Difference between revisions of "Lonelygirl15 puzzles"

Revision as of 21:29, 19 April 2008

See also KateModern puzzles.

This article or section has been nominated for a cleanup The content on this page may be overwritten or contradictory. You can help LGPedia by cleaning it up.

This is an index of all the puzzles that have taken place in the Lonelygirl15 web series.

Bree Phone Home

Why can't my dad leave normal voicemails like all the other dads...

In Bree Phone Home, Bree calls several of her relatives in hopes of finding out what could have happened to her parents. When she dials great uncle Franklin from San Francisco, her call is picked up by an answering machine for Powell's Dry Cleaners.

Powell's Dry Cleaners Message

Bree said the phone number aloud as she dialed it: 287-0211. Since she mentioned Franklin was in San Francisco, one of the possible area codes was (415). Calling 415-287-0211 allows you to listen to the same message heard by Bree.

Hello and thank you for calling Powell's Dry Cleaners. We are open 7 days a week from 9 am until 5 pm. Our current specials are as follows: Dress shirts 3 for $5 with an 8-9 day turn around time. We also offer rush service at a rate of 3 shirts for $12. Please leave a message after the tone and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.

The numbers of shirts and days that it will take to clean them are the real message. The message below has the numbers in bold.

Hello and thank you for calling Powell's Dry Cleaners. We are open 7 days a week from 9 am until 5 pm. Our current specials are as follows: Dress shirts 3 for $5 with an 8-9 day turn around time. We also offer rush service at a rate of 3 shirts for $12. Please leave a message after the tone and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.

The numbers are 7953589312. This is not a phone number. However, when reversed, it yields (213)-985-3597, which is indeed a phone number. When this number is dialed, a voice message from Bree's father plays.

Bree's father's message

This is the message heard after dialing (213) 985-3597.

Bree, it's your father. If you are listening to this message, you managed to crack my code. Your mother and I are safe but I need to talk to you alone. Confirm that you got this by sending me a secret message back. I'll meet you one week after that at the place where we used to talk about Feynman and Jared Diamond. I know you're confused right now. But all will make sense after we talk. I'll see you soon sweetie.

Richard Feynman is a famous physicist for whom Bree has great admiration. She quoted him in her blog Daniel Returns, and More Interesting Factoids (Yay!), in which she tells a story from his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

Bree also quotes Jared Diamond' Guns, Germs and Steel in the The Tolstoy Principle (and Dad "talks" to Daniel).

Since Bree is homeschooled and these readings have been assumed to be part of her coursework, it's possible that her dad is referring to some place where they used to go to work on her studies. He does not seem to specify what kind of secret message he wants her to send back.

• Listen to the message from Bree's father.
• Wikipedia article on Jared Diamond
• Wikipedia article on Richard Feynman

Mystery Movies

When Bree hears the answering machine's message for Powell's Dry Cleaners, she seems disillusioned and says she's run out of leads. She either has not yet realized there is a puzzle behind the message, or she was acting as if she didn't notice. In her video Mystery Movies, Bree names the movies she watched that day and mentions

• Citizen Kane
• Usual Suspects
• Sneakers
• Out of Sight
• Ocean's Eleven
• Never Say Never Again

The first letter of the titles of these movies spell out "CUSOON", as in "See you soon." Bree must have indeed figured out the puzzle and this is her response to his message. Although even in this video she acts like she can't figure out the puzzle, presumably she's putting on that act because her father wanted it to be a secret message. Bree's frequent mention of movies and how she used to go watch them with her dad might be another clue as to the location of the meeting place.

Since her father had requested that she meet him a week after receiving the message, their meeting was expected to take place on Saturday, December 30th, 2006. On December 30th, 2006 Jonas and Daniel found Bree meeting with her father at an unnamed location, confirming that Bree and her father indeed managed to successfully communicate via these puzzles. Nikki Bower later discovered that the location was The Coral Tree Cafe.

Miss Me?

Miss Me? is the second video in the LG15 series to contain a puzzle that viewers can solve. The first video to contain such a puzzle was Bree Phone Home. The Bree Phone Home puzzle however, was much simpler and not implicitly tied to the OpAphid ARG. OpAphid videos always contain puzzles, but this is the first of that series to be incorporated into the Lonelygirl15 series.

There are very faint symbols that flash momentarily, several times during the video, in different corners of the screen. The symbols appear to be braille, although the resolution is poor, and the contrast in the video needs to be increased in order to see them properly. See External Links for the video with contrast.

