- kirish
- |
- Honorable Member
I believe I have found our missing steps (or link, as it were). I am going to post the entire process here, with steps 2-6 being what I believe are the new unposted goodness.
The visual work I did I put into this solution image. References to this image are in {curly braces}.
1) Map the images to numbers {numbers}. The images are perverted representations of Bungie's seven steps to world domination.
1: Start independent gaming software company. - Bungee jumper = Bungie
2: Dominate Mac platform: Launch assault on Windows platform. - Apple = Macintosh
3: Announce killer gaming title. - Angel = Halo
4: Acquire strangely addictive Chinese food company. - General + So = General Tso's chicken
5: Recover Ling Ling's head. - Banana Phone = Ling ling ling ling ling ling ling...
6: Stage bloody coup of new parent company. = Half cuckoo clock = coup (d'etat)
7: Take over world, shoot enemies into the sun with giant slingshot. - sun (that happens to have a heptagon and a four in it)
2) Walk the maze {red line}. The file name of the puzzle image is itallbeginswithyou.jpg. The background of the puzzle is the Seventh Column symbol, and we, as fans, are the seventh (unique) column in that symbol, so we use it as a starting point. As it is the number 4, we draw a line to the point we marked as 4, but we stop as soon as we cross another number. We hit 3, so we draw toward 3 until we hit 1, and so on. Continue this drawing until we finally draw a line the doesn't intercept any more numbers.
3) Write out all the letters we crossed in this process. We end up with the string "MIRROR ME DQDJUDPOHIWRYHUOHWWHUV".
4) With this "mirror me" clue, we take the path we drew in step 2, and flip it horizontally (which happens to be the line of symmetry for the seventh column symbol) {black line}.
5) Write out the letters crossed by this line. We get "DECRYPT WITH SALAD DRESSING" (though I would argue that it looks like "SFALAD"). The only salad dressing I personally use to pass secret messages is Caesar salad.
6) We plug our weird-looking DQDJUDPOHIWRYHUOHWWHUV into a caesar-cipher-decrypter and get "ANAGRAM LEFT OVER LETTERS".
7) We take what is left over {blue boxes}, reassemble the letters, and finally we can see "PER AUDACIA AD ASTRA", the little motto Bungie has been teasing us with for a while :-).
I do believe the inclusion of the "F" in the puzzle was a mistake though, as none of the messages include it, and it was the one "iffy" line-letter interaction.
( I apologize for all the edits, I learned from my mistake last week of trying to explain my work before posting the solution ;-) )
[Edited on 09.16.2012 2:41 AM PDT]