Ok, so I was browsing the new posts and saw the one on "Did you know".
I saw this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Cryptic
Did you know that there's a sculpture outside the CIA Headquarters that has a code on it that hasn't yet been fully deciphered, yet it's been there since 1990?
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So I decided to google it and found the old TFP archives:
http://www.highiqsociety.org/img/gif...s/puzzle02.gif
I found a post by Cynthetiq that listed an out of date ABC article. There was a transcript of the coded message as it has been decoded so far.
The Hint of the day from the ABC site held a passage that reminded me of an old story, something about piramids and sealed chambers or something so I thought I might find a reference if I copied a portion and googled it.
This is what I googled:
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING
Well, I thought I had googled it, but I'd put it in the url portion of the browser. Anyone would think that it would just return a no page found error. Instead it offered a download or open of a word document called Palimptest.doc.
Palimptest?
Opening the doc I found the following.
Quote:
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q (?)
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WTF? Note the bold portions, they make up the word PALIMPSEST. Is this a key?
I thought that maybe word had taken the quote from the url and turned it into a doc, but trying other parts of the hint of the day, it returned the expected no page found. Also, I had pasted a lot less than what appeared in the document. Where does the extra 'X' come from at the end?
What type of url returns a file like that?
I checked the doc's properties and it seems the author was a David Wilson, Xavier University. (Anyone have any info?)