Watch out for the flashes at these times (in min:sec)

• The first is in the lower left corner at 0:04
• The second is in the upper left corner at 0:19
• The third is in the lower right corner at :33
• The fourth is in the upper right corner at 0:45
• The fifth is in the lower left corner at :58
• The sixth is in the upper left at 1:15
• The seventh (and last) is in the upper right corner at 1:27

Due to the poor quality of the symbols displayed, they don't look much like braille, although they were intended to. Each of the screencaps below has three rows. The first shows the symbols as they were displayed, the second shows their braille equivalent, and the third translates the braille to letters. (screencaps to be added soon).

First set
Anagrams to "HARD".

Second set
Anagrams to "AND LIFE".

Third set
Anagrams to "HEINZ".

Fourth set
Anagrams to "SQUARE".

Fifth set
Anagrams to "MILE".

Sixth set
Anagrams to "RIP STEPHEN".

Seventh set
Anagrams to "ASMODAI".

The phone number

Together, all the solved phrases are

HARD / AND LIFE / HEINZ / SQUARE / MILE / RIP STEPHEN / ASMODAI

They each have some number associated with them.

• Hard = Hard Eight, a movie. (8)
• And Life = A song by Skid Row, called 18 and Life (18)
• Heinz = The Ketchup (57)
• Square = 4 Square, the children's game. (4)
• Mile = 8 mile, the movie. (8)
• RIP Stephen = St. Stephen, who died in the year 34 AD. (34) (Note: Many have also suspect RIP Stephen is also in reference to Bree's dad, whose name is unknown to viewers.)
• Asmodai = The demon of lust, the seventh sin. (7)

The number is: (818)-574-8347

Daniel's voicemail message

Daniel's message to Bree is

 "Hey, this is Daniel.  Leave a message if you want to, but I only call back girls who do ceremonies. (In a whisper) Bree, do the ceremony."

• Video with increased contrast
• Forum thread containing solution. Second post summarizes the thread.
• mp3 file of Daniel's voicemail

Semiotics

In the video Jonas Sucks Daniel finds a package in their car. It includes a set of Nancy Drew books and a note from Tachyon. From the start, Daniel suspects that this package contains some kind of clue to guide them in figuring out the password to the encrypted disk Tachyon had left Bree.

Background

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. It can represent a methodology for the analysis of texts regardless of modality, which is the particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans. For these purposes, "text" is any message preserved in a form whose existence is independent of both sender and receiver. Naming the file "semiotics" could signify that the password to the file already exists in what Tachyon sent Daniel. In this way, Daniel and Tachyon need know nothing about each other to be able to communicate what the password is.

The note

Tachyon's note reads

xxxxxxxxxxx
  Where it all started
the answer is before you
  a subtle clue I Drew
        xoxo, 
          T
                    yyy

When Daniel read the note aloud in Jonas Sucks he mentioned that it was a haiku. A haiku is a short poem consisting of three lines. It must have five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five in the third. Tachyon's note had five, seven, and six syllables respectively, so it was not actually a haiku. This proved to be significant when solving for the password of the file.

Another important feature of the note was the x's and y's written at the top and bottom of the message. On the top-left corner there were 11 x's, on the bottom-right 3 y's.

The books

The package contained five books from the Nancy Drew series, including

• No. 1 The Secret of the Old Clock
• No. 7 The Clue in the Diary
• No. 10 Password to Larkspur Lane
• No. 19 The Quest of the Missing Map
• No. 52 The Secret of the Forgotten City

The Nancy Drew series was created and outlined in detail in 1930 by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which continued the series after his death.

The file

In the video description to Jonas Sucks, Daniel posted a link to the file, http://tinyurl.com/33s4w2. The file has been uploaded here. It is a password-protected .rar file named "53454d494f54494353.rar", which is hex for "SEMIOTICS".

The password

The note from Tachyon pointed to "where it all started" and capitalized "Drew" in "a subtle clue I Drew". This led to the first part of the password, which was "stratemeyer" because the Nancy Drew series was started by him. Stratemeyer is an 11-letter word--11 was also the amount of x's in the upper-left corner of the note. The number of y's on the bottom-right of the note was 3, so the second part of the password was 3 characters long.

Another "subtlety" in Tachyon's note led to the second part of the password. Daniel had incorrectly noted that it was composed like a haiku, with the numbers of syllables per line being 5, 7, 5, respectively. Her note actually had 5, 7, and 6 syllables. These numbers, "576" were the second part of the password.

Password (case sensitive): stratemeyer576

The disk contained two images and a text file. These contents are explained in detail at Bree's disk.

• Forum thread discussing puzzle
• You can download the file from here.