To help relieve the boredom of waiting for Hans Van Eegen to get things running over at DharmaWantsYou.com, Nick from Lostpedia and I will be creating some ARG-ish clues for everyone to solve, which I am calling Slovaltine Clues.Here is the the first clue from Nick. There is a LOST-related answer hidden in the image, which will in turn be the "key" to another puzzle.
Feel free to discuss it in the comments, and if you think you have the answer, send an email to slovaltine@lostargs.com.
* and special thanks to Takes A Village for inventing such a funny word!
Hint #1
There are a lot of "red herrings" in this photo, lets get rid of some the distractions.
Hint #2
PigPen is also the name of a Peanuts character (mentioned in the podcast), and the answer to the question on the envelope "Say What You See": Padlock, Eye (I), Green scribble, Pen (or Pen, Eraser, Necklace). PigPen is also is a type of cipher, however a normal Pigpan cipher doesn't have curved symbols...
Hint #3
The black symbol on the right is called a Chakana. You can ignore the letters and numbers inside the Chakana (another distraction).
Solution
Using the Chakana pattern instead of the normal Pigpen pattern (a dot denotes the back side), the cipher decodes to Ethan Rom.
Posts
259 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 259 of 259I think I've managed to use the Chakana to get the keyword. I have emailed it.
Now on to figuring out how to use this to decipher the message on the lostpedia blog.
Orb if you're the one who just emailed - well done! The final part is easy if you know about ciphers
Thank you! I actually don't know about ciphers - I'm knew to this and learning as I go along...
Well there are very few common ciphers that use keywords, so I'm sure you'll do it with a little research lol
Yay! Got it.
So, are we supposed to build our own pigpen using a chakana type grid? Or am I out in left field as usual?
Oh wait - -I think I may have found it. . .at least I know how you're all getting orb instead of lrc,now.
Go with the grid comment lol.
Trying to set up a chakana pigpen decoder... i thought once i knew that it would be so easy!! There are a number of ways you can lay it out and organize the letters though, so trial and error again. one thing throws me off... the ) next to the dotted circle. What would that grid look like? Also just tried flattening the whole chakana with the lines used to draw it and filling in letters... it works! evenly with "Z" as well... feeling close here.
eris - a pigpen code always has 13 combinations per set, and then uses dots to signify the last 13.
My five year old son just asked if i was learning how to play tic tac toe.
Is it on purpose, the fact that drawing the outline of the Chakana point to point you get an ocyagon??hehe
Which one are we supposed to use it on? The straight pigpen looking stuff near the key - - or that stuff over in the upper left with the eye looking symbol in it?
I get a lost-like answer when I use my version of the chakana pigpen on the 3 letter word. . .
Thanks nickb! Almost there... I am assuming you placed the numbers on three "levels" for the three worlds... Still not working out though :(
It's working out okay if you use the deconstructed chakana on wikipedia's page - right number of blanks anyway - still not sure I've got it right though. . .
Well, the letters sure fit in the chakana but there are different positions they can fit in...its gonna take some time...
lost2010, 13 blanks?
a
b c d
e f g h i
j k l
m
??
This is soo hard! I feel so dumb right now lol =/
Right.. i think that the 'Say what you see' was to work out that it was something to do with the PigPen cipher (and theres a peanuts character called PigPen)
aaand its something to do with the chakana pattern thing. =/
That's as far as i've got.
By the way, i read on here that some people thought it was an Oceanic pen but im pretty sure its a Cancer Research UK pen 0=)
yay i've got it!! it took me ages to work out how to set up the chakana pattern properly though. going to email the answer now.
I think i've figured out the whole chakana pattern thing but all i've got so far is gibberish =/ my brain hurts..
what is the gibberish you've got exactly? i may be able to see what you're doing wrong and give you a clue if you like, as i've just worked it out myself.
I've got: MTKIV ZYE
i am back, and i found it immediately. however i use the Sharky's Vigenere Cipher link from lostpedia, and i dont get the answer from Lostpedia Blog.
Can someone give me a link for a 'cipher translator' or whatever the name is =)
Steff - Vegeneres isn't the only form of keyword cipher - its actually one of the less common ones.
Once things started clicking it fell into place very quickly... didn't read all of the posts but did everyone spot the code that spelled "FAKE" ? That one made me laugh.
LOL.. forgot to do it backwards =))))
Yeah that and "red" are actually homages to Masquerade by Kit Williams. He did that a lot, and when no-one was figuring out his book he released a new clue, where some of it was relevant but there was a big herring at the side with code on it - which translated to "red".
