Does the first clue need the use of the Caesar Shift to decode it?

Swordo Posted:

Does the first clue need the use of the Caesar Shift to decode it?

You mean like a ROT13. No. But good try there.

zagerblag Posted:

Is it a physical reference guide, a virtual one, the phrase “a reference guide” or some variant thereof, or something else?

It is physical. But like all things you can find it on the internet. And the code is not based on the phrase.

Can you please give us some sort of hint regarding which reference guide you’re referring to? I don’t think there are any particularly notable ones that we would know to look at first. I hope you just mean something like an ASCII or EBCDIC (another character encoding) lookup chart. Your statement that the guide is physical seems to suggest that we should be looking for a specific guide, but if it can also be found online (legally), then either

1) it’s really old,

2) it’s one of the few books (re)published online before its copyright expired (or maybe a periodical with free online archives or something),

3) or we need generic information that can safely be put online without breaking any copyrights.

You’re probably laughing at my wild, probably inaccurate speculation for a simple online contest in which only a few people have expressed interest and for which the prize is merely minor in-game benefits in an obscure browser-based video game that barely has any content, but instead artificially boosts the time necessary to play that content (I like long sentences (and parenthetical comments (and nested parentheses (and self-reference (come on, give us some hints))))).

Challenge 1 completed: Professor Falken, Swordo, Zagerblag, Quantumenergy

Challenge 2 completed: –

Challenge #1 Hint: Don’t think forward.

Challenge #2 Hint: As for a reference guide, you will find something between the years 1840- 1900 but is still in use today. Note: there may be an extra letter in there, but still readable.

I hope your initial dates were wrong (1840-1900, if it turns out they were wrong and you edit your post to not have them any more). Preferably off by precisely a century too early.

Balloon Posted:

No, my initial dates are not wrong. I said it is still in use to day. And how about this… I’m sure everyone here has seen it at least once in their life. I know I’ve seen it many times.

Is there anything you have not seen in your life yet? Log in to see images!

FalCoN Posted:

Is there anything you have not seen in your life yet? Log in to see images!

A pink cow.

Is it standard high school reading material?

EDIT: Double-posted due to bad internet connection. Wireless keeps disconnecting.

Yeah, you can find it in any high school. And thanks for trying to squeeze every hint you can out of me.

Can you give us any hints about the encoding? You gave us one for Challenge 1. I’d love to know what to do with the minus signs and parentheses. Do we just evaluate expressions like 68-(77-53)?

EDIT: What I’d like to know most is what the book is for.

EDIT 2: Is the reference periodically updated, like Britannica or Worldbook? Would it spoil the whole thing if you simply told us what reference guide we need?