Mystery Hunt 2012 Recast: COMPLETE!!!

[Scurra]

The symbols appear to be from a Dr Seuss book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Beyond_Zebra!
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[gftt]

Aaah. OK, 10 numbers + 26 letters + 20 beyond zebra letters = 56 symbols, same as the number of cards in a Tichu deck. So this is base 56. All games add up to a multiple of 100 as they should.

260 (200 for grand tichu + 60 in cards) -60 (-100 for a missed tichu + 40 in cards)
-220 (-200 for missed GT + -20 in cards) 320 (200 for a GT + 120 in cards)
-210 (-200 for missed GT + -10 in cards) 110 (110 in cards)
-95 (-200 for missed GT + 105 in cards) -205 (-200 for missed GT + -5 in cards)
210 (100 for a Tichu, 110 in cards) -210 (-200 for missed GT, -10 in cards)

Altered scoring:

360 40
-20 520
-10 310
305 195
410 -10

back to base 56:
6(24) (40)
-(20) 9(16)
-(10) 5(30)
5(25) 3(27)
7(18) -(10)

or
6O Fuddle
-K 9G
-A 5U
5P 3R
7I -A

Call in OKAPI

[LordKinbote]

[novice]

[novice]

JFK SHAGS A SAD SLIM LASS

Character distribution:
AAAA
D
F
G
H
I
J
K
LL
M
SSSSSS

Excluding A and S:
JFKHGDLIML

Converting to numbers, starting with D=0

DEFGHIJKLM
0123456789
1234567890

JF KH GD LI ML
62 74 30 85 98
(or using D = 1 and M = 0)
73 85 41 96 09

Since the answers in this round all seem to have five characters, this seems promising.

Decoding the numbers using ascii codes or periodic table elements doesn't lead anywhere, though.

[gftt*]

[LordKinbote]

[Scurra]

Utterly brilliant and utterly underhand,
I've been staring at this on and off all morning and I suddenly understood it when I was working on something else and the word SAD came up there.

Call in COLON
(the alternative answer of semi-colon is ruled out by virtue of the puzzle being in uppercase and the answers for this set being all five letters.)

I was thinking of not giving an explanation because the "a-ha" moment was so glorious that I didn't want to deny anyone else the pleasure. On the other hand, it's also the sort of puzzle that you could clearly stare at forever and not see.

All of the letters (except for the I and M in "slim") are on the middle row of the keyboard. Draw a line along it. The I and the M create a head for an arrow which points at the Colon key...
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[gftt*]

Cute. (I still have to ask... that took editors, plural?)

That now makes two puzzles in this round that have relied on the QWERTY keyboard. One of them was also one of the two puzzles this round that also relied on numbers in a base other than 10. Maybe next we'll get a puzzle that combines punctuation marks with Dr. Seuss...

[LordKinbote]

[gftt*]

LETTER HEAD prompted thoughts of word beheadings. Seems like all clues in the first column can be thought of as missing a letter?

MIke with a connection to Cleveland
OConnor’s maiden name = DAY
BRead, in Rouen = PAIN
YAwl, e.g.
DEvils or Magic = TEAM?
IMage with a staff
COde ending?
KEel follower, at sea = HAUL
?Red on the green, at times
O/AMen
RAfter
ORange part
N?Umber that colors opinions
E?Lite, e.g.

[gftt]

MIke with a connection to Cleveland
OConnor’s maiden name = DAY
BRead, in Rouen = PAIN
YAwl, e.g. = BOAT/SHIP
DEvils or Magic = TEAM?
IMage with a staff = CADUCEUS???
COde ending?
KEel follower, at sea = HAUL
FRed on the green, at times = COUPLES
OMen
RAfter
ORange part = RIND?
NUmber that colors opinions
ELite, e.g.

Don't know what MOBY DICK FOR ONE (= WHALE?) would refer to.

[L'lanmal]

[SuperSlug]

I'm back from camping.

