Hidden Puzzles
What item in The Medusa Report does this clue relate to? Recognize the paper color?
On the back of the hidden note from the padded envelope is a pattern. These images explain how that pattern was made.
Look at the top image first. Can you see the difference between a ‘0’ and a ‘1’ column?
Check the second image: does the same logic hold up for the rows?
According to the images, “A = 00001” and “Z = 11010”. Can you determine the rest of the alphabet?
‘00001’ = 1 in binary, while ‘11010’ = 26 in binary. So, these five-digit numbers represent letters by their position in the alphabet.
The 0’s and 1’s are then translated into a visual pattern on the grid.
When a column has a ‘0’, the first line segment seen from that direction is drawn in with a bold stripe, followed by an empty line segment, followed by a stripe, etc.
When a column has a ‘1’, it has that same pattern except it starts with an empty segment.
In other words: every column has a dashed line, with alternating bold stripes and empty segments.
A ‘0’ starts with a stripe and a ‘1’ starts with an empty segment. The rows function in exactly the same way.
Combined, this creates seemingly random shapes. The shading is only used for clarity (and because it looks pretty).
When you understand how the pattern works, you can take the note from the envelope and find out which rows and columns have 0’s and which have 1’s. After that, every block of 5 letters represents a letter. There is a small dot in one corner of the note, just like in the images on this page. That’s the top left-hand corner.
There are 40 columns – 8 blocks of of 5, spelling ‘LISTNBRG’. The rows spell ‘RIVER’.
Check the map in The Vandermist Dossier to find the name of the river: the Lisset.