As Santiak is MIA - TAV is hijacking this thread - updating this will be a work in progress as the coding appears to be broken when editing the thread. So there's a limit to the amount of spoiler tags one can have in a thread it would seem.. All Information pieces have been found! Great work everyone! Spoiler: List - numerical order Spoiler: Mission #1 Thallium Spoiler: Mission #2 Cadmium Spoiler: Mission #3 Indium Spoiler: Mission #4 87.62 (Strontium) Spoiler: Mission #5 101.17 (Ruthenium) Spoiler: Mission #6 180.94788 (Tantalum) Spoiler: Mission #7 3306 (Osmium) Spoiler: Mission #8 3695 (Tungsten) Spoiler: Mission #9 1115 (Calcium) Spoiler: Mission #10 505.08 (Tin) Spoiler: Mission #11 115.78 (Krypton) Spoiler: Mission #12 Winkler (Germanium) Spoiler: Mission #13 Oganessian (Unnamed Element z=117) Spoiler: Mission #14 Marguerite (Francium) Spoiler: Mission #15 Hofmann (Flerovium) Spoiler: Mission #16 19.84 (Americium) Spoiler: Mission #17 15.10 (Californium) Spoiler: Mission #18 18.95 (Neptunium) Spoiler: Mission #19 12.02 (Palladium) Spoiler: List - numerical order Spoiler: Mission #20 27.2 (Hafnium) Spoiler: Mission #21 13.81 (Iron) Spoiler: Mission #22 33.29 (Technetium) Spoiler: Mission #23 17.49 (Tellurium) Spoiler: Mission #24 2.27 (Xenon) Spoiler: Mission #25 19.79 (Antimony) Edit from Santiak: Sorry, posts are locked in place by their timestamp, so have to hijack the OP (with Lyrah's consent, of course) Credit to @Lyrah for being the first to uncover a puzzle piece! I (Santiak) will try to update the OP with a running list of all known puzzle piece answers and their corresponding mission number. For elaboration on how each was found, and credit to who found it, please find the corresponding post below. Ongoing Investigations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...jD2q242ocRmrEK-Fhdc/edit?pli=1#gid=1313134082 Lyrah's Original post follows: There were/still are quite a few things that bothered me in the Div 79 Basic Training Manual... Spoiler: #1 Mostly the extra binary in 3.2.3. Hello only has 5 letters, but there are seven 8 bit sequences there. /riphairout The first 5 of course belong to the word hello. The next two are: 00001101 = D 00001010 = A When I couldn't find much more concerning these letters (maybe someone else can?) I remembered seeing Greenhead's post here: http://forums.blackwatchmen.com/index.php?threads/morpho-medical.504/page-2#post-7432 So I turned my attention to Stromeyer. The other odd thing to me here was serum 1817 mentioned in 2.9.1. Friedrich Stromeyer was the chemist who discovered Cadmium in 1817. My thought process: http://imgur.com/58ZWVfv Spoiler: Real REAL spoiler Input Cadmium as the answer for Mission 2.1 - Viola! Puzzle piece #2. I still feel like there is more in this document. Maybe someone else can look and find something?
Mission #1 Puzzle piece: Spoiler Being inspired by Lyrah's work, and having exhausted other possibilities, such as known "William Lamy"'s, I imagined it might well be another element. I looked up a list of who discovered what element, and lo' and behold: Spoiler #81 - Thallium - First Isolator: C.-A. Lamy
Mission #3 Puzzle Piece: Spoiler Thanks to @riningear for reminding me about the clue in 3. 1863 is the number of the auction. following the general run of things so far, i looked up to see what was made in 1863 Spoiler It's Indium
So, Spoiler It looks like the first three are elements. I wonder if that's a running theme for the others.
