None of the symbols translate
to a symbol, though, so assuming the order is consistent, we can fill in
the missing symbols with ! (encoded as k) and - (encoded as l).
Thus, the message says (properly capitalized and with spaces added):
The first player who is not a member of the Razor Boomerangs, and who
correctly posts the answer to the question 'What is the origin of the
Razor Boomerang name?' shall find this treasure. The answer must be
posted publically in a message titled 'Acka: Razor Boomerang Excavation'
and the text of the message must contain exactly the words 'i-love-x!'
where x is replaced by the answer to the above question. A player who
posts an incorrect response is thereafter ineligible to find the Razor
Boomerang treasure.
I found the source of the Razor Boomerang in a web search as the game
Odyssey. I posted such, and was called wrong, probably on a
technicality. The treasure seems to have been made intentially full
of unclear technicalities to make it annoying and hard to find.
Whether the capitalization is an issue, spaces are meant to be added
to the quotation or put in place of the -'s which appear nowhere else
in the code, the quotation marks are supposed to be included in the
text of the message, etc. is unclear. My message said I-love-Odyssey!
so try some other combination of the answers to the above questions.
Some other treasures are not listed; this means I can't provide any more
info than what is already publicly known and listed on the treasure
harfer's page, except for the Jukkasjarvi treasure, my treasure with the
antiquities in it, and the treasure with my gold bars in it, which are
omitted intentionally. A couple puzzle-like treasures (the Flora Amanita
and two-star's soot-covered tome are the prime examples) are included in
the ones I have no help to offer on.
200029D3BEC1C7CE41433220B4BD571B4AD65756X1B176EB741286470A2F57F1618
DCE6DEED6B84EA1B4F903A5C4A4CE1D743E07A0A19F6F563F090BCCD5B0771253FD
8E43D6DA970E48A1CF5E84C31A916D7E82075B3F0C0D3BE49E12019C6B7C175EC18
1912DC97477DEX55C6229560XB8541EFD7BEDX0FE57C68223FD233B433A4AAED7F4
2CBD25BC8186B6CDCB3F00835CA0D894A726DA096E02AA947E21FB7007A21FDD11E
C5BF44B1F4969B05EEA16967EE3D4A694FE6DF8EF3C532XE30F9C610314EC8412D1
C42X3527BCD5270C8A566173A28C3E38B91DXA42BE935D0806A7079B4FEBB5831A2
4EXB276EB291C5452E786F2AB6E5E8365CFD1AF05178AFC6A21B5CFE288D19B778C
1A8C82FAE80D457C9BA2D79B1XEB97615D29B44D004A8XE7D31F9XDFBBF34906415
07CXE13B31B00334E0EAE08B350DCD54C08C64XB9CB6A2971BFF06331A50937F00D
37A4C95DXFDB9AX66BAX97656FA0089CEE54076B8B4F5C87E207E06X60994E0612A
X2DE415AA9317A9FA97B7EBACC5E297DF6AF59EF72576479C7ECCXC22F512F45197
D6778EEEE0304E5F36B4B247B3299AB6038E706ECF63AC392611DX545E969267F99
D07EAFC1D7A3DAB83032755F50E34B21975173C36FEC672A5567E2EX8420548B585
40EDA1E9B91E7A55092585C367C8F2E6DEFFE816FE7B7EA09E0C97B736EA941EFA5
1332243(-)831105(+)9509148(+)0(-)17928207(+)1(-)1(+)1332243(+)2(-)4(+)1(-)1(
+)8(-)9509148(+)4444(-)8888(+)88211178(-)8888(-)154(+)17928207(-)88211178(+)
