Craig’s Blog

As part of the promotion of the Da Vinci Code movie, Sony has teamed up with Google to run the Quest, which contains a daily question until the movie premiers. The questions (and therefore answers) vary each time you play, and some are randomized puzzles rather than trivia, so I am including strategies along with plain answers where necessary. You will find Wikipedia and its entry on the book rather useful.

1. Symbol Challenge. This game is based on Sudoku. If your shaded areas do not form nice, even squares (on in each quadrant), then click “new game” a few times until you get one to make it easier.
   “Please name the symbol on Robert Langdon.” blade
2. Restoration Challenge. Move the blotches around. When you click on one, it will hilight the possible blotches with which you can swap. Move them such that they cover the “re” at the beginning but leave “na” and “me” (’name’) uncovered. “Name the symbol on Manuel Aringarosa.” Greek cross.
3. Observation Challenge. Answer the questions based on the video.
   • “In the video, we see Robert Langdon dusting off a classical symbol, one associated with a character we only see a brief glimpse of in the video. What is the name of that oft-gilded symbol?” Fleur-de-lis, also associated with France and Quebec.
   • “Symbols, and symmetry, can be seen in the most unlikely of places. One such example is the position of the body at the crime scene, which resembles a drawing also depicted on the obverse of the Italian one-euro coin. What is the name of that famous Leonardo Da Vinci drawing?” Vitruvian Man
   • “One of the most iconic symbols of the movie is the cryptex, a small cylinder of stacked marble disks, embossed with letters and sealed with brass caps at either end. The twenty-six letters allow for almost twelve million possible password combinations — 11,881,376; to be exact. Armed with that knowledge, can you tell us how many dials it has?” 5 (26ⁿ=11,881,376, n=5)
4. Curator Challenge. A puzzle where you have to hang the paintings around. Start with the big pictures (click the back/left arrow under the painting in the left pane) and hang them first, as there are only one or two possible ways to hang them both at the same time. Keep working your way backwards with the medium-sized paintings followed by the small ones.
   “The symbol shown on Sophie Neveu (pictured at left) is called” a chalice.
5. Chess Puzzle
   • “What is the spiked belt that Silas wears called?” cilice
   • “What are the second, third, and fourth leading members of the Priory of Sion called?” Sénéchaux
   • “The engraved tablet that is supposed to reveal the hiding place of the Holy Grail is called the” keystone.
6. Geography Challenge. Note that a few of the pieces have text on them; these go in the lower right. When you put a piece into the proper place it will lock. You’re aiming for an aerial view of New York (actually lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn; note Ground Zero and the [southern-most] Brooklyn Bridge).
7. Symbol Challenge. Another take on the Sudoku puzzle, but this time without the luxury of even regions. The general strategy is to pick a shaded regions, see what pieces it needs, and put a piece in place only if it cannot go anywhere else in the region. Then there will be a math question. You can use a simple Google search for many of these, for example query “10 miles in kilometers“.
   • “What are 10,879 fortnights in years (to the nearest whole number)?” 417 (a fortnight is two weeks)
   • “What are four score Scottish ells in hands?” 740
   • “Which is longer, a TeX point or an ATA Pica point?” TeX point
   • “What is 1500 arcminutes in degrees?” 25
   • “How many nails in 138 nautical miles?” 4472021
   • “How much is one divided by phi, plus one, minus phi?” 0 (zero)
8. Restoration Challenge. Keep shuffling the blotches around keeping the numbers uncovered. This took me a couple times. Keep the numbers uncovered; this provides you with an ISBN number which you can search for at Amazon. My question was about ISBN 0860784843

, which is a book titled “Banks, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence”. Dropping ‘banks’ and ‘palaces’, as suggested by the Quest’s question, left me with the answer, entrepreneurs.

9. Curator Challenge. Another hang-the-painting puzzle. Again, start with the bigger ones.

   You can find the answers very quickly on Wikipedia: Charles Nodier (born 1780, died 1844), Isaac Newton (born December 1642), Mont Blanc (Pennine Alps), France (547030 sq km), Victor Hugo (died 1885), Galileo Galilei (born in February, died in 1642), Italy (unified March 17, 1861).

