Blue Ice - part 5 By the Three Jays with many, many thanks to Rick Yapp @~Concluded from Issue 72 Decoding BUZXEFREP We're on the last lap now as we finally have all the elements needed to decode BUZXEFREP. The code used is a straightforward alphabet wheel with the usual alphabetical values for all the letters and a value of zero for the space. Thus: 0=space, 1=A, 2=B, through to 26=Z. Pair up the BUZXEFREP letters with the 9 found from the keywords and add them together, remembering to include the zero in your calculations. So we have B U Z X E F R E P C O T E M I T () Y + Using your alphabet wheel, add B and C (=E), U and O (=I for, when you count on from U round the wheel 15 places you need to include the zero as one of the places), etc And that is it, no fanfares, no flashing screens of congratulations, as finally the ultimate solution emerges in the form of just two short words, one German for "ice", one English- we have EIS BROKEN. THE RED HERRINGS AND THE NUMBER GRID PROBLEMS The Hope Colours: (There seem to be two errors in this puzzle.) Hope calls out colours in nine rooms, as follows: Dining room yellow-violet; Cellar orange-yellow; Library orange-yellow; Pond red-green; Mouth red-blue; Hall red-orange; Music room red-indigo; Chimney orange-indigo. In the Drawing room, she calls out violet-orange but this is a mistake and should be orange-violet. The colours are a code that can be cracked by using Base 7 maths. List the colours of the rainbow in order and assign them Base 7 numbers, thus Red=0, Orange=1, Yellow=2, Green=3, Blue=4, Indigo=5 and Violet = 6. Base seven and decimal number equivalents are 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 these numbers are the same in base seven and ten. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Base seven 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Base ten 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Base seven 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Base ten Then list the colours thus: Room Colours Base seven Base ten Alphabet Equivalent Value Letter Dining Yellow/ Violet 26 20 T Cellar Orange/Yellow 12 9 I Drawing Orange/Violet 16 13 M Library Orange/Yellow 12 9 I Pond Red/Green 3 3 C Mouth Red/Blue 4 4 D Hall Red/Orange 1 1 A Music Red/Indigo 5 5 E Chimney Orange/Indigo 15 12 L (Red-orange = 0,1, red-green = 0,3; red-blue =0,4; red-indigo =0,5 Orange - yellow = 1,2 or 9 in decimal; orange-indigo = 1,5= 12 decimal Yellow-violet = 2,6 =20 decimal; Orange-violet = 1,6 = 13 decimal) Now we come to the second error - the missing letter. There should be another E to give us 10 letters of an anagram of the solution - ICIA MELTED. THE PARCHMENT See the screenshot in this issue This is another blind alley. The letters on the parchment are meaningless in themselves; it is the position of the hands that are important. Join the hands of the figures on the left to form the letter N. Joining the hands of the remaining figures produce a small O and the line of an exclamation mark. Follow the line of the fist of the E and draw in a point (see screen shot) to produce the solution - No! in other words another red herring and not the U.S. THE MAP Countless hours have been spent on the map, which seemed significant because most of the place names are anagrams of facial features, because it looks like a face, and because it appears to transpose east and west. However Rik assures us that the map should be taken at face value only i.e. it is another red herring and of no further significance. THE PAPER PLANE Yet another red herring, this was Rik's own favourite problem in the game but he admits it is impossible to solve. When flown in the Chimney, the Win Room and the Sky, circular markings and dots can be seen. The circles represent a dartboard and the dots numbers on the board. The idea was to work out which numbers the dots represented then translate the numbers into letters. An anagram of these letters would give a word that would indicate this was another dead end. Rik realised that it would be impossible to work out the positions from the angles shown so the plane is merely a diversion whose only use is to produce a parchment piece. THE NUMBER GRID PROBLEM Every screen contains a 4 x 4 number grid. Some are easy to read, some very difficult, some are difficult to spot in the first place and some even disappear as the game progresses. Here are some pointers to the trickier ones: Mousehole: the numbers are on the cheeses Secret garden: numbers flash in sequence on the flowers - if you draw the layout of the flowers you can record the numbers as they flash Bedroom: switch on the lamp to expose the numbers Video: reverse the numbers Bathroom: the numbers disappear when you clear the condensation Dining room: numbers are on the menu but disappear when you complete the food challenge Cellar: look at the markings on the floor - you don't count the dots but join them up to make 4 sets of 4 numbers Mouth: numbers flash in sequence in the picture that later accesses the Video room Painting: count the markings on the edge of the picture frame Drawing room: translate the Roman numerals along the mantelpiece Chimney: the numbers to use are the 4x4 block in the grid on the wall Music room: the numbers are on the piano keys To attempt to solve this section your first step must be to write out all the quotations, etc. which appear on the scrolls after you have successfully identified all the Sparklies and number each letter in sequence, ignoring the spaces. Eg: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Loo(01) S H E I S V E N U S W H E N S H E S M I L E S Bedroom D R E A M Y O U R D R E A M S A W A Y (Feb 02) ETC. ETC Now put all the grid numbers you found into February date order, keeping each line separate: e.g. Room Loo (Feb 01) Bedroom (Feb 02) Pantry (Feb 03) First grid line 17 12 4 9 12 10 3 19 4 12 13 16 Next use the letters in the following day's quotation that corresponds to these numbers. I.e. W E A R P E T A L S A B Follow the same procedure with the second and third lines of the grids and you should end up with three pieces of prose. However these are not essential to the game. Our joint efforts plus those of a wider group of players, failed to find the ends of these pieces so there would appear to be errors in some of the numbers. Below are the translations as far as the Mousehole where sense seems to have disappeared into the skirting board along with the mouse. Wear petals above thy head while taste and clear sky lie heavy in thy heart. Say not the bitter ... Say drop a star that shone down like so much desire, quiet and lovely with a shower of glitter to ... Read the parts that do throw lite o'er man and all the kindness lost inside thy wan design. Meet ... After the Mousehole, Mouth and Picture some of the numbers begin to make sense again. The fourth line of numbers completely baffles us still, in spite of the joint efforts of many people. Rik said this line should be handled differently from the others. The room's year date should be subtracted from the last line of numbers in each room's grid and the translation made from these new numbers. The words that should appear give a clue to what the mouth in the Video Room is saying and is another way of arriving at the words Perfect Ice Cube. copyright * The Three Jays. 2000 Any queries regarding this walkthrough should be addressed to :- Jill clive@blandings.freeserve.co.uk Joan gold@mweb.co.za Joyce & Peter joyce@albanyis.com.au - o -