Mystery Hunt 2012 Recast: COMPLETE!!!

[jadesmar]

Here's a list of the 37 colors in the file, sorted by popularity:
20, E4, E5, 80, 88, 9B, B9, E8, BA, A3, 8C, E9, B0, B4, 86, 87, E3, 8D, 85, E6, B6, 81, 8F, 82, BC, 89, AB, 8E, 96, E7, AD, 94, 92, 9F, 99, 9D, 83

" ", "ä", "å", "€", "ˆ", etc.

[Suspence]

Just for posterity, then, call in RACED
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[Suspence]

[LordKinbote]

[novice]

[Suspence]

RGB values. The darkest boxes are R32, G32, B32, which I list as 032, for example.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[jadesmar]

[jadesmar]

[gftt]

I have no idea what you guys are doing, but I thought I would start organizing the meta.

1. This best-selling book flew off the rack.
[new answer] = ?
VELVET ELVIS = 20
VALLEY = 12
TERMINAL = 10

2. This word might appear in a letter to a valued friend.
[new answer] = ?
EBOOK = 48
ADOBO = 37
RACED = 31
[all 5-letter words...]

3. This food often fails to meet international standards.
[new answer] = ?
MERCURY =63
COLON = 58
UNION = 42

4. This is part of a lengthy and miserable experience.
[new answer] = ?
CLINTON = 35
CHERRY = 30
DEPOT =25
[note: these numbers are all 5 times the length of the word. Coincidence?]

5. Even the ancient Romans may have had to pay this burden.
[new answer] = ?
BUSINESS TRAVELERS = 56
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES = 52
OKAPI =1

6. You might use the phrase “robbed blind” while talking about this.
[new answer] = ?
FORGET PARIS = 34
BATED BREATH = 28
YOKEL =15

7. This man was born to run.
[new answer] = ?
TERRY GENE BOLLEA = 53
JOHN ADAMS = 35
JERRY WEXLER = 17
[all people...]

8. Even a two-bit company must follow these rules.
[new answer] = ?
CAPITOL HILL = 5
FIRESTONE = 2
SLITS = 1

[novice]

By using the pixels' R/G/B values as byte values and converting all the pixels to one long byte array (reading from x=0 to x=3597 and from y=0 to y=159), we get a byte array that, when decoded as UTF-8, is a long string of what looks like chinese text to me. Google translates most of the text to numbers, interspersed with some words.

[gftt*]

[novice]

The string is 241098 characters in total.

But it only consists of 21 unique unicode characters:

Character: space Count: 73807 Unicode: 32
Character: 〇 Count: 12296 Unicode: 12295:
Character: 零 Count: 8968 Unicode: 38646: Translation: Zero
Character: 一 Count: 18078 Unicode: 19968: Translation: A
Character: 壹 Count: 19132 Unicode: 22777: Translation: One
Character: 贰 Count: 12812 Unicode: 36144: Translation: II
Character: 二 Count: 14206 Unicode: 20108: Translation: Two
Character: 三 Count: 6303 Unicode: 19977: Translation: Three
Character: 叁 Count: 7886 Unicode: 21441: Translation: Triple
Character: 肆 Count: 7877 Unicode: 32902: Translation: IV
Character: 四 Count: 9607 Unicode: 22235: Translation: Four
Character: 五 Count: 5245 Unicode: 20116: Translation: Five
Character: 伍 Count: 6664 Unicode: 20237: Translation: Five
Character: 陆 Count: 4536 Unicode: 38470: Translation: Land (but also Six: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%99%86)
Character: 六 Count: 5256 Unicode: 20845: Translation: Six
Character: 柒 Count: 4899 Unicode: 26578: Translation: VII
Character: 七 Count: 3932 Unicode: 19971: Translation: Seven
Character: 八 Count: 5483 Unicode: 20843: Translation: Eight
Character: 捌 Count: 4432 Unicode: 25420: Translation: Eight
Character: 九 Count: 4242 Unicode: 20061: Translation: Nine
Character: 玖 Count: 5437 Unicode: 29590: Translation: Nine

[novice]

OK, so the chinese text could be translated to spaces and digits. Here's the first few characters of the translated result:

[novice]

The first six numbers are the ANSI character codes for GIF89a, so I guess we're converting the rest of the bytes back to GIF.

[novice]

Doing that produces this GIF animation:



This is awesome.

EDIT: Wow, that animation has 1119 frames...

[novice]

So the animation shows Hebrew letters, which are also used for counting. The first few frames show
עא עג ע בו בז צז which are the hebrew numbers for 71 73 70 56 57 97 which are the ansi characters for GIF89a.

We're looking at the bytes of another GIF file, in other words. Not looking forward to transcribing 1119 hebrew characters, though.

Maybe I'll have to look into programming with GIF animations...

[novice]

I have to say, PhotoScape had an incredibly useful function to assist here. Here are the frames of the GIF animation laid out, read from left to right, top to bottom.

[gftt*]

[novice]

I guess they used a gif animation so that reading direction wouldn't lead you astray.

The hebrew numbers are:

[novice]

Well I have to go to bed. If we take the numbers from the gif animation and convert to binary using the following rule:

If the number is even: Blue => 1, Red => 0
If the number is odd: Blue => 0, Red => 1

we get a byte string of 42 bytes, which when decoded as UTF8 reads:

"even financial and odd normal numerals = 1"

Not done yet.