17776(-)8888(+)2222(-)77(+)855547(-)17928207(+)1111(+)4444(-)88211178(+)1(-)
1(+)4(+)831105(-)1111(+)8(-)605(-)16(+)88211178(-)16(-)831105(+)88211178(-)1
7928207(+)4444(-)1(-)4444(+)1111(+)16(-)855547(+)1(-)1(+)1332243(+)16(-)1792
8207(+)2222(-)4(-)77(-)4(+)8(+)4444(+)4(+)4(-)605(-)17776(+)1(+)1(+)855547(+
)77(-)1(-)88211178(+)1332243(+)16(-)17928207(+)2222(-)4(-)77(+)1111(+)17776(
-)13634115363(+)175322466(-)154(-)4(+)4(+)1(+)605(-)839546037(+)1(+)2222(-)1
54(-)16(+)88211178(-)8888(+)1(+)16(-)154(+)8888(-)17928207
With a map to it both silly and rabid,
That without Robert Sevin's webpage,
And fourteen squared that's not an age
>From almighty one we must start
With lonely zero on his own, apart,
Perhaps the lucky one will see
Differences in numbers to his glee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A68FAEE67C947AC3E5E6DADFBFE089582EDC8E85F127
36BDB4B3D8BBF30EAECA958602ED481195E25D2786C9
*G
*e*L*OCo
CA clcNAECf*T
CHCiAS*c*tAo*Eba*HAy
*E*c*f*tAEBDBhcI*NAE*E
*rbE*o*GaE*nce*D*T*W
*TCR*iad*rASAc*c
aoaSBs*rbubNCECB
*t*uBIcQce*r*k
aH*N*aAA*ebLaLaT
aA*tBAAE bw*U*V
BUBg CACi
$ _
* G
***C eLOo
C ccAC* A lNEfT
CCA**A*b*A HiSctoEaHy
****ABBc*A* EcftEDhINEE
*b**a*c*** rEoGEneDTW
*C*a*AA* TRidrScc
aaB*bbCC oSsruNEB
**Bcc** tuIQerk
a**A*baa HNaAeLLT
a*BA b** AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
$_
* G
***C eLOo
C ccAC* A lNEfT
CCA**A*b*A HiSctoEaHy
aab*ABBc*A* EcftEDhINEE
ab**a*c*** rEoGEneDTW
*C*a*AA* TRidrScc
aaB*bbCC oSsruNEB
**Bcc** tuIQerk
a**A*baa HNaAeLLT
a*BA b** AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
* G
***C eLOo
C ccAC* A lNEfT
CCA**A*b*A HiSctoEaHy
aab*ABBc*A* EcftEDhINEE
ab**a*cA** rEoGEneDTW
*C*a*AA* TRidrScc
aaB*bbCC oSsruNEB
*BBcc** tuIQerk
a**A*baa HNaAeLLT
aaBA b** AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
* G
***C eLOo
C ccAC* A lNEfT
CCA**A*b*A HiSctoEaHy
aab*ABBc*A* EcftEDhINEE
ab**a*cA** rEoGEneDTW
aC*a*AA* TRidrScc
aaBcbbCC oSsruNEB
cBBcc** tuIQerk
accAAbaa HNaAeLLT
aaBA bbC AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
B G
BBCC eLOo
C ccACb A lNEfT
CCAcBAAbbA HiSctoEaHy
aabAABBccAA EcftEDhINEE
abbCaacAbb rEoGEneDTW
aCCabAAb TRidrScc
aaBcbbCC oSsruNEB
cBBccaC tuIQerk
accAAbaa HNaAeLLT
aaBA bbC AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
B G
cBBC eLOo
C ccACC A lNEfT
CCAABAAbbA HiSctoEaHy
aabbABBcbAA EcftEDhINEE
abCCaccAbb rEoGEneDTW
aCaabAAb TRidrScc
aaBcbbCC oSsruNEB
cBBccaC tuIQerk
accAAbaa HNaAeLLT
aaBA bbC AtAE wUV
BB CC Ug Ai
crzwnx-c,u!vzx?rmn-fmc!gzgdzxmwcrzx!pmxdmmgzx!fe-h!fq?rmamxxzacuv,m-c-crz!
f-?zxcmcrz'bz-cnmfi?r!cn-crzmxnenfmwcrzx!pmxdmmgzx!fef!gzoi-r!uuwnfqcrn-cx
z!-bxzjcrz!f-?zxgb-cdz,m-czq,bduna!uuvnf!gz--!ezcncuzqi!ay!.x!pmxdmmgzx!fe
z:a!s!cnmfi!fqcrzcz:cmwcrzgz--!ezgb-camfc!nfz:!acuvcrz?mxq-inlumszl:ki?rzx
z:n-xz,u!azqdvcrz!f-?zxcmcrz!dmsz'bz-cnmfj!,u!vzx?rm,m-c-!fnfamxxzacxz-,mf
-zn-crzxz!wczxnfzunenduzcmwnfqcrzx!pmxdmmgzx!fecxz!-bxzj
code: qwertyuiop:asdfghjkl'?zxcvbnm,.!-
real: dfghjkl'?zxcvbnm,.!-qwertyuiop:as