Thursday, October 19, 2006

Life 14

Life 14 - A PHILOSOPHER'S DUTY

Difficulty: 9
Interest: 6

The image has a shoe and the word 'BACK' on it. Perhaps it means 'step back' (in time).

The text is a series of numbers followed by numbers in German. If we use the classic a=1, b=2... we get the following text:
Times 13
Put 3
E#DE#DEBDCA 7
Local 2
Pat 4 (this one is hidden).
There are two more hints in the source page: one at the end of the first part, and another one at the very end of the html. The second hint suggests the solution is a scientific term.

The title is also a hint.

Next Level

*Spoilers*


The words are all titles from past riddles, and the numbers in German are an index into the captions. The five resultant values yield an anagram that recalls a famous philosopher back in time. The hints in the HTML source suggest the answer is the means through which the 'duty' was accomplished. The solution is one word, lower case, but it's in Latin! Think botanical.

29 Comments:

Blogger Moulton said...

I'm guessing the german numbers are to be taken as numbers, along with those prefixed by #.

That would give:

TIMES 40
PUT 3
E4E4EBDCA7
LOCAL 2
PAT 4

The middle string looks like 5 bytes of Hexadecimal code.

Philosophers think logically, so the above might be a sequence of instructions in some kind of computer language akin to FORTH.

8:02 PM  
Blogger MathP said...

Vierzehn is 14, not 40.

Also, these words were all included in the title of past riddles. 'Times are changing', 'Put on your orange glasses', and 'E #D E #D' was the Fur Elise one...

8:52 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Yes, indeed. I was thinking of Pat as the name of the artist on Wichita Falls. So maybe we are looking for something based on the 14th, 3rd, 7th, 2nd, and 4th word or character associated with those puzzles.

9:13 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

So far we have...

Riddle One :: Times Have Changed :: 14

Riddle Five :: Put On Your Orange Glasses :: 3

Riddle Seven :: E #D E #D E B D C A :: 7

Riddle Three :: Local Weather Forecast :: 2

Riddle Ten :: Pat's My Favorite :: 4

I'm still thinking the numbers are some kind of index into the title or text of the riddle pages, but it doesn't seem to correspond to the Nth character or word of the page title or caption.

11:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Please note that the puzzle seems to have changed overnight... the first German number is now DREIZEHN, or 13 instead of 14. Another possible hint?

8:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the numbers correspond with Nth characters on those pages

dateh -> death
157310 135710

but death's not the answer

10:32 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

The page title has been corrected to label this riddle as Life 14. There is also a new comment associated with the Title Tag in the HTML:

Teasing before, but now it's real

The German word associated with "Times" has been changed from 14 to 13.

As the previous poster remarked, this now yields the letters "D A T E H" by indexing into the caption text on each of the associated riddles.

"D A T E H" anagrams to both HATED and DEATH.

Perhaps we are looking for some German philosopher who addressed the problem of existentialism and death.

But it's not Nietzsche, even though his initials (FN) match up with the Fn of the previous puzzle.

10:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

perhaps the number-words, and the German capitalized numbers also indicate a way of writing the solution. If it's a word or letters, write them with the correxponding numbers, and if it's a number, in German and capital letters....Just an idea...

6:38 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I did try writing the German word for "death" with no luck.

There is a substantial amount of philosophical literature that touches on the subject of death, and a laundry list of possible terms from that literature.

Trying them all out in German seems a bit daunting and tedious.

6:46 PM  
Blogger MhaPhew said...

Ive tried a few things myself including what has already been said here...also if any one uses Yay forums i have a question..is it dead?

8:34 PM  
Blogger MhaPhew said...

im sorry to the maker of this thread but if i may i want to post a link here to the other yay hooray forum for the antiriddle since the first one has messed up or something...http://www.yayhooray.com/thread/98000/Antiriddle-2---See-how-far-we-can-get#end

8:40 PM  
Blogger MathP said...

Post all the links you want. The more the merrier.

Just remember to link back sometimes ;)

2:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow I thought this one was obvious as hell...

10:33 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

We don't know for sure if 'death' is the correct string to extract from the caption.

And we don't know what the word is that appears in the image. Could be 'back' or 'blck' or 'byck' or something else.

I tried using the German word for 'death' to no avail. Nor does that seem to have anything to do with a philosopher's duty or thinking scientifically.

So, we're stumped.

2:10 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Yay Hooray seems to be vacated of participation.

The posters on the AntiRiddle Forum seem not to have gotten as far as we have here on the AntiRiddle Solver Blog, in terms of the decoding of the caption text to yield 'DEATH' and 'HATED'.

The 3-way balkanization of the community of puzzle solvers appears to be an impediment to unraveling this one through the collective effort of multiple minds.

We've taken five steps backward and three steps forward, but we haven't yet sauntered into the light.

Perhaps it's time for a Vulcan Mind Meld.

9:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm thinking it has something to do with Immanuel Kant, and not Nietzsche; As he's got "A Philosopher's Duty" attributed to him, Kant is German which hopefully follows... As for DATEH I'm still at a loss...

10:10 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Several of us took 'D A T E H' to be an anagram of DEATH. It's also an anagram of HATED.

The reference to 'death' in the context of German Philosophers quickly conjures up Nietzsche and Nihilism.

But Kant is clearly connected to imperative duty.

But we are still left with the puzzling question, "But how did he do it?"

Who is he, and what did he do?

A few ideas come to mind, such as "Question Authority."

But coming up with answers like that is like taking random stabs in the dark. The space of possible answers is still too large to sift through.

10:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd go for 'DEATH', because that's what you get if you put the riddles in the right order. (1 3 5 7 10)

How did the philosopher die?
Just a guess.

11:21 AM  
Blogger MhaPhew said...

can someone post links to those riddles please? i wanna look further into those specific riddles

3:43 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...


Riddle One :: Times Have Changed :: 13



Riddle Five :: Put On Your Orange Glasses :: 3



Riddle Seven :: E #D E #D E B D C A :: 7



Riddle Three :: Local Weather Forecast :: 2


Riddle Ten :: Pat's My Favorite :: 4

6:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

maybe back also refers to going way back in terms of which philosophers youre considering...havent found anything yet though

11:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think we need some more help on this one, unfortunately.

12:07 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

If we go all the way back to the beginning of Philosophy, we arrive at Socrates, and the notorious Death of Socrates, which Aristotle called a Crime Against Philosophy.

Does that lead us anywhere?

7:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Indeed it does Moulton...I finally got the answer, how did Socrates die? What's the scientific name for it?

7:53 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

He drank hemlock.

He was tried and convicted and sentenced to death.

Drinking the poison of hemlock was the prescribed method of his death.

9:18 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Whoa.

That was a tough one.

They wanted the scientific name for how Socrates died.

Sheesh.

9:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

bloomin' heck that was a toughy...

9:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

easy

12:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, it was easy for you Anonymous because the answer was spelled out in one of the comments, all you really had to do was search google for it.

5:36 PM  

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