[Scurra]

4. This is part of a lengthy and miserable experience.
[new answer] = ?
CLINTON = 35
CHERRY = 30
DEPOT =25
[note: these numbers are all 5 times the length of the word. Coincidence?]

Clearly not a coincidence. Presumably the number for this one will indeed be 5X.


7. This man was born to run.
[new answer] = ?
TERRY GENE BOLLEA = 53
JOHN ADAMS = 35
JERRY WEXLER = 17
[all people...]

The numbers are the last two digits of the year of their birth.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[novice]

So we need to go back to the original chinese characters. Each digit was represented by two different characters. It turns out one is the financial number and one is the normal spoken word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals

Normal numbers:
Character: 〇 Count: 12296 Unicode: 12295: Punctuation for Zero
Character: 一 Count: 18078 Unicode: 19968: Translation: A
Character: 二 Count: 14206 Unicode: 20108: Translation: Two
Character: 三 Count: 6303 Unicode: 19977: Translation: Three
Character: 四 Count: 9607 Unicode: 22235: Translation: Four
Character: 五 Count: 5245 Unicode: 20116: Translation: Five
Character: 六 Count: 5256 Unicode: 20845: Translation: Six
Character: 七 Count: 3932 Unicode: 19971: Translation: Seven
Character: 八 Count: 5483 Unicode: 20843: Translation: Eight
Character: 九 Count: 4242 Unicode: 20061: Translation: Nine

Financial numbers:
Character: 零 Count: 8968 Unicode: 38646: Translation: Zero
Character: 壹 Count: 19132 Unicode: 22777: Translation: One
Character: 贰 Count: 12812 Unicode: 36144: Translation: II
Character: 叁 Count: 7886 Unicode: 21441: Translation: Triple
Character: 肆 Count: 7877 Unicode: 32902: Translation: IV
Character: 伍 Count: 6664 Unicode: 20237: Translation: Five
Character: 陆 Count: 4536 Unicode: 38470: Translation: Land (but also Six: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%99%86)
Character: 柒 Count: 4899 Unicode: 26578: Translation: VII
Character: 捌 Count: 4432 Unicode: 25420: Translation: Eight
Character: 玖 Count: 5437 Unicode: 29590: Translation: Nine

So these characters should be translated to 0:
Character: 〇 Count: 12296 Unicode: 12295: Punctuation for Zero
Character: 二 Count: 14206 Unicode: 20108: Translation: Two
Character: 四 Count: 9607 Unicode: 22235: Translation: Four
Character: 六 Count: 5256 Unicode: 20845: Translation: Six
Character: 八 Count: 5483 Unicode: 20843: Translation: Eight
Character: 壹 Count: 19132 Unicode: 22777: Translation: One
Character: 叁 Count: 7886 Unicode: 21441: Translation: Triple
Character: 伍 Count: 6664 Unicode: 20237: Translation: Five
Character: 柒 Count: 4899 Unicode: 26578: Translation: VII
Character: 玖 Count: 5437 Unicode: 29590: Translation: Nine

And these to 1:
Character: 一 Count: 18078 Unicode: 19968: Translation: A
Character: 三 Count: 6303 Unicode: 19977: Translation: Three
Character: 五 Count: 5245 Unicode: 20116: Translation: Five
Character: 七 Count: 3932 Unicode: 19971: Translation: Seven
Character: 九 Count: 4242 Unicode: 20061: Translation: Nine
Character: 零 Count: 8968 Unicode: 38646: Translation: Zero
Character: 贰 Count: 12812 Unicode: 36144: Translation: II
Character: 肆 Count: 7877 Unicode: 32902: Translation: IV
Character: 陆 Count: 4536 Unicode: 38470: Translation: Land (but also Six: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%99%86)
Character: 捌 Count: 4432 Unicode: 25420: Translation: Eight

[novice]

I didn't recognize anything by converting the chinese numbers to binary, it doesn't result in UTF8 encoded text nor in a GIF file.

I get three leftover bits from the conversion, so I'm not sure if I'm on the wrong track or what. I'm ignoring spaces when doing the conversion.

Here are the first 100 bytes:

[Scurra]

You're way out of my league now. I understood this puzzle as far as "Pixels are UTF-8"...
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[gftt*]

Two questions:

1) Did you add back the Chinese characters that give you the GIF89a message?

2) If 3 characters give you the number 255 (say), are they all of the same type (normal vs financial) or are they mixed?

[Elethiomel]

You've got exactly 173 x 967 bits. Plot them as a monochrome bitmap, perhaps?

[novice]

[Suspence]

Sorry for the digression, but:

[novice]

[gftt*]

[LordKinbote]

[Suspence]

1. This best-selling book flew off the rack.
[new answer] = ?
VELVET ELVIS = 20
VALLEY = 12
TERMINAL = 10

These are all Scrabble values.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[jadesmar]

[Suspence]

3. This food often fails to meet international standards.
[new answer] = ?
MERCURY = 63
COLON = 58
UNION = 42

Not sure if this is the right path, since I don't see a connection with MERCURY or UNION, but a COLON is 58 in ASCII (63 is question mark, 42 is asterisk)
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gftt*]

[Suspence]

Unicode Character 'MERCURY' (U+263F)

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/263f/index.htm
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[novice]

[Suspence]

If it were "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", then that would make sense with #1 in the meta. Applying the Scrabble score, you'd get 65, which would appear to meet Watson's threshold for a correct answer.
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[novice]

[novice]