[PUZZLE][SOLVED] Semiotics 2/22/07

[Scrawnyfish]

I used:
010100100110000101110010001000010001101000100000

[theresascraps]

clock???

theresa

[tiltingwindward]

Let's try to think this one through in a logical way:

We have a note. We have some books. We have a file whose name decodes to SEMIOTICS. Semiotics tells us that we need to look at symbols. The note has symbols (X's and Y's), which remind us of the XX/Xy puzzle referenced earlier in this thread by several people--but this might not be the only application for the word SEMIOTICS. The note tells us that somewhere, there is a "subtle clue," and lo and behold, we discover that the first letters of each line spell out Wyatt (anagrammed?), which happens to be the name on Daniel's fake ID.

Before we get too excited about the Wyatt thing (and believe me, I'm excited about it), we have to remember that Nancy Drew is somehow involved, because otherwise Tachyon wouldn't have passed on her books to Daniel. So, off we go to the list of quotes we have from the Nancy Drew drop.

If you think I'm coming to a grand conclusion with all of this, you'll be disappointed. But I'm suggesting a way to think about the problem that does not involve brute forcing or randomly plugging in passwords. Let's think about possible solutions that involve the note, the books, the Wyatt clue, and the word SEMIOTICS...and come up with passwords from there.

And now for some notes of my own:
I've just read through 6 pages of people trying passwords, and I have to say, I have no idea where most of them came from. So please, if you're going to post passwords you tried or think other people should try, please explain why you thought they might work (i.e., "I tried cucumber45 and foosball188 because Bree once hit Daniel with a cucumber 45 times, and Jonas moved his levers 188 times in the foosball game"--obviously, this is just an example). It will make it a lot easier for everyone else to follow along.

Tommy, Semiotics comes from the name of the .rar file. It is encoded in hex, but it decodes to "Semiotics."

[longlostposter]

there are winRAR password cracking programs out there that use the "bruteforce" technique

google bruteforce if you dont know what it is

Thanks.

[FallingIntoSin]

I'm still confused as to what led people to "Semiotics..."

The name of the file was "Semiotics" in Hex.

[FallingIntoSin]

there are winRAR password cracking programs out there that use the "bruteforce" technique

google bruteforce if you dont know what it is

Thanks.

It is impossible to brute force this password, it would take 100's of years for an attack to complete it. The PM was upset that we cracked a pw that way before and made it sure that it would never be able to happen again.

[FallingIntoSin]

OK, do you have to know the whole password? Or will it tell you if you have part of it?

has anyone tried
brownpaper?
lonelygirl015?
goldendawn?

It's won't let you know if you get any part of it, you'll just get an error message or it won't open. Keep trying, your doing fine on the previous pages you'll see some posts about the exact error messages winrar gives.

I don't want to take all of your time, but why are people posting one word like: HEART, for example? That's only 5 letters and no numbers.

Hmmm...well there are a few reasons *grin*...

It may be the that the 11 numbers and 3 letters could be matched into pairs to make a shorter word using Hex. Or it could be that some people just get carried away in the fun of it all. Finally, we all may be completely wrong about the letters, numbers, everything and some longshot guess might work.

[theresascraps]

maybe the answer is way more simple than we want it to be.....It has to tie in to Nancy Drew somehow....maybe it is the numbers of the volumes of the books....She wouldn't have given hime all those books if they weren't related somehow, if she gave them to him at all....

theresa

[Ziola]

Could it be the license number from Daniels fake ID?

Sorry if this has been mentioned before

[junetown]

hrm. i don't want to throw you guys off track too much here, but someone in another thread mentioned something like 'blue fire' or 'blue flame' .. i can't find it now, but apparently it was relevant.

i'd say try variations of that, just to get it covered and out of the way if anything.

[tiltingwindward]

Z, it has been mentioned, but it's easy to miss things in a thread this long. We're looking at the fake name now (Wyatt) more than the fake ID #.

[Ziola]

Thanks Tilt...and you all tried the name of the actor who played Wyatt I presume?

[quickapples]

Anthony Michael Hall? [/quote]

[theresascraps]

ok Z....spill it. who is it?


theresa

[tiltingwindward]

...no. I don't think we have.

::me wants a pensive face emoticon::