Level 31

Hints:

* 'top' should say 'bottom'
* if in doubt, lower left
* if the count isn't odd, see the last two hints
* if none of these make any sense, you didn't get there yet

Hints about the "totem":

1. If you are a true geek, then you should recognize it on sight.
2. If you don't recognize it, then google can help.
3. If you don't know what to search for, take what you know for sure as the search terms, as improbable and nonsensical as it may seem at first. To paraphrase: ask a silly question, get the correct answer.
4. The answer has absolutely nothing to do with japanese women products.

I'm not sure if I'm looking at this too hard, but the second part of this puzzle is causing me trouble.

I'm running into a bit of critical dependence on initial conditions, if you know what I mean, probably caused by minor floating-point differences between my version of the dataset and the one provided.

Is there an easy way to isolate the meaningful points in the data, or do I have to work it in this manner?

UPDATE: Lots of fiddling with the numbers has left me with 1679 differences, but they don't mean anything to me. Any hints?

... UPDATE: Lots of fiddling with the numbers has left me with 1679 differences, but they don't mean anything to me. Any hints?

It's a sign you're on the right track. Not a cosine, and not a sine, but a sign. You didn't sign your message, you know. I'll sign mine.

sign-of-the-times-ly y'rs - tim

Once again I'm impressed by the devious problem and how obvious it all seems in hindsight. However, for those of you hitting this one and bouncing, I offer the following:

- There are three stages to this puzzle.
- The first stage is pure Google, and the username/password doesn't contain spaces.
- The second stage requires you to be very careful in your calculations.
- The third stage may be difficult if you haven't encountered the subject matter before - don't forget the in-page hints.

I hope there aren't any spoilers there.

I've had these differences for a couple of weeks now. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I figure out what to do with them.

I keep going backwards and forwards between the differences and Uncle Timmy's last hint, but both are still a mystery to me.

I've had these differences for a couple of weeks now. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I figure out what to do with them.

I keep going backwards and forwards between the differences and Uncle Timmy's last hint, but both are still a mystery to me.

Well you got the right # of differences. Any statistician would notice something about the number. Maybe even statisticians that don't speak any Earthly languages. Google can help you especially if you use the other hints on the page.

I can't find this island, could someone help me?

I found it now, http://www.nationmaster.com is a good place to start:-)

I can't find this island, could someone help me?

Google can. What does it look like? Don't be shy or prudish .

UncleTimmy's "what does it look like" clue threw me off for the first part. Just like humans see faces in clouds and (U.S.) electrical sockets, the whole world seems to have similar landmarks. A google search using just terms in the page is more productive.

A second problem is that the server doesn't understand unicode, so you can't use the native spelling, just (one of) the English equivalents. Not even the whole ASCII set either, just 12 from the [a-z] set.

I've had these differences for a couple of weeks now. I'm sure I'll kick myself when I figure out what to do with them.

I keep going backwards and forwards between the differences and Uncle Timmy's last hint, but both are still a mystery to me.

Well you got the right # of differences. Any statistician would notice something about the number. Maybe even statisticians that don't speak any Earthly languages. Google can help you especially if you use the other hints on the page.

I'm stuck at this point. I've found the correct number of differences and used the other clue from the page to find the significance of the number, but the result doesn't make sense. What am I missing?

Edit: Wow...it turns out I had the answer for several days without being able to even SEE it. When I tried typing it in I used a capital letter first and got a 404 error in response. I'm still confused as to why I can't see anything in the message. Hopefully I can figure that out later.

Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but Google isn't being very helpful about the name of the island/country. There are lots of hits for the words that come to my mind, but they're mostly for-pay sites that aren't of a geographical nature.

I'm wondering if maybe this used to be at the top of Google's hit list when the puzzle was written, but now it isn't?

Help?

[mjpieters]

Using only two obvious keywords it's the first hit on Google Image for me..

Using only two obvious keywords it's the first hit on Google Image for me..

Wait...yay! I just went through all of the pictures again and found one that worked.

(1) To help the Google search:
mjpieters is right...on Google Images (not the regular Google search!), you only need two words. If you're at a loss for what to try, use an adjective and a noun. (At least, *I* tried several combinations of two nouns and couldn't find it that way.)

(2) To help you once you *think* you've found the answer:
Apparently, there are multiple ways to spell the name of the island. Grrrr.

I need some nudging, please. I'm off the island and onto the second part of the puzzle. I recognize what it is and found the algorithm. I can make a close copy of the picture, but it's different in 88160 places. I'm not sure where to go from here.

UPDATE: Getting closer, I think. I'm down to 1682 differences after some manipulation of the initial conditions, but that appears to be three too many. Do I have the right differences, and if so, which three do I drop?!

UPDATE: I just noticed that of those 1682 differences, 1679 differ by the same number of iterations. This can't be a coincidence, right?

UPDATE: Okay, I solved it. You know that feeling you get when someone tells a really bad joke?


Thanks,

Chris