Clues and News 1/29/9

ClueChaser.com will be having a video contest.
When:
http://www.cluechaser.com/2009/01/29/video-contest/

Thursday, January 30th, 2009 through February 16th, 2009.
During this time anyone (registered player or not) can enter a video that matches the contest theme. Upon conclusion of the contest all submitted videos that meet the requirements will be posted on the website for judging. Judging will be done by the players and visitors until February 23rd at which point the winner will be announced.
Prize:The winner will receive a ClueChaser T-shirt and recognition on the site.
Theme:The point of the contest is to promote Game 3: Chasing Shadows and the ClueChaser site in general. Therefore, the theme of the video will be:
Shadows.
(Interpretation of Shadows is left to the imagination of the contestants)
Rules:Every contest has to have them. I’ll try to keep it simple.
• All submitted videos must:1. Match the theme of the contest.2. Contain original content (no copyright infringement) with the exception of music.3. Mention ClueChaser.com at least once.4. Promote ClueChaser.com in a positive way.5. Be rated G (this is a family friendly site)6. Be in English if it contains dialog. Foreign languages with English subtitles or vice versa are not acceptable.7. Be posted on YouTube.com (for consistency) and a link to the video sent to admin@cluechaser.com
• Multiple submissions per person are allowed (and encouraged).
• All submissions become the property of ClueChaser.com© and Cowpatty Bill Entertainment©.
• And just in case - Contest is void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Open to all residents of Earth. Rules subject to change without notice.
Equipment:For all the videos I’ve created I use Windows Movie Maker for the editing. It’s free and if you have Windows on your computer you probably already have the software. It’s easy to use and quite flexible. However you are free to use whatever software/equipment you like.
Good Luck!

The disk of Phaistos is a 10 (may never be solved)

The Voynich Manuscript is a 9 (unsolved)

Linear A is an 8 (unsolved)

Kryptos is a 7 on the ClueChaser difficulty scale

It's currently unsolved.

The 2nd Zodiac cipher is a 6

This isn't it. It hasn't been solved yet.

Chaocipher is a level 5 on the ClueChaser.com scale

Currently Unsolved

Amnesya.com is a 4 on the Cluechaser.com difficulty scale

And it's unsolved.

NotPron.com is a 3 on the ClueChaser.com Difficulty Scale

Rubix cube is a 2 on the Cluechaser.com scale

I made some ebaums contributions

Using the cluechaserfan account Monica started at ebaumsworld.com, I uploaded a gallery of puzzles/ciphers with a "cluechaser" rating of their difficulty. It was more in fun and promotion than anything. Here's the first:


Jigsaw puzzles are a 1 (1-10, with 10 being the hardest)

Thank you God

I thank god for helping me a lot these days with my career plans. I thank god who made my son’s genetic disease something liveable after 2 tough years. I thank god for my last daughter who has not his brother’s genetic disease. I thank god for still helping me after I questionned his existence for quite a long time. Thanks god!

A brief history of risk

(from about.com)

I would imagine most people who read this will have played Risk or are familiar with it in some other manner. Sometimes it's sort of interesting to know how it has grown and evolved over the years.

RISK TIMELINE
1950s - Parker Brothers forms an affiliation with the Miro Company in France.
1957 - A representative of Miro approaches Parker Brothers with La Conquete du Monde (French for "The Conquest of the World"), a game designed by Albert Lamorisse. Lamorisse (a movie writer and director best known for The Red Balloon) and Micheal I. Levin are co-credited with the game design at BoardGameGeek.com.
1959 - Parker Brothers first publishes the Risk Continental Game in the United States.
1986 - The game Castle Risk (played on a map of Europe) is published.
1993 - The rules for Secret Mission Risk, which had been a variant in Europe, are added to the United States edition.
1999 - A limited edition of Risk is published in France, as 10,000 copies of Risk Edition Napoleon are released. An expansion in 2000 added the Ottoman Empire.
2001 - Risk players can now conquer the moon and underwater territories with Risk 2210 AD.
2002 - Risk moves to Middle-earth with the release of Lord of the Rings Risk.
2003 - Risk travels deeper into Middle-earth with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition.
2004 - Risk: Godstorm is published, injecting mythology into the game of world domination.
2005 - Risk: Star Wars - The Clone Wars Edition is published in concert with the release of the third Star Wars prequel, Revenge of the Sith.
2006 - Risk: Star Wars - Original Trilogy Edition is published. The game features three factions, each with its own victory conditions.
2008 - A new basic edition of Risk is published by Hasbro.

