Quest Discussions

[puzzledrifter]

Thanks for the confirmation!

I suppose that also means I was wrong about PERFECTLY, so I'll save my takeaways from that for later and focus on the 3x3 first to finish off the riddle.

The quick version is that I interpreted the riddle as [The number] Nine reveals nine [additional letters/numbers] from those nine [minipuzzles] found by B(9) with the first of the quest. It's similar to the interpretation mofinn shared about each instance of the word "nine" referring to something a bit different, which also goes back to the prompt we have at the start of this topic, that there are four aspects to the riddle you need to understand in order to solve it. I think identifying what each "nine" refers to is a big part of that.

Looking at the riddle, I also can't rule out that "the first of the quest" is just the letter T, literally the first of "THE QUEST."

So back to the 3x3...

I still love BEGINNING for the answer but don't want to let it blind me to other possibilities, and I mentioned a few of those earlier. Of the others I think BELONGING would be my top pick since BELONGING WITH is a decent phrase, although BEGINNING WITH seems to fit the general context better.

If indeed it is BEGINNING, then we have a problem, There are only two repeated pairs in the grid- DC and BA, and BEGINNING has two Is, two Gs, and three Ns. We can't assume that the letters are in the correct order (that the first DC corresponds to B) or that the letter pairs are 1:1 substitutions for another letter. Based on Jenny's earlier comment that the last two puzzles both relate to sets of nine, this inclines me to believe we're looking for a set of nine things where DC combined with one of those things yields one letter and DC combined with another of those things yields another letter. It could theoretically still be Polybius with nine different keys for each letter pair, but that would be a nightmare to test.

I really liked what I got when I combined these with the playing cards- the only real knock I have against that is that we haven't seen any repeat usage of minipuzzle elements yet, aside from references to the main body of text, and the cards have been used already.

I like the cards because C is never in the first letter on the pairs (and there wouldn't be, because there's no red card in the third pair), and similarly there's no E ever in the second place (no black card in the fifth pair). The only other combination that doesn't show up is D in the second place- and of course that one is NINE . I also really like it because when I use these rules, I get numbers that match the letter frequencies of BEGINNING.

21x3 = N
15x2 = G or I
20x2 = G or I
16x1 = B or E
17x1 = B or E

I like that a lot but don't see a sequence where these letters could be pulled this way. There are a few instances in the story where the right letters are grouped near each other, but nothing that lines up quite right with this.

[mofinn]

It looks like the 8 red numbers in parentheses do apply to "Those Nine". I think the red numbers mean for us to pull out the correspobding letters from "those nine".
6th letter of "those nine" = "n".
Altogether we obtain:
63879918
nonieetn
It anagrams into many phrases, including:
"One In Ten".

[puzzledrifter]

Jan 21, 2023 10:09:11 GMT -5 mofinn said:

It looks like the 8 red numbers in parentheses do apply to "Those Nine". I think the red numbers mean for us to pull out the correspobding letters from "those nine".
6th letter of "those nine" = "n".
Altogether we obtain:
63879918
nonieetn
It anagrams into many phrases, including:
"One In Ten".

I like it- those are good letters to work with. NOTE NINE could also be a thematically appropriate clue it unscrambles to, given our case of recurring nines.

[mofinn]

Although, if you pull the red letters in parentheses this way:
swallOwed
wHimpered
somethiNg
someTimes
sItuation
whispEred
Excitedly
forgotteN
inviSible

63879918 gives us ENNESSON; which anagrams into "Nonsense"! :-)

[mofinn]

Ok, here is how we obtain "Beginning". The 3 by 3 grid is a word, then letter count, Per Paragraph.
DC=4,3. In paragraph 1, the 4th word is "finished". 3rd letter is "N"
BA=2,1. 2nd word is "both"; 1st letter is "B"
EA=5,1. 5th word is "gloominess", 1st letter = "G"
DA=4,1. 4th word = grumbled; 1st letter = "G"
BC=2,3. 2nd word = can't; 3rd letter = N
BA=2,1 2nd word = I; 1st letter =I
BB=2,2. 2nd word = perked; 2nd letter =E
DC=4,3 4th word = smiled; 3rd letter =I
AB=1,2 1st word(in poem) = In; 2nd letter = N

NBGGNIEIN anagrams into "Beginning"

