Thanks to whoever noted Ra making an L on the End of Days cover---as soon as ASL got brought up, it all clicked thanks to him.
I checked, and I don't immediately see reliable signs in all of the non-cover art---there are some I could infer, but I don't think they all do, so I imagine just the covers. So now it's just finding out what SENTINELS means here for the 9x9 grid. I have to run for several hours, so good luck all!
Edit: In case anyone is double-checking my ASL---S is fist with thumb in front (Dark Vis/Skyscraper), E is fist with thumb below (Wraith/Ermine), N is fist with thumb between middle/ring (Harpy/Chokepoint), T is like N but thumb between pointer/middle (Unity), I is fist with pinky up (Argent), L is L (Ra)
Yeah, it seems like your first page/back cover comparison is right. If someone has the link to the rulebook PDF handy, could they repost it? It's buried pretty far back in the thread by now, and I closed the tab after it seemed we were done with it.
I reposted it to the "Summaries" topic yesterday for exactly this reason!
New tweet... "Hands Talk" Sign language of some sort?
There is an ASL letter on every cover! Getting them now, ASL is one of my things.Edit: It actually spells out the word SENTINELS in order. That's not a working url for us right now, though, so it must be part of a cipher we have to run, something like that? I know some ciphers do the substitution based on a word, so maybe our substitution is SENTILABCDFG....?
Yeah, I thought Argent's pinky-up was suspicious, good find!
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
I was so excited, I thought I had a great idea. Back cover reminded me we never got anything out of the Lorem Ipsum from the back cover of the original comic, but if nothing was to come of it, why not just leave the old letters? I started using the numbers revealed so far and got about as 6 letters in before I realized I had only nonsense. I don't think the next message starts with "PSOTCS."
@Trajector : my hypothesis is that it means "take the central letter in each 3*3 part of the grid". The problem is building the grid : it gives nothing with the cover list, nor the cover names rearranged with a transposition based on SENTINELS as a key. I will try a substitution, but it's been a long time I haven't played with ciphers and don't remeber much about other codes. And may be wrong with my hypothesis !
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
@Trajector : my hypothesis is that it means "take the central letter in each 3*3 part of the grid". The problem is building the grid : it gives nothing with the cover list, nor the cover names rearranged with a transposition based on SENTINELS as a key. I will try a substitution, but it's been a long time I haven't played with ciphers and don't remeber much about other codes. And may be wrong with my hypothesis !
Clever idea about using the middle pip as a grille. It would mean we'd only be drawing from the 2nd, 5th, and 8th lines, though, which (at first glance) would make many of the answers superfluous---unless we had to manipulate the grid first in a way that still required all answers.
Tried URLs with Sentinels letter-shifted once in either direction, given the one missing pip, that didn't work. Tried looking at how many times the letters in Sentinels appear across all answers, I think it was 386686833, neither that nor CHFFHFHCC was a working URL either.
I was so hoping to have been done. But more puzzles means more story, and I can't very well turn that down now!The nine covers, for reference have been:
These line up to the Xs, but how to use them. The left image is named First, and the right is named Back, but I have no clue where to go from there. I think our next clue might still be numbers, as we've generally gotten a comic scene between covers.
Don't know if i'm alone here, but "time v time" just doesn't mean anything to me... time VS time maybe, but only "v"...? If it is any indication, i've noticed that this "v" is positionned exactly at the center of the matrix (or grille?). Also, V is 5 in roman numbers... This position, if I remember correctly is also where the ID of the Scholar was found in the source code of the "itscoming" URL... Also... Anyone finds it strange that both "beginning" and "itscoming" leads to the same page?
Perhaps sign language that led to "SENTINELS" was there to point to the word Sentinels in the rulebook (with the letters NINES shadowed). It appears to me that we might have found the clues in the rulebook a little earlier than anticipated...?
I'm looking at the scan of the Villains rulebook, but don't have the other rules handy. Do they all have the company name in the format "greater/than/games" with the slashes like that at the bottom of the back cover?
Edit - nevermind, found the downloadable Enhanced Edition rules and it does the same thing.
Perhaps sign language that led to "SENTINELS" was there to point to the word Sentinels in the rulebook (with the letters NINES shadowed). It appears to me that we might have found the clues in the rulebook a little earlier than anticipated...?
The NINES thing was mentioned pretty early on. I think that was one of the hints telling us everything would be nine letters and such. So I'm not sure if it is applicable here.
It looks like we have to tie the 9 cover names with Sentinels (from the sign language) but I'm not sure how one would go about doing that.
Maybe just my imagination, but isn't biomancer's hand position a little strange on the VotM rulebook? Another sign language maybe? I checked and it doesn't look like it's a letter...