I still just remember the 6 sets of colors with a little triangle and the bigger star-shaped thing.

And stalemates lasting until morning when someone makes a stupid move or gets bored and careless.

Good times.

Sleepless and smelly, but good times.

Echoing my friends

Monica, Don and I are balking at puzzle #6 in the cluechaser Puzzle Master series.

http://www.cluechaser.com/puzzles/6/

I'm out of ideas.

Straight from the Man

(From Cowpattybill's blog at www.cluechaser.com)

This is a call to action. I need your help. If you like ClueChaser and are looking forward to Game 3: Chasing Shadows then I’m talking to you. I need you to tell your friends, your families, strangers on the street, everyone you see. Tell them about ClueChaser. Tell them what it’s about, how much fun it is. Tell them where they can find it.

Why?

Because marketing is essential to the success of something like this. Because I can’t do it all myself. Because I’m behind and need the pressure to finish that only a horde of thousands of screaming players can inflict on me. Because I don’t know what it’s like to play it so I can’t describe it the way you can.

What can you do specifically?

Do you have a blog? Talk about ClueChaser.Do you have an email account? Send emails to your friends and family.Do you have a Facebook, Myspace or some other social networking account? Tell everyone there about it.Do you have your own website? Find a place on it to link to ClueChaser and/or talk about it.Do you work in the media? Find a sneaky way to mention ClueChaser. Put it in a puzzle. People love puzzles.Do you work for a new company or does your company have a new product? Contact me about including it in a puzzle.Do people value your opinion? Tell them about ClueChaser.

Have I covered all the ways you can help?

Not by a long shot.If you have other marketing/advertising ideas let me know.

ClueChaser
Spread the word.

Tasteless but classic

Don found a nice little bumper sticker for me since I'm Canadian.

I thought I'd return the favor but I'm not quite as tactful I suppose...

News

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial update about the site http://www.cluechaser.com/ and has been spread through the internet via AIM, ICQ and emails. Efforts have been made to focus it to a human audience so for all the crawlers and robots out there, please disregard. Again, this isn’t spam in the sense that we’re selling something but more of an attempt to distribute information we feel the group as a whole and any potential audience they may have would be interested in.

Update:

From Cowpattybill’s site:

“My 9 year old son Tyler was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes three years ago. One thing he enjoys doing is going to a summer camp that is just for kids with diabetes. While he is there he is surrounded by other kids who understand how he feels and struggle with the same things he does.

The camp is called Bearskin Meadow Camp. It is run by the Diabetic Youth Foundation (www.dyf.org) and it is truly amazing. They don’t turn away any child regardless of their ability to pay. For awhile these kids are able to almost forget that they have diabetes and that they’re “different”. As a parent I can take a break from diabetes management because I know he is safe and surrounded by trained professionals.

To be able to do these camps they rely on donations and fundraising. Their biggest fundraising event of the year is the Families in the Forest walk. It’s about a mile and half. My son is going to do the walk this year. He has set up a donation page. If you would like to sponsor him and make a donation you can do so below.

His goal is to raise $2500 not for himself but so that DYF can pay for other children whose families can’t financially afford to send them.

On behalf of Tyler I thank you for your support.”

