[puzzledrifter]

Jan 21, 2023 11:40:37 GMT -5 mofinn said:

Ok, here is how we obtain "Beginning". The 3 by 3 grid is a word, then letter count, Per Paragraph.
DC=4,3. In paragraph 1, the 4th word is "finished". 3rd letter is "N"
BA=2,1. 2nd word is "both"; 1st letter is "B"
EA=5,1. 5th word is "gloominess", 1st letter = "G"
DA=4,1. 4th word = grumbled; 1st letter = "G"
BC=2,3. 2nd word = can't; 3rd letter = N
BA=2,1 2nd word = I; 1st letter =I
BB=2,2. 2nd word = perked; 2nd letter =E
DC=4,3 4th word = smiled; 3rd letter =I
AB=1,2 1st word(in poem) = In; 2nd letter = N

NBGGNIEIN anagrams into "Beginning"

Awesome, great job!!!

[puzzledrifter]

Quick inventory of what we've got to work with from this point onward, and some of the thoughts proposed thus far about unused elements:

The riddle: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM THOSE NINE FOUND BY BEGINNING WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST

Unused/unconfirmed elements:
-Page 1 top left numbers in parentheses. No confirmation, but mofinn noted that if you index the letters from the answer right above this, you get letters that can anagram to ONE IN TEN or NOTE NINE.
-TH3 QU35T is clearly important and still unused
-The nine letters by the stairs on page 2 and the diagram with the stairs on page 1
-The other "nines" concealed within the other clues, like the keys at 9:00 on the clock, the 9 cards used to make QUEST, the 9 of spades used in that, etc.

Hints:
-The hints have multiple elements we haven't used, although sometimes it's not clear if we've used an element
-For hint 1 I'd argue that we've used most of this already except for "Top of Three TH3 QU35T Won." It might be that Top of Three refers to the spinning top on the border of page 1 since those elements go with the clock showing "three" but we ultimately didn't use the top for that minipuzzle so this may still be unused.
-I think "from sixty six begin step one" told us that the first part of the riddle was found using the 6-6 dice.
-For hint 2, it was proposed earlier that this may be a rebus saying "treasures in the quest are in..."
-There are a few possibilities on what hint 2's red "R" is referring to, but it's probably related to the red highlighted letters we've used already.
-We have definitely not used the 3+35=38=? yet.
-The drawings may be artistic flair or they may be clues

Context:
-In the start of this topic, Jenny mentioned there are four parts to be understood in the riddle in order to be able to discover the final answer
-It seems likely that three of those elements are what each "nine" refers to, and I'd speculate that the fourth part is understanding with what is meant by "beginning with the first of the quest"

And now into my pure speculation:
I'm feeling pretty good about exploring options with the interpretation of the first two nines as [The number] nine reveals nine [keys] from... I like the number nine being the subject of the first because it says "NINE REVEALS" instead of "NINE REVEAL." I like nine keys a lot since I really feel like that 9:00 set of keys is too nice not to mean something here. I earlier interpreted that those keys are one of nine elements to pull a single letter, but maybe they fit directly in with the riddle. And we do need nine keys ultimately, I believe, to turn that HKJDSJRTC into something else.
Earlier I had speculated that the nines in the riddle might swapped out for nine letter words, but I'm currently liking that less than if we just need to interpret what each "nine" refers to

[Jenny]

Jan 21, 2023 11:40:37 GMT -5 mofinn said:

Ok, here is how we obtain "Beginning". The 3 by 3 grid is a word, then letter count, Per Paragraph.
DC=4,3. In paragraph 1, the 4th word is "finished". 3rd letter is "N"
BA=2,1. 2nd word is "both"; 1st letter is "B"
EA=5,1. 5th word is "gloominess", 1st letter = "G"
DA=4,1. 4th word = grumbled; 1st letter = "G"
BC=2,3. 2nd word = can't; 3rd letter = N
BA=2,1 2nd word = I; 1st letter =I
BB=2,2. 2nd word = perked; 2nd letter =E
DC=4,3 4th word = smiled; 3rd letter =I
AB=1,2 1st word(in poem) = In; 2nd letter = N

NBGGNIEIN anagrams into "Beginning"

Excellent! 5 more entries for mofinn! So the complete Riddle is found!

