Difference between revisions of "Talk:Merit's Encoded Message"

Revision as of 08:54, 27 May 2011

Ideas people might try.

I'm not good at decoding, but the "___ of the Dragon" makes me think of some possibilities:

Once, the heart of the empire was "the Dragon's Throne." Throne seems likely - the WORD of the WORD of the Dragon could be talking about some order stationed in the Dragon's Throne.

We should check the word "name", in case it's talking about the renaming. Shen's Gate is close enough to the wall that whoever wrote it could have been over the wall at some point and noticed the change.

egg, spirit, breath, claw, guardian, guardians.

And I'd be curious if the word "wall" was in there somewhere.

--Ringrose 17:19, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Crazy attempt to record wrong guesses per word

Testing wiki formatting. Mouse over WORDs to see what we've already tried in that spot.

Paragraph 1

These are the words I found upon the NOUN of the WORD, as I found it, and as I transcribed it, before it was destroyed. May these words not fall into the hands of the enemies of the Dragon.

Paragraph 2

"And in the last days of the great Lo Tan, did he give his WORD and WORD to the brotherhood of Keepers. And as the Cycle WORD turns, with each Great Spirit rising to ascendency and then falling once more only to rise again, so did the WORD predict that the Dragon Emperors would return. And so as the WORD of WORD WORD, the Keepers would protect Their WORD from those who would WORD it and cause the WORD of the Dragon's WORD. And thus did the WORD Keepers receive their charge, and WORD the three Keys to the Vault and WORD them WORD the three WORD of the Dragon. And the

FLAME

of the Yin was in the body of the land, and it was WORD beneath the earth, where it would not be found. And the WORD of the Chi was in the heart of the land, and it was WORD within the WORD, where it would not be found. And the WORD of the Yang was in the spirit of the land, and it was WORD within the WORD, where it would not"

Paragraph 3

These are the words I found upon the scroll, as I found it, and as I transcribed it, before it was stolen. May these words not fall into the hands of the enemies of the Dragon.

Paragraph 4

"The Great Keeper is not able to stop us. The first WORD are dead, though they did manage to WORD the WORD and WORD their Key WORD WORD, never to be recovered. The second WORD have made a WORD with demons and WORD a piece of the WORD away from the WORD, where it can not be WORD. But the third NOUN were PAST-PARTICIPLE-ADJECTIVE and have WORD their charge. We shall WORD into the WORD of the WORD and WORD the WORD this very day, and the Dragon's Hoard will be ours."

Paragraph 5

These are the words I have WORD, and I believe they are true. Thus, I am the last Great Keeper. The rest of the WORD are dead, or lost, or worse, and so it is only I who remain to fulfill our WORD. Though I do not have the Keys, I do have the blessing of Dragon. I shall WORD his NOUN ADVERB to those who would defy his will, and they shall be bound to His WORD, as if they were Keepers themselves. Until freed by WORD of the Dragon, they shall serve, ADVERB PREPOSTION their WORD, as WORD PRONOUN WORD VERB with PRONOUN. The Dragon's will shall prevail until He returns.

Comments

Oooh, nice. When initially thinking about the mechanic, we were thinking of doing mouseovers for information on a single word (if there's ever more than one hint worth of information), but it hadn't come up yet. --Boojum 18:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It's better than the other stuff I tried, at least. Cumbersome to convert my spreadsheet into that format by hand, though, so I'll ponder how to convert it automagically. --Haydn 18:55, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

This is great. My hat's not pointy enough to do it any way but by hand, but I can start adding my previous guesses in off my spreadheet. Xian 14:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I have a reasonably tall pointy hat in the field of text-frobulation, if someone wants to send me a spreadsheet to try playing with. --Boojum 14:53, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I forgot that, unfortunately, the way I've been managing my guesses means that previous guesses are not preserved anywhere in the sheet, so by hand is the only way to go back and include mine. Xian 16:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. This may be a job for Perl. After the log gets written, though. :) --Boojum 16:22, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm adding in my (and Xiao Fa's) previous guesses by hand. If any of the guessed words seem sufficiently unlikely to ever be tried again, go ahead and remove them. I already can't guess the same word twice in the same place. Xian 17:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The paragraph breaks help me find my WORDs more quickly. If they are getting in the way of some automated process, feel free to remove them. Haydn 13:36, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Spelling

Us humans are usually fairly forgiving, but even fairly sophisticated text-frobulation can't cope with misspellings, so we may need to be more careful than when we're simply writing to be understood.