A picture of Tyler that Francisco Bernardino swiped from Cowpattybill’s Facebook page


As the author of this week’s update, I thought Tyler’s cause was worthwhile enough to disseminate it across member sites. He’s a nine year old boy who actually cares about others. As adults we have an opportunity to show Tyler and his friends and the other kids at the camp that it is good and worthwhile to be good. It doesn’t seem right to crush anyone’s hopes and dreams let alone a decent kid who by all accounts is thriving despite having to face Diabetes every day for the rest of his life. You are not obligated to donate but the least you can do is spread the word over the vast and wonderful internet in the hopes that someone has a couple bucks ready for a good cause. Thank you to anyone who has decided to post the update and thank you to anyone reading it. This is all for now but I think we can all agree, it’s more than enough.

Here’s the fundraising widget (to not allow any funny business, direct all donations to either the cluechaser site, cowpattybill or the fundraising widget - YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE ANYONE’S MONEY):

*I put the widget on my sidebar to the right*

To post, just cut and paste from your email/other to your blog/social network site. If you have any problems or questions you can contact me at my blog (cluechaser.blogonize.com) or email (cluechaserfan@live.com)

Happy ClueChasing!

-Monica Hardaway

A photo finish

Don and I triumphed over sample puzzle #5 at about the same time.

It's funny but the solution is a little challenging logically but when you're given such a sparcity of options, it sort of stands out quite a bit now that I look back at it.

I guess that's how it always is. I think I heard somewhere that's how great innovations are remembered. Everyone says, oh, yeah, well duh!

Even though they could never have come up with it on their own.

I won't post the solution as Don already has but keep in mind that everything happens for a reason and even if it seems like things are numbered by mistake, it's probably for a very good reason. It's nice to see commonplace puzzles (crossword) mixed into a larger, more complex game.

I've been up since 6 this morning but I just couldn't get back to bed.

Oh well...

-[FB]

Ancient Puzzles

From: http://www.cluechaser.com/2008/11/12/puzzle-1-2/

The moon nine days old,
The next sign to Cancer;
Pat rat without a tail;
And now, for your answer.

5 ezzlup elpmas

On to sample puzzle #5.

The answer is a URL.

But that's all I know for now. Solving the crossword didn't give the solution. The numbering is screwed up and there's a blank. Otherwise I'm stumped.

=FB

Scraping to get by (*spoiler alert*)

Well, I guess most of the guesswork has been taken out of Sample Puzzle 3. I'm not sure how Monica and Don found the extra pictures, not even a clue...

But find them they did and I trust they didn't leave any out. So that makes 8 images for the next part of the puzzle.

Let's see...

Hotel, Lima, Oscar, Alpha, Hotel, Uniform, Papa, Oscar.

Looks familiar, hmm...

Segue-way into a sort of puzzle, cryptographic, cipher sort of topic.

The NATO phonetic alphabet

The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets have no connection to phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the NATO alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically (Alpha for A, Bravo for B, etc.) so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.

Follow the white rabbit and you get:
Hotel=H
Lima=L
Oscar=O
Alpha=A
Hotel=H
Uniform=U
Papa=P
Oscar=O

HLOAHUPO which by itself is meaningless and doesn't work as a password. However, if you use an anagram program such as Andy's Anagram Solver (google it), the only real solution is:

Hulahoop

Which is the password for Sample Puzzle 3.

-FB

Giving up, Giving In, Getting ahead

I did the math but I either screwed up or am doing it wrong.



I hate you GoogleMaps


I've failed at Sample Puzzle 2.

I've given up and am moving on to Sample Puzzle 3.

I'm going to eat this whole box of Whoppers and figure it out (about 144 whoppers).

I have some hunches but have not found the more yet...

-FB

Sample Puzzle 2

Currently working or not working on puzzle sample 2 of www.cluechaser.com.

I don't get it.

It's just some pictures of clocks, feet and rulers.

Whatever.

I need to check in with Don and Monica.

Laters,

The Dark Lord of Not Getting It

Game Fury of the Fuhrer

New!

Site Updated

I updated the site.

Added some links and a poll...

Increased the darkness...

Cinderella was disgusted.

-Bernardino