[puzzledrifter]

Guess of the day- ANNUITIES. It's a nine letter "treasure" you can get by pulling one letter from each of the solved minipuzzles. Also A NEW GHOST, which can be anagrammed if you pull the 9th (rolling back to the beginning when you reach the end of something shorter than nine).

On a more serious note, I think a good place to focus would be on what we haven't used from the hints yet. TH3 QU35T shows up in hint 1 and 3+35=38 shows up in hint 2- those two seem like they would go together. Hint 2 indicates 38 is more relevant than 3 & 35 independently, but it could still be interpreted as 3 & 8, e.g. third row eighth word, or 38th, e.g. 38th word, every 38th letter, etc.

It strikes me as potentially related that the final words in the story on page one are "The Quest." "The first of the quest" could relate to the hunt in and of itself, any places "The Quest" occurs in the hunt, or the letter T which is literally the first letter of "the quest." That placement of the phrase at the end of page one is conspicuous!

[Jenny]

You're right. The Quest, which is the secret (the poem), and why it is spelled Th3 QU35T is important, and a clue for another NINE to find.

[puzzledrifter]

Very exciting! Looking at the poem with this in mind, it occurs to me that maybe the important part of the clue isn't necessarily the number 38 itself, but rather that the 3 + 35 = 38 is an instruction for how to translate words in the poem into numbers. I'm going to spend a little time thinking about the implications of that! For example, those dashes might actually be minus signs!

[pop]

Maybe some words from the poem are turning into numbers?
I think I can find 9 of them... (if I force TOssed)

TO
FOR
WONder
gONE
FORgotTEN
TOssed
TO
FORever

2 4 1 1 4 10 2 2 4

[puzzledrifter]

Jan 27, 2023 10:51:19 GMT -5 pop said:

Maybe some words from the poem are turning into numbers?
I think I can find 9 of them... (if I force TOssed)

TO
FOR
WONder
gONE
FORgotTEN
TOssed
TO
FORever

2 4 1 1 4 10 2 2 4

I like the approach- it could just be that TH3 QU35T is pointing out to pull numbers from the text. One other thought on the approach is that you don't necessarily need to torture TOSSED to fit the mold; since TEN is a two digit number, it could just be that we've yielded 9 digits - 241141024. The zero is less helpful than a ten if these nine were to be an extraction of some kind but still potentially interesting- a zero could still potentially work if the sequence is the key for a shift.

Another possibility would be if we need to take these numbers and use them with the parentheses numbers. We have eight digits there but if we're pulling from this list, then the 6th number in the set would be 10 and we'd end up with 9 digits at that point, too.

That would use up our unused clues nicely, if we combined the numbers in TH3 QU35T with the 8 numbers in parentheses to get a key for the stepladder 9 letters, but I'm making a small mountain of assumptions to get to that point. It may be helpful to keep tethering pieces back to the riddle. Could the numbers you found be "those nine found by beginning with the first of the quest"?

[Jenny]

Jan 27, 2023 10:51:19 GMT -5 pop said:

Maybe some words from the poem are turning into numbers?
I think I can find 9 of them... (if I force TOssed)

TO
FOR
WONder
gONE
FORgotTEN
TOssed
TO
FORever

2 4 1 1 4 10 2 2 4

So close..... you don't have to force any.....maybe you need to look again.....

Clue to this was 'TH3 QU35T' - there are numbers in THE QUEST... (and they happen to add up to 38 when you find the correct #'s)

[pop]

Jan 27, 2023 13:11:34 GMT -5 Jenny said:

Jan 27, 2023 10:51:19 GMT -5 pop said:

Maybe some words from the poem are turning into numbers?
I think I can find 9 of them... (if I force TOssed)

TO
FOR
WONder
gONE
FORgotTEN
TOssed
TO
FORever

2 4 1 1 4 10 2 2 4

So close..... you don't have to force any.....maybe you need to look again.....

Clue to this was 'TH3 QU35T' - there are numbers in THE QUEST... (and they happen to add up to 38 when you find the correct #'s)

ofTEN!!!   Ugh...  I missed it (as usual...)

TO
FOR
WONder
gONE
FORgotTEN
ofTEN
TO
FORever

2 4 1 1 4 10 10 2 4   (These now add up to 38).