Going by general results pertaining to mission 4 and beyond, it would seem the theme has changed. This could be indicative that we've yet to manufacture a "key" of the results from Missions 1-3, and it could also be a hint that manufacturing that key might potentially point to the following theme. So it might be worth investigating whether or not we can find something based on the 3 first pieces, before we move on to the next 3. I've checked for any Archive entries using various configurations of the atomic numbers as well as element abbreviations - based on the fact that all entries so far have been 6 characters - with various arrangements based on both mission number, melting point, and year of discovery (in both descending and ascending order), as well as dappling with arrangement by metal-type (transition and post-transition) and group (krypton vs xenon); but with no results thus far. In any case, I'm going for a nap, but thought I'd better share my ruminations - if for nothing else than to remember where I left off. Edit: Having glanced through various databases as a bed-time story, I could spot no correlation between the 3 elements, be it ionization, atomic mass, electronegativity, density, occurance, etc. - only their proximity to each other on the periodic table seems above-chance. Which could arguably be of importance when manufacturing the key.
It's also worth pointing out that the elemental abbreviations for the first three didn't spell out anything, despite utilizing Caesarian shifts. And I really expected it to spell out Pesman too..
This is really cool - and it highlights the need to be able to access previous missions without restarting them from scratch.
If you go to http://www.asciitohex.com/ and then enter hello + <enter> in the textbox and then hit convert, you'll see the 0x0d 0x0a get added, which indeed are the Carriage Return and Line Feed characters. Great finds by the way! I had been looking into Stromeyer yesterday but did not notice the 1817 connection. Could this be connected to the Tantalum capacitators?
I'm trying to figure out mission 4 puzzle piece solution and there are things of those docs, which caught my attention. The first document has 70$ extra charge, but the taxes are not listed as they are on other documents. I first thought, that it may refer to the Yttebrium element, but it's not. I'm stuck at this point, but maybe someone will make use of this info. If that's a tax, then the Third Zone Lad sales tax is 10%.
Quite a few accounting errors in the recipients it seems. Spoiler $70 missing on the Third Zone Labs Spoiler 12% tax rate in Spokane, when it should be 8.7% Spoiler 3.5% tax rate in Oregon, when Oregon has no sales tax at all. Just to name a few.
Looking at the achievements in the client, Spoiler I found out that all of the mission-related ones are named after a certain "theme". The achievement for mission 6 is called "Chemistry", for mission 9 "Medical" etc. It may be somehow related to the puzzle pieces.
Ok, I went through and ordered all things under the Chemistry tab. Not sure if should do the others. Here is the confirmation codes I recieved. Boric Acid 835263044 Calcium 228606557 Glycine 822985690 Serine 278319742 Acetic acid 245149888 Deuterium oxide 200276 Isoflurane 655463 Scrith 997000 Dihydrogen Monoxide unavailable dangerous substance Unobtanium unavailable
Did the same to compare, and got the following. Interestingly, the last three aren't random like the rest, good catch Field! I tried the first few and stopped previously Deuterium oxide not changing is for obvious reasons, but the other 2 are interesting. If you consider 655463 as ascii hex it's "eTc" or ascii decimal it's "A6?" (if you add 9970 it's "A6?cF") Boric Acid 307227324 Calcium 1804740687 Glycine 1816033885 Serine 2047970417 Acetic acid 344250778 Deuterium oxide 200276 Isoflurane 655463 Scrith 997000
Just on a wild hunch: Not sure of what the significance might be, but it was one of the initial correlations that came up in search. Albeit they do seem remarkably similar in theme to the Nathaniel image.
Ok, did some more research though figure it might be misleading Carbohydrates Rice 1527kj per serving Pasta 1154 date first referenced in Sicily Quinoa 1539kj per serving
20.0276 g/mol is the molar mass of Deuterium oxide, the carbohydrates are energy in kJ, 997000 is the width in miles of Ringworld, and Isoflurane.... I got nothing. So we have g/mol, kJ, and miles.
No luck on Isoflurane here, either. But that L-655,708 agonist has been annoying the bejeebies out of me.