10. Observation Challenge. You can have the video opened in a separate tab for reference (use the slider below it to skip around and re-watch), or use the answers below. After filling in each answer you can press enter to see if it was correct.
    • “A seemingly-important stone-object is extracted from the ground by Silas. What is its shape?” octagon
    • “An interesting viewpoint is the vantage point from which we last see Silas. What is the last thing we see him touch?” holy water
    • “During the action in the video, we see many things shattered and destroyed, but what is it that will ultimately be broken?” silence
11. Chess Challenge.
    • “A word that can be read the same backwards or forwards is called” a palindrome (my favorite palindrome: “go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog”)
    • “Jacques Sauniere’s body was found in which part of the Louvre?” the Denon Wing
    • “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog is an example of” a panagram
12. Geography Challenge. Again, find the words with the text and assemble them in the lower right corner so that they lock into place. The pieces with the river (greenish) go in the lower left. The answer is Rome (note the Colosseum in the lower left). Then it will ask you to “find the Palazzo Venezia by clicking on a Greek Cross hidden in the city”, which is just to the left of the red dot on this map. Your cursor won’t change when you hover over it, so just give it a click.
13. Symbol Challenge. Another Sudoku-like puzzle. When you’re done it will ask you to translate a word ‐ be sure to use Google’s translator because other dictionaries can give you slightly different answers (for example, my favorite translator produced ‘environments’ while Google’s answer was “atmosphere’s”).
14. Restoration Challenge. Uncover the message, then use an Atbash decoder to translate it.
15. Curator Challenge. Hang the pictures again; remember to start with the big ones.
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19. Symbol Challenge. First do the six-piece Sudoku puzzle. If at first you only get a few pieces on the board, start anew until you get a dozen or so. Then it will ask a question. The one I got:
    • “During his Italian Journeys, William Dean Howells notes that there are engineers of this nationality on all the Mediterranean steamers.” English. You can read the entire book for free at Project Gutenberg; I did a quick page-search for ‘engineer’ and the first instance gave me the answer.

During the episode “The Whole Truth” (2×16), there is a point where Jin and Bernard are fishing with nets on the beach. Sawyer walks up and begins talking. Jin becomes confused and the audio is unintelligble as we hear it from his perspective. Reversing the audio reveals a clear exchange of words between Sawyer and Bernard.

Here’s how it played out on the show:

[Sawyer walks up; voices being spoken normally]
Saywer: “Yo, Daddy-o!”
Jin: “Sawyer.”
Saywer: “Way to go, papa-san. You didn’t waste much time. I’d give you a cigar, Bernie, but I’m fresh out.”
Bernard: “Sun’s pregnant?”
Sawyer: “Keep it down, there, Susie. I don’t think Jin senior here knows yet.”

[audio reverses and becomes indistinguishable as Jin looks confused]
Sawyer: “Let sunshine tell ‘em.”
Sawyer: “Hell, no.”
Bernard: “You should tell him”
Bernard: “Well…”
Sawyer: “Not my place”
Bernard: “Well aren’t ya gonna tell him?”
Sawyer: “Well I got my sources.”
Bernard: “Well, well how do you know?”

What really happened is that the dialog for the “confused” part was recorded in order, then the order of the lines were reversed, then the audio track was played backwards.

Clip of the reversed dialog, unreversed (i.e. listenable) [MP3]

A man has been charged with pirating a screener DVD of Walk the Line after the Motion Picture Association of America set up a special server for him to upload it. They caught wind of his intentions after he discussed it in a chat room. The MPAA then set up a fake web site for movie downloads to entrap him. Pretty slimy move. I wonder how much money — coming from the salaries of actors and crew, of course — was used to fund this scheme.

Andrew Sullivan from Time wrote a decent editorial about the cartoon controversy. An excerpt:

The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and the symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich. But I have yet to see Jews or Israelis threaten the lives of Muslims because of it.

In my last post I mentioned that an Iranian newspaper is holding a contest for creating holocaust cartoons. (It should be noted that the newspaper is owned and operated by the city of Tehran in alliance with the holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) This is not an act of revenge which would upset Jews in the way that Muslims are upset now — while the Holocaust certainly makes one think of Jews, it is not a symbol of Judaism in the way that Muhammad is of Islam. Rather, the cartoons will be endorsements of fascism and genocide.

And finally, a topical political cartoon by Tom Toles.

Mirrors: Time editorial, cartoon.

In the past week or so, many Muslims have pushed protesting to insane extremes in response to some cartoons published in European papers, namely Denmark, Norway, and France. The cartoons depicted Muhammad and Allah. At this point several people have died. Let me repeat that: people have died as a result of cartoons being published.

Less serious but also noteworthy:

• The Danish embassy in Beirut was burned down
• Two executives from a Jordanian newspaper which reprinted the cartoons have been arrested
• The 12 cartoonists are currently in hiding with police protection

In a fit of immaturity, an Iranian newspaper is now holding a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon.

Here are the cartoons in question.

Mirrors: AFP article, Reuters article, cartoon gallery