Herein lies the solution to the "Myspace Point", solved by ParanoidAndrew on 10/22/15 (the day before the "Tumblr Point" tumbld down).
A tale of a man told by a man told by a man told by a man. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) September 4, 2014First of a middle, last of a middle, what space can one gone so long call home? #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) September 4, 2014This was literally (almost - ALMOST) all you needed to solve this one. Still, we were young and dumb. :)
Once we had all picked up on the 'profiles' thing (this was one of the first four points released, all resulting in finding a profile on a social media site), we assumed this one would be on Myspace, which was reaffirmed some time later:
It's neither of the aforementioned middles, but a gloomy spa ceremony may be useful. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) October 12, 2014- "glooMY SPA CEremony"
As was becoming the norm, the CM had to later drive home the point again:
A man a man a man a man. First of a middle last of a middle. Color you confused. The search goes on. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) October 21, 2014So what in the world exists that is "a tale told by a man told by a man told by a man told by a man"? Once again, some research was required, and this one turned out to be fairly obvious (unlike the research required on Leif Erikson).
Our digging landed us here: Rip Van Winkle
Which then led us here: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
Which is, of course, where everything started to become clear. "Rip Van Winkle" is a tale of a man (Rip Van Winkle) told by a man (Irving pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker), told by a man (Geoffrey Crayon), told by a man (written by Washington Irving) ... all of this being reinforced and confirmed by the "Color you confused" clue (Crayon). So now, "first of a middle, last of a middle" ... we were clicking now, and it didn't take long to observe that there was some playing around with first and last names of the "middle" names in that sequence. With only four possible permutations, we quickly identified this Myspace profile under the name "Diedrich Crayon".
Myspace - Diedrich Crayon
That page contained the song "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit, and instructed us to submit our answer along with a hashtag composed of the "other" first/last name combination. I quickly ran to the Twitter to submit the winning answer.
@TheGinterCode #GeoffreyKnickerbocker #thegintercode
— ParanoidAndrew (@ParanoidAndrew) October 22, 2014And that was it. Right? Right?!?!?
No points today. And no, I didn't miss anything. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) October 22, 2014Turns out ... we are idiots. Mostly me. We had to turn back to a couple of seemingly-innocuous clues to figure out where we went wrong.
What is everything going to? Answers must be phrased and submitted correctly. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) September 2, 2014What is everything going to? Don't lose your head thinking about it, but you'd be getting warmer, in a way. #thegintercode
— GinterCode (@TheGinterCode) October 14, 2014"Don't lose your head, but you'd be getting warmer, in a way" ... definitely a reference to Sleepy Hollow, and we had completely overlooked it. So ... what is everything going to? I imagine if you are familiar with the Passion Pit song, you probably knew the answer already ... but we weren't, and as it turns out, you actually have to LISTEN to the song, to find the lyrics:
Everything is going to the beat ...
@TheGinterCode the beat #GeoffreyKnickerbocker #thegintercode
— ParanoidAndrew(@ParanoidAndrew) October 22, 2014Point scored.
- Grant
We had all the pieces of this one (myspace, rip van winkle), but didn't connect the Man man man to be the reference to Irving's various pseudonyms. Spent a lot of time searching around in Myspace to no avail. In fact, one of the first things we had in our notes when the point was first released is "What is everything going to? - The Beat"
ReplyDeleteBut we never got far enough to figure out the first of a middle last of a middle thing.
Was that some popular song I'd never heard of?
DeleteThe other interesting thing is that the link to the song wasn't as prominent either on the web or mobile version so I didn't even notice it.
"Was that some popular song I'd never heard of?"
DeleteNot particularly, at least that I'm aware of, though I do personally like it. I just picked it because of the name.
Man, that's good stuff. I had never heard the song, and had no idea on that one.
ReplyDeleteWhat is worse ... I actually tweeted #GeoffreyKnickerbocker along with the LINK TO THE SONG, about 10 minutes before I actually tweeted the correct answer. For a short time, it was on the table for anyone to take.
I (Bosun) actually found the correct profile at some time after you made the initial hashtag tweet and before you scored the point. It looked blank and I didn't notice the horizontal scrollbar which would have taken me over to the part I needed to see. Later when I realized that it had me wondering wchb... :)
DeleteYep ... that kinda makes me want to throw up :)
DeleteAs a big fan of Passion Pit and someone that used Myspace a lot in the past this whole point bums me out! I don't know how many times I read the Rip Van Winkle Wikipedia article.. or apparently parts of it. All the talk of napping and "a man gone so long" seemed to be pointing there, but my mind was clouded with too many other thoughts and apparently limited ability to focus and read the whole article at any time.
DeleteHa! Man, we understand more than you guys can know. This entire contest is a study in extracting signals from noise. Now that I recall, Brian actually solved the "3x3 grids" point after Jim and I led him through a heuristic, almost Socratic process of 'asking the right questions'. It's amazing how quickly your mind can get polluted with things that don't apply to the problem at hand.
DeleteFor awhile I thought that the tale of a man clue was referencing Hugh Williams: Sole Survivor from the Coincidence insert set. From the back of the card - "It is said that of three ships that perished there over a 200-year span, each had only one survivor. All were named Hugh Williams". To me this worked very well with tale of a man (the recurring Hugh Williams story) told by a man (Hugh 1) told by a man (Hugh 2) told by a man (Hugh 3). As the name of the insert set should have helped me to realize... this was simply a coincidence.
ReplyDeleteI love reading your solutions. You guys are crazy smart. This is one ability I wish I had. Congrats!
ReplyDelete