The Unholy Saga of Where.gif
By UrbanZombie
It suddenly occurs to me that, much like survivors of plane crashes, we Jawbreakers are privy to a shared legacy of horror from dealing with whore.gif. Upon reading Beth's reply to me (I apologize, by the way), I realized that under greenmath, there are 6600 of you missing out on a story of pure pain. To ensure that you non-Lockjaw players don't feel left out as we quietly commiserate over cups of hot cocoa, trying to make the pie-related nightmares end, here's a brief history.
(Warning: This is kinda long. I kinda got carried away.)
Day 1: After a day of working on a rather nasty puzzle (complete with minor typo that caused us to think we hadn't solved it earlier on when we actually had) we find a new webpage, the Underground Resistance Front. After a bunch of Jawbreakers stay up alarmingly late exploring the vast site and breaking through the security system hidden in the logos left eye, we arrive at a forums page with three login boxes. We quickly and effortlessly solve two of the logins, and call it a night.
Day 2: An erstwhile Jawbreakers notices that the letters in the message next to the "events" login box form the acronym WHEREGIF. Sure enough, there's a file named where.gif in the root directory. It is the square root of 64, flipped vertically. We scoff and expect to have the puzzle solved in minutes.
Day 3: Puzzle still lingers, but there are still other things to work on. Still, frustration levels grow high, as we don't really know what to DO with the root of 64 backwards. Since the last puzzle on this page was solved by finding a .html file, we manually search every imaginable interpretation with every file extension possible, while continuing to plug them into the Events box.
Day 4: Frustration skyrockets, as we hit what professional athletes call "the wall". We've tried everything, three nonconsecutive people have posted SOLVEDs to the board for incorrect answers, and nothing has worked. Still, the root of 64 backwards mocks us.
Day 5: We have officially spent longer on this puzzle then any Cloudmaker or Jawbreaker before us, with literally no progress. Morale is low… talk of 'maybe we're not supposed to solve it yet' runs high.
Day 6: An update! The PMs, seeing our abject failure, have added… a dot. A small white dot has been added to the picture. Sarcastic exclamations of "OH, NOW IT FUCKING MAKES SENSE" are heard emanating from #jawbreakers. We know this is supposed to help, but it really really really doesn't.
Day 7: Another update, as the Puppetmasters attempt to assuage our hate with our first real solid clue: the words "Perhaps in Error" added to the original WHEREGIF message. Pie! Pi! Whee! Finally we have a direction. We have a point on a circle, pi, and the number eight. Despite the fact that we've spent an entire friggin week on this problem, it should be simple high school mathematics from here on in.
Day 8: 300 grown men and women suddenly simultaneously realize that they learned nothing in high school math. Impatient PMs slap yet another update; this time, its the word "synonyms" in morse code (also horizontally reversed). Now-openly-mutinous Jawbreakers spend their time in the chat coming up with their own synonyms. Asphyxiate… disembowel… enforced quietus…
Day 9: Once again the morning update comes along: its the letters of pi (TPOFOFNT etc.) surrounding the now-familiar root of 64. The Yahoo group is flooded with posts saying simply "WE ALREADY KNEW ABOUT PI, DAMMIT!". Speculation that the puzzle somehow refers to the ancient "Squaring the Circle" problem runs rampant.
Pages: 1 2