Prophecy is the noun. Prophesy is the verb. Phrophesy isn't anything. Xian 00:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

At this point, there are few enough words that I'm looking by eye rather than doing anything automatic. ascendency/ascendancy was okay, and I will try to not hold obvious typos against you, but I don't count plurality differences, conjugation differences, etc. --Boojum 00:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Targeted Discussions

Five letter element from old French

The 5 letter element from old French almost has to be "metal", and I would never have guessed that.

Huh. It's not "the metal of the Yin", which is weird, because "earth" is the only other element with 5 letters and it's not from Old French. Unless "element" is an anachronism, and we're looking for something like gold, silver, or boron. Or someone is using a synonym for one of the in-fiction elements, like "plant," but not plant because it's from Old English. Or "element" is meant in another sense entirely, like "piece of the whole." Haydn 17:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

What about "Terre", a French word for Earth? --Ringrose 18:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Water is also a five letter in-system element, which I guess we might try even though I believe it is germanic. Also I don't think we've tried earth there, though the earth of the yin being buried beneath the earth sounds weird. Of periodic table elements, only boron, argon, xenon and radon are five letters, I think. Elizabeth 18:37, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Anyone mind if I move this section to the Talk: page? This seems more like discussion and less like mechanic. Xian 23:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Unless of course it's Beryl --Xiao-Fa 01:29, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think "beryl" really fits (it says "five-letter-element", but the element is beryllium), although I'll try it anyway because I respect and fear the Eon-Laura wordgame mindlink. Hey Laura, could we get the four hints broken out, so we can see what each individual hint was? The parentheses around "NOUN" confuse me. Xian 06:27, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Noun
Element (but it's still a noun, not something like "Pb")
From Old French
Five letters

Going from one hint to two hints on a word also went from "Pronoun" to "Interdeterminate pluralish pronoun", but "elemental noun" seemed too much like a part of speech I didn't know what it was. --Boojum 14:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, my next best idea is to try "beryl", even though it's not an element, and then five-letter synonyms for elements, e.g., "fluid", "humus", "loess", "talus". Except not "loess" because it's Germanic in origin, and probably none of the others because they're all kind of weird. Xian 15:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The Cycle WORD Turns

Possibly "the Cycle *wheel* turns"? I miss the words to try. --HeidiB 16:07, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Meta-discussion

My theory is that this is a wiki with revision control, and we should individually feel free to make executive decisions about how we want it organized. If someone disagrees, they can change it back, and/or start a discussion about it. At the discussion point, we can be all "IMHO" and "Mother May I," but things will tend to go fairly well if we just assume that everyone involved (including ourselves) is clever. For example, if I take out the "Words To Try" and you want them back, just put them back. I'll think, "Huh. Apparently they were more useful than I thought," and happily leave them alone. Haydn 13:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

But I don't (yet) feel confident enough in that theory to remove old talk entries, even though they are clearly obsolete. Any opinions on old talk entries or the proposed theory of wiki-etiquette in general? Haydn 13:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

If this version of MediaWiki supports fairly low-effort collapsible sections of pages or auto-archiving, either of those could be simple solutions. Otherwise I think the easiest answer is "scrollbar is your friend". Xian 14:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Collapsible boxes don't get introduced until 1.17, and this is 1.15. I could try upgrading if people were really enthusiastic about collapsible boxes. I think archiving should just work, though. Let's see. --Boojum 22:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, the archive behaves fine (and knows it's a sub-page); the automatic archive box is having issues, I think because I keep trying to steal it from a more recent version of mediawiki. :-P

Difference between revisions of "Talk:Merit's Encoded Message"

Revision as of 08:54, 27 May 2011

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