*** CLOSED August 26 ***

For updates, go here

***Stuff that happened before March 21, 2005 is here ***

March 21

Unlike its predecessors (which kept looping us back to perplexcity.com), the Guardian ad pointed to perplexcitysentinel.com - the website of Perplex City's newspaper, The Perplex City Sentinel.

Aside from the press release which we have been laboring over for the past month, another mine of information is John Cormoran's editorial:

• the public is growing impatient (to put it lightly) with Sente, who has been preparing his plan (which, apparently, involves hefty funding by the City) for finding the Cube all of this time
• it looks like Perplexians are generally aware of Earth, but only insomuch as they are informed by the Academy - which appears to have lost the ability to communicate with us (presumably, due to lack of the Cube)
• we finally have the "present" (i.e. 2005) year for PC time - 268 A.C.
• it seems that Cubism is a major, if not predominant/sole religion in PC

From the headlines on this page, we learn that the team at the Academy is capable (as was mentioned before) of tracing the Cube to Earth, but they are unable to "pinpoint its specific location".

Finally, there are a few new companies whose websites are not, unfortunately, live yet:

• Crispy Heaven - a fast-food chain in trouble with the PPC's Health Department
• Centrifuge Inc., which is about to acquire Key Surety, Inc.
• Park Realty Corp., a subsidiary of Mobius Development Corp.
• Perplex City Academy Games - technically, not a company, but rather something like our Olympic Games Committee (though PCAG, unlike our Olympics, seem to be oriented towards academic games)
• PCBC - Perplex City's bank
• Ceretin - a drug (possibly, a "cognitive enhancer") manufacturer

So far, we have only been able to read a limited number of articles; the majority of them require a subscription status verification via some sort of key. We have not yet figured out what these "keys" are, or how to obtain them.

March 28

The new article at Perplex City Sentinel sheds some light: the keys are physical objects, running some sort of software (that store personal information (possibly identification, account information, etc.) and interact with browsers), and are capable of being infected with virii. So much for our hopes on getting our hands on some of them.

Aside from that, we see that Sente is still under a lot of heat - from both the press and the Council. However, the Council leader recommends that everyone remain patient and allow some time for Sente's plan for "establishing bidirectional communication with Earth" come to fruition.

In other, suspiciously familiar bit of news, the "Cube retrieval effort is being delayed further weeks, coinciding with a growing firestorm of accusations and public outrage". Hm...

So far The Perplex City Sentinel has been loaded with stories; we will have to wait and see which of them will play a larger part in the plot, and which will remain merely "atmospheric".

April 1

One of the letters on the updated section of the Sentinel lead us to a new site: www.scarlettkite.com. Scarlett Kiteway is Sente's daughter, who is publishing her weblog on our internet to be the "first person from Perplex City to write a blog [we] can see." The blog is also intended to serve as an outlet for the progress of Perplexian search for the Cube, and as a "test for [the] communicating-with-Earth systems." Scarlett's statement that Sente launched a game for the purpose of recovering the Cube on Earth, and the link to an article about Adrian Hon "from MC" caused many a head-asplosion on uF. When stuff gets that crazy, I can at least be glad that it's Friday!

April 4

The new Sentinel Editorial retracts any allusions the paper might have made as to the "fictitiousness" of Earth, yet maintains its skepticism of the effectiveness of Sente's program. Now, the fun thing is: they say that an Earth version of the Sentinel is being published on Earth "as part of the Academy's testing of its communications systems", and invite Earthlings to "to establish a fair and intelligent two-way dialogue between our civilisations". At the same time, a hidden message in the Futures section tells us to remain patient. It seems that due to, ahem, technical difficulties, the game is being further delayed.

In regards to the meta craziness, this is my variation of the popular opinion: the PM team (formed during Project Syzygy), aka MC (Mission Control? ***update***: or MindCandy?***) is the direct result of Sente's recruitment of Earth's people (to find the Cube). The collaborative effort of the Academy's tech team and MC produces the Perplexian sites on our internet, and establishes two-way communication channels between us and Perplexians (such as e-mails, etc.). Thus, the PMs are as much in-game as anyone of us is. But that's ok - because... this is not a game! muahaha! And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to look for the spoon.

April 17

I would like to take a moment to explain the absence of updating goodness here: it certainly is not due to the lack of updates on the in-game sites, nor is it due to my inattantiveness. Though frequent, the updates so far seem to be setting the background rather than moving the storyline forward - to the point that the Updates section serves as an adequate progress report. My opinion, at this point, is that the game is stalled due to some unknown factors - but your... er, mileage, may vary.

With that out of the way, let's see what pertinent information we have gathered during the last couple of weeks:

• Sente has a protégé - one Ryan Cahill, whom he awarded the Beaumont scholarship, and who, presumably, still studies/is employed with the Academy.
• There is a Cubist cult in PC, whose members like to call themselves Reconstructionists - eight of them (the Recon Eight) were actually held in police custody as Cube theft suspects. Apparently, one of their prophecies states that someday the Receda Cube would "be delivered from the faithless hands of the Academics." They were, however, released on April 6th - due to lack of evidence.
• The Sentinel has publicly announced that it is being published on Earth, and invited our suggestions for improving two-way communication.
• Numerous, but rather sporadic, references indicate that Perplexian technology is, indeed, far more advanced than ours - from healthcare to transport to construction.
• We learn that interest in our "alternate" world is high in Perplex City, and that various Earth artifacts/gadgets are replicated (and available for sale, heh) in PC shops. Our friend Lyssa Ling might have even been able to finally get her hands on some shoes.

