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Post by Beelzebibble on Mar 27, 2013 6:43:45 GMT -5
Just to be clear... Three seven-digit codes have been scattered around the forum in different ways. You must find those passcodes and send them to me by PM. Only one person needs to PM me any one passcode, but you assuredly need all three to win the game. Upon receipt of each passcode, I'll send the player who PMed me several more images. By finding all three passcodes and combining those unlocked images with the ones you'll receive at the start, you'll pool all the images you need to determine the six-word question. This was carefully worded, but at no point does it say the passcodes are one-time-only. On the contrary, if either of the two players who've so far missed any one passcode are able to discover it and PM it to me, they too will be sent the corresponding images. The passcodes aren't "defunct" now.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 10:34:47 GMT -5
All right, let's finish this up, shall we? It's been two ENTIRE MONTHS since I posted the final challenge. If the players were going to solve this puzzle, they would've done it, like, a week ago. Suffice it to say, the final challenge was a bust. Will we now sit around and weep over this failure? Well, no, not me, I already got most of that out of my system. How about I explain the solution instead, in excruciating detail? That's what you guys like to see me do, right? No one's stopped me yet!! Here we go, then. The solution. Let's start by reviewing the puzzle pieces. Each of the three remaining players -- Belle, Sem, and Testbug, in case you forgot -- was originally given a PM containing several images. This is what Belle got... This is what Sem got... And this is what Testbug got...
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 10:41:39 GMT -5
Those weren't all the puzzle pieces, though. As I set in the challenge outset post, three seven-digit codes had been hidden on the forum in different ways, and the players would need to recover those codes in order to unlock the missing pieces. I also suggested the players mosey on over to the Q&A thread: One more thing: Since you're looking for a question and an answer -- and since the final quiz looms -- it couldn't hurt to take a peek in the Q&A thread. Concealed beneath spoilers in three of my posts within the Q&A thread were the following three messages: In this post: A MESSAGE FROM JAMES GANDOLFINI“The fuck is this Mole crap? Back in the day, you know what we played? Mafia. I played Mafia. I was the fuckin’ Mafia champ. Everyone loved that game. Matter of fact I think there’s even a forum skin for it.” In this post: A MESSAGE FROM KATHY BATES“One time I served a man a slice of cake singing Happy Birthday and telling him if he was a good boy he wouldn’t have to eat any of the special candle. The special candle was his thumb which I’d cut off that morning. It happened in the book anyway which I thought was better, I’m not going to lie.” And in this post: A MESSAGE FROM STEPHEN COLBERT“America, there are only two news sources you can trust. One of them is me, Stephen Colbert. The other one is on Archie Exie somewhere. I’ve got no affiliation with it but I, Stephen Colbert, vouch for it with all my God-loving heart.” THAT WAS A MESSAGE FROM STEPHEN COLBERT
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 11:08:26 GMT -5
Obviously, these three clues synergized with three of the images that the players had been given, sending strong signals toward three facets of the forum. James Galdofini's recollection about the Mafia forum skin, as well as the close-up photograph of skin sent to Sem, indicated that it would be wise to check up on the forum skins. Indeed, a skin titled "The Mole" had been created, which at the time would display the following main page banner. (It probably doesn't anymore, though, since the forum upgrade. Thanks, Obama.) So, that was one seven-digit code down: 2901310. And to the player who sent me this via PM, I replied with the following images: Kathy Bates' birthday cake story (obviously a reference to Stephen King's Misery), along with the much less gruesome cake image sent to Testbug, was a pointer to the Birthdays sub-board of the Introductions & Greetings board, whose description was changed to: "1t's awful nice to make a topic f0r someone on their 6irthday. If you feel like bein8 a 5uper Duper Good 4riend, then here's the 9lace." Easy enough. That code was 1068549, which unlocked the following three images: Finally, Stephen Colbert mentioned a trustworthy news source for the forum, and Belle received an even more blatant clue in the form of a newspaper that was literally fading out of existence. To the news fader! ...Well, unfortunately, I didn't keep a record of the adjustments, and the fader's since been edited. But at the time there were seven messages, and I appended a single digit onto each one. You merely needed to take them in the most natural order, starting from "Welcome to the Exodus! We hope you enjoy your stay here!" and ending on "As always, Post in the RP!" in order to get the following string of digits: 3507624. This unlocked the last three images. Not terribly difficult, all in all -- and in truth, at least one player managed to work all this out in relatively short order. But with all of the puzzle pieces in hand, what remained was to work out the question they comprised. And Here Our Troubles Began.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 11:37:43 GMT -5
THE RED PIECESI don't think anyone had a hard time figuring out that the chromatic images were the key to working out the question, and that they proceeded in rainbow order. What's more, red was definitely the easiest set. Guess Who, the fourth Doctor Who, and the cover of Horton Hears a Who: our six-word question was off to a fine start. WHO ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 11:46:16 GMT -5
THE ORANGE PIECESThis really should have been pretty manageable, but it was dangerously easy to overthink. Hopefully seeing the four of them together like that should help. Two photographs depicting a pair of people, and in both cases it's the one on the left who's circled. An older photo with three people, in which, again, the one on the left is circled. And then that final image... This time it's the old lady on the right who's circled. Pattern broken, huh? But wait: it's also the only one of the four images in which the subjects are photographed from the back rather than the front. If we saw a front-on shot of these people in the same arrangement, then the old lady would now be on the left. Pattern sustained! WHO LEFT ---- ---- ---- ----
