Contest: Solve the puzzle! - Win 50 000 gold!

[Alex21]

Safir?

[Lo Pan]

women.

[Safir]

women.

Nope, sorry, wrong answer!

Disqualified.

[Spinewire]

Is it a Jwilson?

[Alex21]

Suckiest thread that ever did suck.

[Safir]

Is it a Jwilson?

Nope, sorry, wrong answer!

Disqualified.

I'm not Disqualified, you are, now get out of my thread.

Punk.

Safir?

Suckiest thread that ever did suck.

I would appreciate it if you could follow the rules of the thread and stop posting on this one while the contest is ongoing. You can discuss the contest HERE.

[satori]

27 furs?

[Safir]

27 furs?

THAT IS THE CORRECT ANSWER!!!


To claim your prize I would like you to explain to the public how you arrived at that conclusion.

I will shortly after that send you a PM where we can finalize the details of the transaction.


CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST WON 50k!


If you where at all helped by the information posted here by Yossarian (aka Orange), you might want to consider sharing your winnings, as he did a great job in solving the first part of the puzzle and shared it with the public.

[satori]

ok ill explain but i have to give most of the credit to Yossarian.

In the discussion thread he explained how the clue #1 refered to a book about llamas that was in the game.

Clue #2 was used in junction with that book with the first number being the page the second number being the line and the third and forth number were the letters you got and clue #2 said "derrick has a fetish"

Clue #3 was the same as #2 except you had to subtract 1 letter from each letter you got. Example if you a F it would be read as a D. and clue #3 stated "Check the house"

This is where Yossarian left it and i just remembered about that rune i had in my runebook to derricks first house so i recalled there and looked at all the crate he had, all were empty except 1. Inside that crate was 27 furs. That's how i arrived at the answer, and in retrospect i would like to split the winnings with Yossarian for all the help he gave everyone.

[Safir]

The Solution:


Here is the solution to the puzzle and how one needed to have followed the clues.

• Clue #1:
  This clue was an excerpt from the book "Regarding Llamas" by Simon. And the clue was meant to point to the full book that can be found all over Sosaria in UOSA.
  
  
  
  
• Clue #2:
  This series of digits is a simple book cipher, and the different numbers point to specific letters that can be deciphered using the book from Clue #1. There are three parts to each number, they point to different locations of the book, where that letter can be located.
  
  • Page number (what page the letter can be found on)
  • Row number (in what row of the above specified page the letter can be found on)
  • Letter number (how far in the row specified above the letter can be found on)
  Let me give you two examples, the first and second numbers from Clue #2, 161 and 4410. Let's break them down into the above mentioned parts: Page, row and letter.
  
  • 161:
    • Page: 1
    • Row: 6
    • Letter: 1
    
  • 4410:
    • Page: 4
    • Row: 4
    • Letter: 10
    
  The deciphered message from Clue #2 would read out as:
  "DERRICK HAS A FETISH"
• Clue #3:
  This series of digits is also a simple book cipher, but with a twist. Once deciphered, the message still comes out garbled, and one needs to add another technique to decipher it yet again. This cipher is called a Caesar cipher and plainly shifts any letters in the text a number of different steps along the alphabet. In this case there is one negative shift, which means that the letter combination "CDE" would come out as "BCD".
  
  Let me give you one example of the first word in the clue. Once the first five letters have been deciphered using the simple book cipher detailed above in clue #2, those five letters would read out as "DIFDL", which is completely incomprehensible. But by shifting them all 1 negative step using the Caesar cipher it would read out as "CHECK".
  
  Let me give you another example of just the first letter in clue #3, 374, and break it down into all the parts of the book cipher first.
  
  • 374:
    • Page: 3
    • Row: 7
    • Letter: 4
    
    This would give us the letter "D". If we then shift it once negatively, we would instead get the letter "C":
    
  The deciphered message from Clue #3 would using the book cipher (still garbled) read out as:
  "DIFDL UIF IPVTF"
  
  And then when applying the Caesar cipher on the garbled text read out as:
  "CHECK THE HOUSE"
• Clue #4:
  "# of what?" - This clue is slightly cryptic in it's nature, and here is where I believed (rightfully so) that cooperation from several players was necessary to solve the puzzle. The previous clues both helped solve the next clue, but also gave hints to what the final answer might be about. Clue #1 mentioned Llamas, and the book "Regarding Llamas", when read, clearly shows how sought after their wool (or "fur") is. The book, when analyzed can be interpreted as being a tribute to the disturbing nature of Llamas, and possibly even suggest that Llamas have a certain affection to people, that might even be considered religious.
  
  This inevitably brings us to Clue #2. Which when deciphered, reads out as "DERRICK HAS A FETISH", and considering the above analysis of Clue #1 is obvious when having found the answer.
  
  Clue #3 when completely deciphered reads out as "CHECK THE HOUSE". This in itself means nothing, but when getting to Clue #4 and the final answer, all previous clues come into play. If you have never enjoyed UOSA (but just sat in your safe hideout and macroed), and never just explored the huge world of Sosaria, you probably never would have been able to figure this one out. Clue #3 wants to point you to a specific house, it is up to the players to figure out which house that is. In this case, it is Derricks private house. When "snooping" around his house and looking through his stuff, one will notice that there is nothing else there but furs. Llama furs. Actually 27 of them. One obviously has to come to the conclusion that having nothing in a house but this ridiculous amount of Llama furs is nothing but a fetish. It is nothing to be ashamed of, just obvious, and might have been better received by the public had it been official.
  
  Now, I also mentioned in the rules of the contest that "You may use any means you find necessary to reach the answer.". I placed this in the rules for a reason. If one does not like to explore or actually spend time in Sosaria, there is this sweet, sweet thing called a "Search"-function on the forums. A function many seem to neglect when trolling the forums looking for information. When using the forums search function and searching for "DERRICK HAS A FETISH" only one hit will reveal itself (before the contest and the numerous times that phrase now has been mentioned due to it, but still applicable), that hit is a post made by me almost 9 months ago, on the 5th of May 2009, in the "Pics of the Week"-thread. Here you can see that I already then stumbled upon the solution to this riddle, and shared my findings with the world. Click this link to check it out.
  
  Below is an image of Derricks house as it is today. The in-game coordinates to this house are "95o 26'N, 33o 28'E":
  
  
  
  The final answer to this puzzle is "27 furs". "# of what?" equals to "number of what?" which is "27 furs".
  
  In essence, one could have possibly solved this by never logging on at all. ;)

"27 furs"

Thank you for participating!


// Safir

[Daolin]

Wow, excellent job! I was stumped at first and gave up quickly. I guess I need to think outside the box more.

[Phallax]

I think you need to do more puzzles like this. You are very creative with them and give the community something to do. I was tryin to figure this one out, looking up different ciphers and stuff but was just plain stumped.

[Safir]

Thank you both!

We'll see about making more puzzles, but it was fun and exciting to see how it would develop and who'd be the first one to get on the right track. ;)

[Downs]

so the answer's not ant lion?

[Wise]

I think its an ant lion, thats why he changed the numbers after the fact