Could there be another clue on the "itscoming" page? That would be the "first page" we found and the url matches the title of this new page. Also, an alternate url for that first page was "beginning" and the last cover was the "end of the beginning."
Well, every one of the cover names has at least three of the letters from SENTINELS in it. The distribution's not proportional, though. So that may just be a red herring. (They are kind of common letters)
Could someone who has the Villains rulebook please verify that the same letters of SENTINELS are shadowed one the first page and on the backcover, please ?
They seem different on the PDF that has been uploaded, but I can't see well enough to be sure (I am not even sure if they all are shadowed or not).
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
Could someone who has the Villains rulebook please verify that the same letters of SENTINELS are shadowed one the first page and on the backcover, please ?They seem different on the PDF that has been uploaded, but I can't see well enough to be sure (I am not even sure if they all are shadowed or not).
All of the letters are shadowed on the back cover.
Edit: Ninja'd =[ The amount of times this happens, it seems we should have an emoticon or something...
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Well, every one of the cover names has at least three of the letters from SENTINELS in it. The distribution's not proportional, though.
Counting the number of times the letters in Sentinels occurred in each of those nine titles and putting the results into a nine-digit number, I got 435463535, but this did not lead anywhere.
I feel like we need to use the 9x9 grid somehow too. Or maybe it is just there to show us to use the 9 comic names? I feel like there would've been a better way to portray that unless they purposely want us to use the grid.
Just a small thing I noticed: With Scion's Aid saying to 'play along, even without necessary information' and the lack of barcode, I opened up the image in paint and filled in the bar code area and found six distinct pips on the right side, much like those of a die. If people have more useful hardware (beyond Paint), maybe this is a thing? Or, it could also just be...something.
Just in case anyone's wondering, I tried counting the number of each letter in "Sentinels" in all the comic titles, and got 497787934 and got nothing. So, putting all the letters in the titles together, there are 4 total S, 9 Es, and so on.
Steam Username: General Specific
You gotta know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to hold fast And when to turn loose!
What I find really intresting in the grid; is that you can find all of the letters in sentinels in thier correct column. Except the T E L. which mostly matches the STEL from the shadowing.
Wait, I looked at the genocidal page cover, and there was fire that spelled out "It's Coming"Was that always there? Did I just overlook it, or is that new?
been there the whole time that I'm aware of.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
I'm not sure which number clues I should be using for a 9x9 grid. One list gave these: 982354617, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 139724865, 122114115, 12233445. But that's only eight. And another gave these: 716453289, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 918273645, 139724865, 122114115, 112233445.
Just a small thing I noticed: With Scion's Aid saying to 'play along, even without necessary information' and the lack of barcode, I opened up the image in paint and filled in the bar code area and found six distinct pips on the right side, much like those of a die. If people have more useful hardware (beyond Paint), maybe this is a thing? Or, it could also just be...something.
No, it's there, holy cow. Its screwy, because they're not contiguous pixels, so at first my fill(on GIMP) didn't pick it up, but when i tried a fuzzy select, there they were!
EDIT: put image in link
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Just a small thing I noticed: With Scion's Aid saying to 'play along, even without necessary information' and the lack of barcode, I opened up the image in paint and filled in the bar code area and found six distinct pips on the right side, much like those of a die. If people have more useful hardware (beyond Paint), maybe this is a thing? Or, it could also just be...something.
I messed with the contrast and see what you mean. They don't seem significant, just pixel garbage.
Even if it is significant, I doubt it is for the current puzzle as I think it the answer is related more to an overview of each of the pages, not detail like this. If it does lead to something, its probably like an easter egg of some sort like America's Cleverest Legacy.
I'm not sure which number clues I should be using for a 9x9 grid. One list gave these: 982354617, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 139724865, 122114115, 12233445. But that's only eight. And another gave these: 716453289, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 918273645, 139724865, 122114115, 112233445.
The first number of the second set doesn't seem to work, so I would say these are the nine:
982354617
421234220
100263350
201128190
157784760
918273645
139724865
122114115
112233445
444455555
Is this the correct order?
The font of the text "It's Coming" seems to suggest to me overlaying two things, e.g. the letter and number clues.
edit: Added a 1 in front of the last number
edit2: Added 444455555 to the end of the list. Unfortunately this makes 10 numbers, so if they were to go into a grid which to pick?
I'm honestly surprised we didn't run into a Parse promo, especially when we were required to look at the source code during the Wager Master comic riddle.
Steam Username: General Specific
You gotta know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to hold fast And when to turn loose!
I think this is right. Those are the numbers that lead to "pages," and obviously we have nine words/phrases that lead to covers. The clue is somewhere in the combination of those numbers and letters, and I think the two dice are meant to be the key to extracting the clue.
Thanks to whoever noted Ra making an L on the End of Days cover---as soon as ASL got brought up, it all clicked thanks to him.
