(urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
Sun Aug 15 17:19:02 PDT 2010


Typhon was monarch. He built the Whorl.

António Pedro Marques wrote:
> Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
>>> 5553 8783 4223 9700 34
>>> 2221 0401 1101 7276 56
>>> SEALED FOR THE MONARCH
>>
>> I would like to be be 'Gene Wolfe' (he is the true monarch of the
>> books, after all!), but if that's the solution, the cipher must be
>> fairly complex - not a straight substitution. Notice that 'Gene Wolfe'
>> has 3 'e's in it, while there's not a single repeated 4 or 2-digit
>> group.
>>
>> Staring, I don't see any interesting regularities. There is one
>> repetition in the sum of each group: [18,26,11,16,7,7,5,3,22,21]. mod
>> 10 doesn't show anything interesting: [8,6,1,6,7,7,5,3,2,1]. mod 2:
>> [0,0,1,0,1,1,1,1,0,1]. If we drop the 2 2-digit groups to get
>> 00101110, that's an ASCII '-',  decimal 046, octal 056, and hex 02E.
>>
>> Each group begins with a different number, covering 0-9 except for 6 -
>> which has bad connotations religiously, of course. As for end-digits,
>> the 3x2 grid on the left all end in odd numbers - 3 or 1, while the
>> 2x2 block on the right ends in the even numbers 0, 4, 6. But there is
>> so little to go on that this could just be numerology.
>
> The last columns look like check digits, but there's an infinite way 
> those could be computed.... 3 to 5 is 2, 4 to 6 is 2, but who can 
> guess what that means.
>
> The first 3 columns all end in 3 above, 1 below. Chopping that out, 
> the frst two at least show symmetry - 555/222, 878/040.
>
> I dount we'll get anywhere from the numbers alone. Though if there is 
> something there to be found, I'd expect it not to be brutally hard. It 
> needs to be hard enough for the passer-bys. What do we have different 
> from them that should make it easier to us?
>
> Why is it sealed for the *monarch*? Is the monarch expected to be 
> moving around depot rooms? And how come monarch? He's posing as a god, 
> and his god personality isn't supposed to visit the room, or is it?
>
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