Secret Location Meta Information Solution

PERPLEX CITY, SEASON ONE The search for the Receda Cube on Earth

The Meta Data

The card Season 1 Card #223 - Secret Location has a list of numbers printed on it in a faint yellow ink, these numbers are not related to the other numbers in the wave 4 meta information. They form an encoded message that is a clue to the location of the Cube.

Combed Thunderclap's Example

In Combed Thunderclap's Library of Babel update on 30th October 2006 we were given a method of decoding a string of numbers using a series of book titles and their authors.

The update gave the following books:

Hamlet- William Shakespeare The Wonderful O - James Thurber The Library of Babel - Jorge Luis Borges History of the Land Called Uqbar - Silas Haslam Papillon - Henri Charriere Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to you my Lad - Montague Rhodes James

If you remove all spaces and punctuation, you get the grid given by Combed Thunderclap:

HamletWilliamShakespeareThewonderfulOJamesThurberT
helibraryofbabelJorgeLuisBorgesHistoryofthelandcal
ledUqbarSilasHaslamPapillonHenriCharriereOhwhistle
andIllcometoyoumyladMontagueRhodesJames

Counting the characters and picking the ones given by the numbers gives:

N(127) O(77) W(28) B(64) E(160) G(176) I(11) N(30)

ie:

Now Begin

Using the Example to Solve the Secret Location puzzle

The solution to Season 1 Card #223 - Secret Location gives you five books and their authors. Using the full names of the authors, you can generate a grid as in the example.

NOTE: The correct names for the books and authors, which are the answers to the puzzle card, can be found in the thread on Perplexorum, and are not posted here so as to avoid spoiling the puzzle card for those that have not solved it.

If you have the correct names for the authors, the message decodes as:

Five fingers point half the world realm region feature last mystery

It is believed this is 5 pieces of information which point to the location of the cube, like so:

• Hemisphere (North, South, East, West, and so on.)
• Country, or Continent (it is unclear what constitutes a "realm" in CT's mind)
• Area, Town, District, Hamlet, Village, or the like.
• Specific place within that town (near a statue, under a rock, in a box, beside a building, that sort of thing)
• A key clue as to the ultimate whereabouts and means of discover of the cube.

It is reasonable to guess the Cube is in the Northern Hemisphere. Sente Kiteway said, at the San Francisco Event, The Third Power sent agents to North America [1] and presumably they have come looking for the cube. This narrows the options considerably, but is neither conclusive nor especially indicative of one location over another.