I checked, and I don't immediately see reliable signs in all of the non-cover art---there are some I could infer, but I don't think they all do, so I imagine just the covers. So now it's just finding out what SENTINELS means here for the 9x9 grid. I have to run for several hours, so good luck all!
Edit: In case anyone is double-checking my ASL---S is fist with thumb in front (Dark Vis/Skyscraper), E is fist with thumb below (Wraith/Ermine), N is fist with thumb between middle/ring (Harpy/Chokepoint), T is like N but thumb between pointer/middle (Unity), I is fist with pinky up (Argent), L is L (Ra)
Check out Unity on the Omnitron-U cover! That's a "T!"
Visionary on genocidal - "s"
Agent Adept on Time VTime - "i"
Chokepoint on FtAdamant - "N"
Yeah, I thought Argent's pinky-up was suspicious, good find!
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Gah, the Scion's Aid page even says "The signs were decoded," so it was pointing us to the ASL now that everything was done. Clever/sneaky puzzlers.
Trajector---it's SENTINELS
Yeah, seems to be. How to connect to the 4/5, though?
I was so excited, I thought I had a great idea. Back cover reminded me we never got anything out of the Lorem Ipsum from the back cover of the original comic, but if nothing was to come of it, why not just leave the old letters? I started using the numbers revealed so far and got about as 6 letters in before I realized I had only nonsense. I don't think the next message starts with "PSOTCS."
Oh well.
@Trajector : my hypothesis is that it means "take the central letter in each 3*3 part of the grid". The problem is building the grid : it gives nothing with the cover list, nor the cover names rearranged with a transposition based on SENTINELS as a key. I will try a substitution, but it's been a long time I haven't played with ciphers and don't remeber much about other codes. And may be wrong with my hypothesis !
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
Here are some thoughts about making a grille out of the X grid:
- We could index the rows and columns by the word "SENTINELS"
- The pattern of dots on a die showing 4 or 5 could form a grille
Tried URLs with Sentinels letter-shifted once in either direction, given the one missing pip, that didn't work. Tried looking at how many times the letters in Sentinels appear across all answers, I think it was 386686833, neither that nor CHFFHFHCC was a working URL either.
Don't know if i'm alone here, but "time v time" just doesn't mean anything to me... time VS time maybe, but only "v"...? If it is any indication, i've noticed that this "v" is positionned exactly at the center of the matrix (or grille?). Also, V is 5 in roman numbers... This position, if I remember correctly is also where the ID of the Scholar was found in the source code of the "itscoming" URL... Also... Anyone finds it strange that both "beginning" and "itscoming" leads to the same page?
pitching ideas as usual...!
MrLeRobot...
I've often seen "vs." and "v." used to mean the same thing, so not sure there's much to that. Besides, they had to stay at 9 chars.
While FreedomeGunfire is correct, I like where you're going, MrLeRobot!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Hey, if the "v." means the two Prime Warden teams have to engage in a lengthy litigation over the rights to their name, I'd definitely read that book.
Not helpful at all, but the "timevtime" makes me think of that old Cyndi Lauper song.
In Re Prime Wardens
Who would be their lawyers?
"Quintessential Tactics Experience: Arguing Over Range" - Worlds Tournament 2015
What if the nine 9-word clues arrange in the x grid in such a way that they spell out nine new words/phrases when read top-to-bottom?
Perhaps sign language that led to "SENTINELS" was there to point to the word Sentinels in the rulebook (with the letters NINES shadowed). It appears to me that we might have found the clues in the rulebook a little earlier than anticipated...?
MrLeRobot...
I'm looking at the scan of the Villains rulebook, but don't have the other rules handy. Do they all have the company name in the format "greater/than/games" with the slashes like that at the bottom of the back cover?
Edit - nevermind, found the downloadable Enhanced Edition rules and it does the same thing.
The NINES thing was mentioned pretty early on. I think that was one of the hints telling us everything would be nine letters and such. So I'm not sure if it is applicable here.
It looks like we have to tie the 9 cover names with Sentinels (from the sign language) but I'm not sure how one would go about doing that.
Maybe just my imagination, but isn't biomancer's hand position a little strange on the VotM rulebook? Another sign language maybe? I checked and it doesn't look like it's a letter...
MrLeRobot...
Could there be another clue on the "itscoming" page? That would be the "first page" we found and the url matches the title of this new page. Also, an alternate url for that first page was "beginning" and the last cover was the "end of the beginning."
Awww man, I want a Super-Lawyer in this universe now. the advocate? the legal beagle?
"Good thing Parsons have been puzzlers for generations!"