[gftt]

MIke with a connection to Cleveland
OConnor’s maiden name = DAY
BRead, in Rouen = PAIN
YAwl, e.g. = BOAT
DEvils or Magic = TEAM?
IMage with a staff
COde ending? = WORD?
KEel follower, at sea = HAUL
FRed on the green, at times = FUNK
OMen = SIGN
RAfter = BEAM
ORange part = SECTION
NUmber that colors opinions = RATING
ELite, e.g.

The second column clues stuff that is one letter + one word clued by the first column.

Gesture = V-SIGN
Building part = I-BEAM
What nudity may lead to = R RATING
Security
Military vehicle = U-BOAT
Varsity group = A-TEAM
Drama, with “The” = L-WORD
Musical collective = P-FUNK
Arcade game
Author
Historic event = D-DAY
Truck = U-HAUL
Medical procedure = C-SECTION
Rapper = T-PAIN

So the first column words and clues are beheaded and the second column is not. So maybe MOBY DICK, FOR ONE clues BOOK and the real word that we want is E-BOOK? The second column could be "VIRTUAL PRODUCT"?

Call in E-BOOK?

[SuperSlug]

1st col
MIke with a connection to Cleveland = HENRY
IMage with a staff = NOTE
ELite, e.g. = TYPE

2nd col
Security = T-NOTE
Arcade game = R-TYPE
Author = O HENRY

[LordKinbote]

[gftt*]

UNIX commands. I'm not going to be of any help here, I'm afraid.

[SuperSlug]

I've been trying since LordK posted the link last night, but I can't get the tar.gz files open here. Grrrr

I also don't know anything about UNIX commands so will be of limited help even if I can see the text files.
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[onethreeseven*]

I'm glad you guys liked JFK SHAGS...! This puzzle caused some great controversy in-house (and beyond), as to whether it was a legitimate offering or not and whether we should run it. But I think it was worth it, even if it had the highest ratio of manpower used to content generated imaginable.

Makefiles may be the most arcane puzzle in the hunt in terms of the depth and specificity of knowledge involved. If you don't have someone who is pretty familiar with a UNIX-style command line you may be in trouble.

But I'm of the opinion that most metas are most challenging and satisfying short 1-2 answers anyway... (At least, that is how we design them, in order to make the hunt solvable despite the inevitable stuck puzzle or five.)

[kaihuang]

[Scurra]

[gftt*]

Nice! Could also be REPOT, though -YORS doesn't seem any more promising. At least YODS is an alternate spelling for the 10th Hebrew letter.... I'm sure that's relevant, right?

Is there a musical tie-in to word-squares?

[Suspence]

Ogre of La Mancha makes me think of (Shrek's) DONKEY and DON QUIXOTE, which must be coming to me because of ?ONK?
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[SuperSlug]

Playing with Suspence's DONKEY = DON QUI

and Scurra's word squares and suggestion of DEPOT:

[LordKinbote]

[jadesmar]

I got a few more of these this morning, but here's a start

1. Radiation (3/9 = D)
2. Operative (1/9 = O)
3. Survivor (7/8 = O)
4. Decontamination (8/15 = M)
5. Physician (2/9 = H)
6.
7. Mekkatorque (1/11 = M)

Presumably that's going to spell Doomhammer.

[SuperSlug]

Thankful for wikis.

[jadesmar]

Couple more here:

[LordKinbote]

[SuperSlug]

[LordKinbote]

[LordKinbote]

Updated the first and second post. Phew.

[SuperSlug]

DEPOT is nice but I was sort of hoping it was the -ACED one. Oh well, onward...
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[novice]

For Encoded, there is a metadata comment in the gif file stating that "Pixels are UTF-8". Each pixel in a GIF file has one of 256 values (indexing into the associated colour palette). So I guess the first step is to extract the pixel values and interpret them as text encoded in UTF-8.

I don't have the tools at hand right now to do that, however. Maybe there's a tool available that does this, but it might require a code snippet.

[LordKinbote]

[Suspence]

[LordKinbote]

[jadesmar]

[SuperSlug]