Talk:July 2010 inscriptions

Information needed (on main page)
(sorry I wasn't sure how to format the main page for this- Jenny): Cobalt: Torn Grid: on a table to the left of the Palace on Sakejima Complete Grid: on a rowboat moored to the left of Dragon's Nest dock. Letter: on a barrel between the Ironmonger and the water, Dragon's Nest dock Letter: on a barrel on the right side of the Olive docks. Bold text
 * Places where all inscriptions were found (with ocean name)
 * Credit for the translators

Theory discussion - go nuts!

 * It's some person looking for a woman, Barnabas the Pale speaks of a woman he wants to meet again, so it has to do with Barney
 * Barney speaks of meeting his woman in the Abyss => Abyss SMH


 * The mainland the writer is from is the Empire, therefore the coming update is related to Imperial Outposts


 * The day the woman left is:
 * Cinco de Mayo
 * Duanwu Festival (or double Fifth)
 * Japanese/Korean Children's day


 * The woman is a:
 * lover
 * relative

Jacobey has taken the grid, and taken in alphabetical order, plotted A->B, B->C using the depth chart seen what letters the line crossed through, spelled out "Barnabas on the Haunted Seas"

Here is Jacobey's explanation: Here's the best explanation I can come up with to connect the three clues:

1: The Letter.

The trick here was to use a "monoalphabetic substitution cipher".

This uses a 1 character for 1 letter direct substitution through out the whole document.

This is typically done by looking at letter frequency and if you can find "the" you're well on your way to solving it.

Letter frequency in the english language is as follows:

E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, L, D, C, U, M, F, P, G, W, Y, B, V, K, X, J, Q, Z

Translating the letter gave us all the "language". We also know from translating the language there is no "Z".

2: The Map

Translating the map gave us a number of locations some numbers and a lot of theories.

It also gave us one clue: "Floor and Column will connect to what you seek"

The map on it's own with out the 3rd clue doesn't provide any information.

2: The 5x5 grid

This is what's known in cryptography as a "polybius square" cipher. each letter in the grid gets a 2 digit number.

In a classic version, I and J are treated as the same letter to fit all 26 letters into a 25 letter grid. However, there's no Z in our language so I and J get separate letters.

The rule of a polybius square is to go across and then down - which is how I interpreted "floor" (across) and column "up down")

a) Apply the language to translate the grid into English. b) Assign each translated letter it's corresponding 2 digit number. c) Verify each 2 digit number matches a number on the map.

Finally, the last step was a leap of faith - I reassembled the English alphabet and came up with this number sequence:

21, 42, 53, 24, 34, 25, 52, 31, 11, 23, 33, 54, 15, 22, 43, 45, 51, 13, 55, 41, 32, 35, 44, 12, 14

d) Connect each of the numbers together (the connect part of the map clue). Each line between numbers passes through a unique letter on the map.

e) Following the number sequence (in English) spells out:

BARNABAS ON THE HAUNTED SEAS.

As for an image of the final map - someone posted a link to one earlier. It's... um... rather difficult to make sense out of it.

Jacobey

Disproven Theories

 * FH made of Driftwood => Part of Frederico, a Scavenging Event
 * Star Pins => Part of Frederico, a Scavenging event

Whining about how event clutter never seems to get tidied up

 * Whine