@SOAP: ok well you're kind of on the right track then but you must have set up the pattern wrong; i didn't get that in any of my own attempts so i'm not sure exactly what you've done to get that, lol. I had tried to use the chakana construction diagram on the wiki page like someone above said, but that doesn't work. The thing that helped me in the end was trying to visualise how i could achieve the symbol shapes in the code within the chakana itself.
one more question nick.. now that almost everyone has solved the real code, can u tell me how you decode the code IN the chakana. it is probably the "keep looking" phrase u mentioned in the second post, but i want to know how u can get it
oh, btw, i just wanted to say that although these have been hard, they have been fun to figure out, and knowing almost nothing about ciphers, etc, it has taught me alot deciphering these so good practice for the real ARG!
Steff - yes I can explain that. I believed you guys would immediately get that it was actually a book cipher to Bad Twin (exactly what Malick did in TLE on the DJ Dan broadcast). Hence why Bad Twin was there. So, I separated pages with a letter so it looked like hex, but added at the end "BT" to give somewhat of a clue. In hindsight, had I realized it wasn't as easy as I believed it would be, I would have at least changed the book code to read "pigpen use chakana" but instead it does read "keep looking".
Anyone who got caught up in this though, I advised them to focus on something else, as I felt bad that the only means of closure was if you actually owned the book.
You know I live on the west coast and just got back on the computer for today...it disappoints me to see that someone typed the answer in the comments. I don't mind hints, etc. But to post the answer isn't fair to those of us who don't get started until late in the day for others.
Removed it. Now go figure out how it is derived. That's the fun part.
I did and was close, but just checked in on the comments and there it was. Thanks for removing it. :)
Excellent. Did you lock down #2 yet? I'm working on #3.. I'm on Pacific time also... Arizona.
So I've figured out where to put letters...just not sure what order to put them in...grr...
GOT IT!
lol, well done!! its satisfying, after all this effort, is it not? i've just got number 3 to do now.
@ukgirl...hi, been around for a while and though I cracked #2 (Finally!!!) puzzle #1 is still killing me. I got the letters in the chakana and I get I T H M Z V Y A which looks wrong but I dunno, maybe I got some right¿?
Okay, I got a note saying I have the second part right, but that I still need to work Part 1 - - What's part 1. . . .so I can work on it. . .
Nevermind - I found it. . .
lost2010 if hey are referring to clue#1 then they mean how you got the keyword to solve the phrase in the blog.
You mean the phrase on the other blog at lostpedia? Because I haven't gotten that far yet. . .I'm still over hear trying to piece a key phrase together. . .
Yay!!! I finally got the key phrase!!! Thanks everybody for dragging me along!!!
Whew, finally got #3, so all three clues now in the bag.
Clue #3. . .and just when I was starting to feel pretty good about myself. . .
@Anonymous: You said you get 'I T H M Z V Y A'. I could be wrong but I think that you have put the letters in the right places but you are reading the symbols wrong from the Chakana grid. For example, the first symbol would be the far left 'box' on the grid, not the far right. Hope that makes sense.
lost2010;
"I don't think the puzzle for this one was used in TLE. A less difficult version was used for Hanso Careers though."
Comment from nick in the Clue #3 thread. May help you.
Thanks anon. . .Now, I just need to figure out what Hanso Careers is. . . but that's part of the fun.
:D
Lost 2010 - that comment I made was about no#3.
unc897- sorry I've been out so I didn't see your response. I haven't started working on #3 yet. I got #2 yesterday. I'm in Arizona too. Phoenix area.
Cool. I'm in Tucson.
@anonymous: you have got 2 letters right in ITHMZVYH so there must be something wrong in the chakana you drew up. i will say this; according to my own pattern you have got the mirror image symbol of most of the correct letters (apart from the last letter) so could you have entered the alphabet back to front or something? does that make sense? i mean say if a was meant to be (, you would have it as ). hope this makes sense to you.
@orb and ukgirl, Thanx fo the help guys... so I c the letters are in the rightplace, I'm just reading the chakana symbols wrong...ok will try again
(i have been busy with clues #2 and # which I think I solved, no email reply as of yet).
And now clue #5 is up!!!!
ANM
Now I get
E T F A N R W M
mmmmm...
ANM
Ok, just saw the solution, and I really have no clue how you came up with that letter placement in and around the chakana, still, it was entertaining!
ANM
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