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 11:53:00 GMT -5
THE YELLOW PIECESClose to orange in the "very simple concept, but easy to overthink" category was yellow. Don't stress out about this one too much. These four random images were each divided in half. That's the only word you need. In my original draft, the ocelot was flipped horizontally, as I liked the symmetry: the right half of the man, the bottom half of the car, the left half of the ocelot, the top half of the house. However, my trusty playtester and sister found this was causing her to get too hung up on the specific correspondences: RIGHT-MAN, etc. I flipped the ocelot in order to break that symmetry and try to draw out the essential concept: these are just halves, that's all. WHO LEFT HALF ---- ---- ----
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 12:06:57 GMT -5
THE GREEN PIECESThis was easily the hardest set, or so I thought, anyway. It was supposed to be the stumper -- kind of as a matter of necessity as this was an auxiliary word that was hard to represent visually. Any other suitable replacement I could have chosen would have been equally tough to convey, and once this word was chosen, I couldn't come up with a better way to suggest it than this. Ironically, though, being pretty auxiliary, this word was the least important of all of them. Having figured out the other five, easier words, a player could have gotten a very accurate sense of the question without tearing their hair out over this one. Three images, and a set of dashes in each one, indicating the number of letters in that word. Cousin It from The Addams Family was the easiest to identify, of course. And with that in hand, it shouldn't have been too hard to guess that the old lady image represented "sit", and finally the baseball image represented "hit" (not "bat", the knee-jerk reading). "It", "sit", and "hit". The word must be "it", right? But hold on now. Think like a Pohatu. If this trio of images were supposed to jointly convey "it", then why would I have gone right ahead and put "it" right into one of the three images directly? Or, alternately, why not go the other route and have the other images be Tim Curry in Pennywise makeup and, like, I don't know, the Pulp album cover? If the green word were "it", then you'd suppose either all three of the green images would give you "it", or none of them would. You wouldn't suppose one of those images would give you "it" directly and the other two wouldn't. "It", "sit", "hit"... there had to be something else going on. Try this, instead. Take the first letter of each word. I S H Oh, of course! The green word is so obvious now! WHO LEFT HALF ISHKABIBBLE ---- ---- No, just kidding. WHO LEFT HALF HIS ---- ----
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 12:12:32 GMT -5
THE BLUE PIECEOnly one. I wanted to switch things up for one of the words and give you only one clue. I might have been hoping this would mildly freak one or two people out and lead them to conclude that some other blue images must have been deliberately withheld either by myself or by the Mole. But no, in fact, there was only one blue image. Just as well, since this word was pretty straightforward and wouldn't have been easy to represent in a variety of ways without just getting repetitive. WHO LEFT HALF HIS TEAM ----
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 12:17:25 GMT -5
THE PURPLE PIECESNow, I'm pretty disappointed that no one seemed to figure this one out. I considered it to be definitely one of the easy ones, alongside red and blue, in contrast to the more deceptive orange and yellow and the sinister green. You've got three different kinds of stands, right? A music stand, a lemonade stand, and a handstand. So the word has to be "stand" -- or rather, a derivative form of "stand". After all, there's a little bit extra going on here, with the "I" and the "G" tacked on in two images, and the "n" of "Lemonade" highlighted. This one doesn't take a genius. WHO LEFT HALF HIS TEAM STANDING
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 12:28:05 GMT -5
So who left half his team standing? That's easy. Obviously it's in reference to this team, and this game. Let's brush up. Our team started with twelve players. The first three episodes each saw one player get executed: Lugiasian, Geo, Tangrow. Then two more players were voted off in between episodes: Iron Mouse and DL. That left us with seven: Belle, Biscuit, Bulbs, Elliot, Ninety, Sem, and Testbug. At the end of episode four, one of those players was executed, leaving six players still in the game out of the original twelve. That player's departure, in other words, left half his team standing. And that player was Bulbs. You know. Bulbs. Psst - in fact, there was an extra clue. In the banner for the Mole skin,Bulbs #6 was the only player name that was both completely within the frame and not obscured by any other elements of design. And his rank as #6 stressed the fact that his execution marked the halfway point.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jan 10, 2014 12:31:33 GMT -5
So, no payout for this challenge, I'm afraid. Boy, if only I'd given you guys one more year, huh?
This concludes the challenge portion of The Mole. As in, of the entire game. But alas and hooray, we're not done just yet. The final quiz still looms, at which point it'll be time to declare the game's winner, and to unmask the saboteur. I'll announce the quiz date soon.
THE TEAM POT: 532 EP THE MOLE'S POCKET: 452 EP
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pokedigi
Citizen of the Archipelago
Posts: 12
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Post by pokedigi on Jun 23, 2014 16:53:17 GMT -5
So, did this ever end? Or no?
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Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Jun 24, 2014 10:58:55 GMT -5
I don't think so, I'm pretty sure that Pohatu still needs to come up with a final test... I think...
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jun 25, 2014 6:03:17 GMT -5
Nope, the final test's been ready for ages. I just find it hard to believe anyone, including the players, would give a shit at this point.
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Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Jun 25, 2014 17:34:04 GMT -5
I still do, I can say that much for certain.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jun 28, 2014 11:23:01 GMT -5
Thanks, Blood. That genuinely does warm my shriveled heart.
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