Thursday, September 3, 2009

Weird note from Hari - help!

So I found Hari's room in Hurlbut, but it didn't look like anyone had moved in yet. I tried to find out if he had a roommate, and someone told me that his room was in a block of rooms called "psycho singles". !!! He's a bit odd, but he's no psycho!

There was clearly no one there, but I saw a corner of a piece of paper sticking out from under the door, so I fished around with my key and pulled out... a note from Hari!

Anna,
I knew you'd try to track me down! Nice work! I'm sorry we haven't hung out yet, but I'm super busy! Meanwhile, check out these awesome books I've found in Widener - it's just like in our old letters!
xo,
Hari

The Strongest Poison
Neighbouring Nobel
Dizionario Italiano-romanesco '
Strange Negro Stories of the Old Deep South

The Annotated Nose
The Sub-prefect should have held his tongue, and other essays
Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?
On the Origins of Classical Economics

International Migration of the Highly Skilled
Der Typo Atlas
Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile
The Last of the Knickerbockers

Women Scientists in the Third World
The Political Legacy of Margaret Thatcher
Order from Confusion Sprung
Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon

A = D West


This must mean something. Hari has never used an exclamation point in his life. Any ideas??

16 comments:

  1. You said he used to send you riddles and stuff in your old letters. What kind of riddles?

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  3. I wonder if it is some sort of cipher...the A=D makes me think so, but I'm not sure what to make of the 'West'. I also can't imagine those titles turning into something else...a few words sometimes work, but that is a lot!

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  4. I have been using this tool page but getting nowhere. Partially because I can't tell which letters should be plugged in. First letter of each title? Last? Each capitalized letter? Letters in the names of the authors? Call letters?

    http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/

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  5. Hmm... maybe we have to find out something more about the book titles before trying to break the cipher?

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  6. These are cool titles, and although I didn't check them all, some of the strangest -- and presumably, therefore, all of them -- are actually in Widener Library. Now "D West" is a location in Widener. So maybe there is some connection between the actual locations of the books and the meaning of the four "quattrains" ... but that's as far as I can figure, at least for now.

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  7. My thought is to convert all of the first letters to four past their place in the alphabet and then try to unscramble. I will give it a go.
    Ashley

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  8. Aha, I was trying to find a map of Widener on the internet but I was unsuccessful. Anybody know where we can find one online, or do we need to go to the library to figure out which sections are in D West? (I already wrote down most of the call numbers of the books)

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  9. call numbers for all books in order:

    BP605.P46 L36 1980
    AS911.N9 N45 2001x
    PC1825.Z9 R6543 2003x
    ALA 3009.1092

    PS3605.S77 A84 2008
    AC8 .B89 1990x
    JZ1242 .B54 1999
    HB94 .A85 1996x

    Q150 .I57 2001
    Z246 .S38 2000
    PQ6060 .M57 1996
    AL 4067.5.30

    Q130 .S8 1998
    DA591.T47 P65 2003x
    PR442 .R36 1985
    PS201 .R46 1994

    Corresponding locations (ALA and AL using the old system? they are the only ones w/ a space, so I'm guessing it makes them different?)

    3 East
    D West
    2 West
    2 East

    2 East
    D West
    D East
    Pusey 2

    B East
    C East
    5 East
    2 East

    B East
    1 East
    1 East
    2 East

    Now...w/ A= D West

    3 East
    A
    2 West
    2 East

    2 East
    A
    D East
    Pusey 2

    B East
    C East
    5 East
    2 East

    B East
    1 East (E,or O)
    1 East (E,or O)
    2 East


    as far as I've gotten

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  10. Wow, good work everyone! It must be a simple substitution cipher from here! I'm sure there's some fancy math thing we could do to solve the cipher, but Hari knows I suck at math, so I'm betting the answer is right there on the call number location chart... If D West is A, what's B?

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  11. And Karen, you're right about the ALA and AL books, I asked a librarian - if a call number starts with WID-LC, it's in the Library of Congress system. That's the top third of the page. But some old books still have the old system designation. It doesn't matter though, the locations are consistent between the systems.

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  12. hrm. i've tried a couple differnt things...listing all the floors/wings and spelling out the alphabet across them in different ways...haven't found one that makes real words yet. Also just looked at the letters that the call numbers started with, but again, no real words. =(

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  13. I'm with you Karen. Here's what letters I got corresponding to the Widener call numbers starting with A=D West and using Karen's floor codes. I'm not sure if certain ones that have multiple letters count (ie: PS rather than just P), but I'm assuming not since D West = A and not AC or AZ. I can't find any words out of it and I feel like there are too many P's.

    B/D - 3 East
    A – D West
    P -2 West
    P - 2 East

    P - 2 East
    A – D West
    J/K/L - D East
    H - Pusey 2

    M/N/R/S - B East
    T/U/V/Z - C East
    D/P - 5 East
    P - 2 East

    Q/M/N/R/S - B East
    D/E/F/P - 1 East (E,or O)
    D/E/F/P - 1 East (E,or O)
    P - 2 East

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  14. So, A is at the start of the alphabet, and D West is the first location listed on the call number sheet - http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/widener/finding_materials/stacks_docs/wid_loc_chart.pdf - so maybe it's not a matter of unscrambling, but of assigning the right letter to each possible stacks location!

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  15. So I started going down the start with D West as A, and then Pusey 3 = B, 3 West = C, etc, so the first word i got was CAFE! A real word! I'll try to figure out the other 3 words later on when I have more time, but there's a start for anyone else who want's to give it a try!

    1. CAFE
    2.?
    3.?
    4.?

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  16. Thanks Michelle! I'm not sure how you got to CAFE, but I used your solution and got this:
    CANT TALK MUFT MEET

    I think that's probably "must"--not really sure what happened there.

    On to the next puzzle :)

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