Well, every one of the cover names has at least three of the letters from SENTINELS in it. The distribution's not proportional, though. So that may just be a red herring. (They are kind of common letters)
gENocIdaL
harbINgEr
oddaLLIES
omNITroNu
TImEvTImE
fTadamaNT
bEThEgaTE
ENdofdayS
ScIoNSaId
Could someone who has the Villains rulebook please verify that the same letters of SENTINELS are shadowed one the first page and on the backcover, please ?
They seem different on the PDF that has been uploaded, but I can't see well enough to be sure (I am not even sure if they all are shadowed or not).
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
All letters are shadowed on the back cover
MrLeRobot...
All of the letters are shadowed on the back cover.
Edit: Ninja'd =[ The amount of times this happens, it seems we should have an emoticon or something...
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
Thanks ! so the difference is SETL... Now is it linked to the other difference, the missing dot ?
I need to rest. I think I will play a game or two...
Any view of things that is not strange is false - Neil Gaiman
Counting the number of times the letters in Sentinels occurred in each of those nine titles and putting the results into a nine-digit number, I got 435463535, but this did not lead anywhere.
I feel like we need to use the 9x9 grid somehow too. Or maybe it is just there to show us to use the 9 comic names? I feel like there would've been a better way to portray that unless they purposely want us to use the grid.
Like this?
Estelindis can you do a similar thing with the number clues?
I was scratching out that configuration at my desk, too. I'm not sure what meaning to glean from it, though.
Edit: that was to Estelindis
I'm on my phone, but could someone try arranging the words so that sentinels reads on the diagonal. If the way is unique, seems like a good way to go.
I noticed there's only one word starting with S and one ending with 's.
Edit: never mind, there's no L in the right position.
Just a small thing I noticed: With Scion's Aid saying to 'play along, even without necessary information' and the lack of barcode, I opened up the image in paint and filled in the bar code area and found six distinct pips on the right side, much like those of a die. If people have more useful hardware (beyond Paint), maybe this is a thing? Or, it could also just be...something.
I fall up the stairs.
"Right, Left, Right, Left! Chu! Chu! Chu!
Just in case anyone's wondering, I tried counting the number of each letter in "Sentinels" in all the comic titles, and got 497787934 and got nothing. So, putting all the letters in the titles together, there are 4 total S, 9 Es, and so on.
Steam Username: General Specific
You gotta know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em,
Know when to hold fast
And when to turn loose!
What I find really intresting in the grid; is that you can find all of the letters in sentinels in thier correct column. Except the T E L. which mostly matches the STEL from the shadowing.
Wait, I looked at the genocidal page cover, and there was fire that spelled out "It's Coming"
Was that always there? Did I just overlook it, or is that new?
"A delayed game is eventually good. A rushed game is bad forever"
-Shigeru Miyamoto
been there the whole time that I'm aware of.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Not going to work. There aren't any words with T as the 4th letter.
I'm not sure which number clues I should be using for a 9x9 grid. One list gave these: 982354617, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 139724865, 122114115, 12233445. But that's only eight. And another gave these: 716453289, 421234220, 100263350, 201128190, 157784760, 918273645, 139724865, 122114115, 112233445.
No, it's there, holy cow. Its screwy, because they're not contiguous pixels, so at first my fill(on GIMP) didn't pick it up, but when i tried a fuzzy select, there they were!
EDIT: put image in link
"But dice are dice, and Dice are Fickle"
Internet Pseudonyms: PseudonymTwitch, PseudonymTweetr, PseudonymGamer
I messed with the contrast and see what you mean. They don't seem significant, just pixel garbage.
Steam Username: General Specific
You gotta know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em,
Know when to hold fast
And when to turn loose!
Even if it is significant, I doubt it is for the current puzzle as I think it the answer is related more to an overview of each of the pages, not detail like this. If it does lead to something, its probably like an easter egg of some sort like America's Cleverest Legacy.
The first number of the second set doesn't seem to work, so I would say these are the nine:
982354617
421234220
100263350
201128190
157784760
918273645
139724865
122114115
112233445
444455555
Is this the correct order?
The font of the text "It's Coming" seems to suggest to me overlaying two things, e.g. the letter and number clues.
edit: Added a 1 in front of the last number
edit2: Added 444455555 to the end of the list. Unfortunately this makes 10 numbers, so if they were to go into a grid which to pick?
Might be relevant, but the last URL is 444455555
4 fours and 5 fives.
The dice logo in the rulebooks show a 4 and a 5...
MrLeRobot...
I'm honestly surprised we didn't run into a Parse promo, especially when we were required to look at the source code during the Wager Master comic riddle.
Steam Username: General Specific
You gotta know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em,
Know when to hold fast
And when to turn loose!
I think this is right. Those are the numbers that lead to "pages," and obviously we have nine words/phrases that lead to covers. The clue is somewhere in the combination of those numbers and letters, and I think the two dice are meant to be the key to extracting the clue.
Pages