Monday, February 27, 2012

The Original Ten

The first ten cards we connected to the clocks were somewhat different from the correct ten cards. But, that doesn't mean there isn't a logical explanation about how to do so. I will do my best to show you that there were 7 others cards that could logically be connected to 7 of the times. It doesn't matter anymore, because the last word on those cards didn't lead you to a website. But, it does show you that we were connecting cards to clocks before connecting clocks to cards was cool!

1:11
Correct Card: Pablo Sandoval (Card #111 Base Set) led to Giant Panda (recovery)
Incorrect Card: Kaspar Hauser (Volume 111 of Journal of Medicine)

Kaspar Hauser is one of those mysterious figures that, unless you ever had to write a paper on him, you would likely have never heard of. Kaspar was rumored to be royalty and was stabbed at a young age after spending a long time locked up. The interesting connection with Hauser is his mirror writing. It was completely logical in my mind for Kaspar Hauser to be the Keeper of the Code. Mirrors played a role this year in the code and Hauser was a mirror code writer, seems logical to me. Plus, if you look in volume 111 of some journal of medicine you will find reference to a disorder that involves people like Hauser.


1:14
Correct Card: Thomas Dewey (114 "Margin" Loss to Harry Truman in 1946 election)
Incorrect Card: Fulcanelli

Fulcanelli was an alchemist and was rumored to have lived to be 114 years old. The most mysterious piece of the 114 years is that it was the last time he was seen by one of his students, not necessarily to recorded death. It is widely known in the alchemist world that 114 is associated with Fulcanelli. I think a few folks had this same connection.

1:19
Correct Card: The Poe Toaster (Edgar Allen Poe's Birthday 1/19)

This one we had from the start. I was intrigued by The Poe Toaster's story and it is disappointing that he doesn't visit the grave site any longer to "toast" Poe on his birthday. This was a pretty easy connection using the Rollins clue about confusing the day for the hour and the hour for the day.

2:21
Correct Card: Dr. Watson (Address of Sherlock Holmes was 221B)
Incorrect Card: (220) The Man in the Iron Mask

I know a lot of you had the same issue with this time as we did. Many of us were convinced for months that it was 2:20 and not 2:21. We made the connection to MIIM through the length of the famous Bastaille prison in France (220ft) where he was held captive. Also, the banquet hall that is there now seats 220. I know this one is kind of a stretch, but when you are convinced all ten cards come from the same subset you will make the connections you think work best for those ten cards.

3:14
Correct Card: Archimedes (pi 3.14)
Incorrect Card: Count of St. Germaine

Prior to thinking the cards were all part of the WMMF subset I had Archimedes as my connection to 3:14, but I abandoned that when I fealt the subset was the entire 10 cards.

This one is still the one I was most convinced of. St. Germaine was the inspiration for the "I Am" church. This is also when I thought the lines of the poem lined up with their respective lines in the poem. 3:14 lined up with "Now you stand at the First Point of Aries". The first point of Aries is actually in Pisces, but more importantly it is nicknamed the "I Am" constellation. Pretty deep connection and I think you can see why I was convinced he was correct at the time.

3:15
Correct Card: The Amityville Haunting (3:15 was the "time" the father got up every morning and went out to the boat house)
Incorrect Card: The Babushka Lady (Frame 315 of the Zapruder Film is when Kennedy isfatally shot by Oswald)

This one is pretty self explanatory. It is an interesting connection that worked for what we thought we were trying to connect.

4:00
Correct Card: The White House (16:00 Pennsylvania Avenue)
Incorrect Card: Captain Charles Johnson

The picture used on this card was not actually Captain Charles Johnson. It was a picture of a pirate that CCJ wrote a book about. This particular pirate has been given credit to sinking 400 ships during his career. Again, easy to see why we thought that was a good connection.

6:13
Correct Card: Tazmanian Devil (Foreign State, Country Code Australia 613)
Incorrect Card: Rasputin (Restaurant in Ottawa, which also uses a country code of 613)

This one is another that makes logical sense. For a couple reasons. The 617 Boston Baked Beans clue made us aware of needing some sort of area code connection. What else is cool is the references that connect Rasputin to some biblical verses. Matthew 6:13 says, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil". Rasputin lived by the idea that one must face temptation to overcome all evil. It is a stretch of a connection, I know. But you can see how we made the connection to him through multiple sources. Each of these alone isn't enough to convince me, but together they made me certain we were right.

7:27 and 9:42 we had from the beginning, just like Poe Toaster. I am interested in hearing other connections some of you made to the times. I had a lot of fun doing this, probably the best part of the code for me. Please leave your ideas in the comments, it will be fun to see what you thought.






5 comments:

  1. My team was trying to find player cards that matched each initially, we had a couple of different player cards figured out at first. Once we got the clue about the things we were looking for, things changed a bit. We were emailing back and forth between us. The first that we figured out was DB Cooper. Once we realized that we could use cards outside the player cards, things went fast. We got Archimedes next, and the White House. At that point, we realized that we were looking for cards that were not players.

    By the end of the day on Jan 31, we had all the cards and keys, and then we were completely stumped about what to do next.

    A few cards we guessed incorrectly at first before finding a better match.
    613: We originally said that 613 was Isaac Newton, because Newton was one of the first to observe tides, and the ebb tide is 6 hours 13 min long. That was a stretch, and we later found that Newton didn't have a matching domain, so we had to ditch this one. We got the Tasmanian Devil one by backing into it. I took all the cards that referenced "Foreign States" and tested their keys, and I hit paydirt on Tasmanian Devil, and then figured out that their calling code was 613.

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    1. Those sound pretty good! Even if Newton was a stretch, It is a pretty awesome stretch.

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  2. Similar experience. We had the right 10 locked in very soon after we turned the keys and actually had 9 of them dialed in ahead of time. Had Dewey early on and like a bonehead tweeted about it (my bias through the whole 7 months was to share most of what I knew with others). Had Tasmanian devil too -- know way more about world area codes that could ever be useful. :)

    Teammates had White House and Amityville. Funny enough, Guillame turned me on to 727 and 119. We were communicating before everyone teamed up. He also turned me on to the CCJ 400 connection, which I thought was brilliant. In return, I offered up the Fulcanelli 114... Looks like he chose the right team. :)

    Biggest hang-ups were on 111. Early on was convinced it was HMS Victory. 111 is a cricket term (a "Nelson") that refers to Admiral Nelson (according to myth, he lost one eye, one arm, and one leg in battle). The HMS Victory was his flag ship in his greatest conquests. He's actually a very interesting character to read about and is the subject of many timeless sea shanteys...

    Another 111 we honed in on was The Lave -- it was one of 3 (III) iron clad ships commissioned by Napoleon III.

    A final dead end on 111 was Copernicus. He dedicated his life's work to Pope Paul III. Another fascinating story. This connection was "confirmed" by a third party, but we'll just leave that subject alone. :)

    A longer story, perhaps for another time, is how a guy I was working with early on and I connected the times to 10 base cards and how I was using the clover values to walk through the characters in the Poem in search of the codemaster's message...

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    1. I'd like to read that Wheels :)

      I'm going to fix up a Clover post and put it up here. Hopefully you'll share!

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