User:Lhall/Research

When adding information, facts and speculation, please add clear sources/references if possible; the code may be found here.

Make a list, muffin, and then pare it down to only the things you have to do. Save the ones you want to do, for now. Don't worry, you'll have a lot of free time coming to you before long. -- Madame Bianca

I’ve given you all you need to begin. Be simple. Start by answering the obvious questions. Everything leads on from the answers you already have. -- Combed Thunderclap, emphasis added

Five fingers

• Discuss ideas on the "Five Fingers message" from card #223

• Five fingers point half the world realm region feature last mystery
  • Believed to refer to five meta puzzles that we have received from Combed Thunderclap. -Mindez
  • Any other alternatives? -Mindez
  • It is believed that we need to solve them in order, and we may not be able to solve the one after it unless we solve the one before it, unless by some luck -Mindez
  • To this end, I feel we should focus our attention on the "Half The World" clue. -Mindez

• Half The World
  • North, South, West, East hemisphere? -Mindez
  • Perhaps a clue lies in the other joker card, Persian. -Mindez
  • The Persian creation myth apparently states that the land was divided when the rain came into 7 areas, the largest of which was one-half of the world - called Khvaniras, Khvanirath or Hvaniratha. -Mindez
  • Source: http://www.art-arena.com/cotw.htm -Mindez
  • The text on Roaming Identity (otpaaworldtdnia 1.59.27) is believed to have something to do with the Half The World clue. -Mindez
  • Could it be as obvious as the diagram on Ecliptic? - scribe
  • Alternatively, the risk battles (below) represent one side vs another. Could this indicate one half 'vs' another half, with the victor being the half where the cube is? - scribe

• Realm

• Region

• Feature

• Last Mystery
  • Endgame? Cube? Or perhaps, one final clue to lead us to it. -Mindez

Number Strings

• Is Combed Thunderclap giving us a clue in 'The arrangements have been made'?
  • A grid of letters (or words), or several layered grids even? - "the words on words arranged on other words"
    • Possible Grids:
      • The table of cards used on the PXC site
      • The prime number cards arranged as per the original Combed Thunderclap message
      • The grid of letters spelling out gemstones on 'Going Dotty'
  • N.B. 'Arrangements' are mentioned in 'To begin' as well: "It all begins with the arrangement of things"

Risk Battle

• See Puzzle card symbols for details.
• See Risk rules at Wikipedia.
• According to the Wikipedia article, 1 cavalry = 5 infantry. This means, based on the troops appearing on the cards and the dice results, that we can work out the order in which the 3 fights occur:

1. 1 Cavalry, then defender wins twice (Card 060). 5 - 2 = 3 left. (Defender loses 0, has 3 left.)
2. 3 infantry, then both sides lose an army (Card 090). 3 - 1 = 2 left. (Defender loses 1, has 2 left.)
3. 2 infantry, then attacker wins twice (Card 040). (Defender loses 2, has 0 left.)

• Problems with this:
  • IIRC, If an attacker attacks with 2 infantry present in a region, they can only roll 1 die. Similarly, 3 infantry = 2 dice. (As one has to stay behind.)

Roaming Identity

• otpaaworldtdnia 1.59.27

• I've been thinking about this, and I suddenly thought of CT's quote, Worlds within worlds (Or something to that effect). We need to think of worlds within worlds. And in this piece of text, we have a 'world'. Could it be in another world? Could otpaatdnia be a world? - Mindez

• If so, could Half the world imply some kind of anagram consisting of half of the letters? I can't make anything of it, and I have no idea how to tie the numbers in. -Mindez

• If you take the 1, 5, 9, 2, and 7th letters, it reads o.ai.td, with patna left over. -Mindez

Casle Castle

Says Scribe...

Re-examining this after reading 'The Wonderful O' by James Thurber, as mentioned in one of Combed Thunderclap's messages. In the book, a castle appears which is supposed to contain gemstones. Also in the story, everything with the letter 'o' in gets banned. While not quite the same, I wondered if 'Casle' might be lacking the letter O (or more than one?).

• Casole (d'Elsa) Castle.
• Might be being turned into a Posh housing place now.

• However, can't think of any reason why we'd go down this missing-O route, except after CT brought it up. So probably nothing.
• Castles seem to appear quite a bit in recent cards though (Elephant & Castle, Castle in the Sky, etc), so maybe there's something going on there?