For more information/a quick recap of the last two weeks' updates, please visit SpaceBass' mod blog.

April 18

The newest article at the Sentinel fills me with hope, as it states that Sente's "highly secret plan to retrieve the stolen Receda Cube from Earth may soon come to fruition." Maybe it even means the game's real start as opposed to - and I quote - teaser/prelude/pregame/look a bunny. Oh, and it also says that something will happen on April 22 at 3pm London time.

April 20

The Sentinel published yet another article about the Northside development (the sale of Northside Nature Preserve to Park Realty Corp. was approved by the City Council on March 21st, and has since caused much controversy in PC), this time citing a poll of Earth residents. Huh? What poll?? Who are these elusive Earthlings that managed to get polled by an extraterrestrial newspaper without any one of us³ hearing about it (both Earth residents mentioned in the article are, indeed ³, but they swear they have not been asked to participate in a poll)? Hmm...

In other news, Scarlett assures us that something very cool is going to happen on Friday, and that Sente and lots of other people are frantically trying to get things ready for it.

April 22

Sente sent us an e-mail:

The answer to the riddle was, ironically, "puzzle", and the first 333 people to submit their answers are supposed to be receiving some sort of parcels. Watch this space for more developments.

April 29

So, the game has finally started.

Now that you've had a chance to get back into your chairs, let's see how that happened.

First, a new issue of the Firebox catalogue went out yesterday, and it contained this item for sale (scan courtesy of Paul): a set of cards from Perplex City. Of course, there was a puzzle attached: Sy found the solution spread throughout the pages of the catalogue, which amounted to this message from Sente:

I will get to the PC Academy site shortly.

All the rage really began when the first parcels from Sente started arriving this morning, containing these items:

a tour guide of Perplex City:

There were also some Perplex City stickers, a letter from Sente, and a badge.

So, first the cards: as per Sente, these have to be collected and solved for points. Somehow all of this should lead us to revealing who stole the Cube, and, eventually, the grand prize - £100 000 (or, more precisely, PCL 2,000,000). Yeah, I know, confusing and troublesome so far, but let's see where this takes us. The cards will be collected here and here, and you can follow the solves here.

The tour guide leads us to a new website: opendesignagency.com. Nothing particularly interesting there yet, except for a link to Whipsmart Icecream (which can also be found on one of the puzzle cards). Whipsmart's site is terribly cute, but also not very informative.

From Sente's letter we find another new website: mindcandydesign.com. Sente refers to them as his "agents on Earth", and it now seems that "Mind Candy" is what "MC" actually stands for (remember Sente using that acronym a few times before?). The site is not fully live yet, but already promises a cool event: "Meet the Mind Candy team at E3 (18th-20th May) at our stand at the UK State of Play Pavillion (West Hall, stand no. 2316)".

Now to the cooler updates: the solution to card #027 was Violet's phone number, which had a voice message, which gave her url: quirkyacuity.com. A reminder: Violet is Sente's daughter, Scarlett's older sister; and now we learn that she works at the Academy Library, that she decided not to attend the Academy even though she got in, and that she likes to play poker. Hopefully, we will be hearing a lot more from Violet in the future, as she does seem quite an interesting character (what's with the calling her Dad a "power-hungry psychopathic megalomaniac", btw?).

Finally, the last site to get to: PC Academy. Vive le loads of content! We have a nice bit of Sente's biography; additional contact information; a brief history of Perplex City, as well as some Cube history (surprisingly, the Cube was discovered in 7AC, which means that our previous hypothesis that "AC" means "After Cube" is pretty much shot to hell); and a list of other Academy Professors (we recognize a couple of names from the Academy logo). There is also a Library Search engine (which is not working yet). There is a lot to take in (not to mention the couple of new articles in The Sentinel), so get busy reading!

May 3

Controversy over Sente's plan for the Cube's retrieval continues: from Perplexian general upset with Leitmarks being awarded to people³ for mere participation to doubting the possibility of success of Sente's "card-based puzzle game on Earth."

In other news, if you have received a parcel, you need to submit you letter code, because this is shaping up to be a message.

May 6

The PMs' new approach to ARGs as a viable business model (namely, the introduction of puzzle cards and the prize into the game) caused quite the stir among the players. Seeking answers to some of the more pressing questions, SpaceBass interviewed one of the PMs, Adrian Hon. You can also read his very insightful follow-up article here. Oh, and - haha! - you thought the game started? Well, I did... Anyway, it *gasp* still hasn't. That bunny is beginning to look awfully cute...

The 333 parcels are still being delivered, and the tentative solve of the unique codes contained within Sente's letter yields a list of 9 stores that will carry the cards.

In PPC, judge Alice Zeller (hm, possibly, Hesketh's descendant?) declares a mistrial in the Corolla case. Michael Corolla, a popular "athlete", was accused of murdering his fiancée on the night before their wedding. You can follow that story through Sentinel's previous coverage: news in brief March 21 · March 28 · news in brief April 5 ·

May 13

I am very happy to say that things have been stirring up lately.

Let's start with Ruth Coralhouse: the recently deceased retired Academy Professor was a pioneer of convergent development theory, and a winner of the Ikonnikov Prize (who? Ikonnikov? Why do I feel like I should know who this is referring to?). According to another Academy Professor, Ruth and her husband Horatio Flynn "really shaped our understanding of Earth and how their societies relate to our own." The convergence bit is particularly interesting, given that we've been trying to find the point of divergence between Earth and PC, and it may turn out that our histories are yet to convene. This is all spec at this point, of course.

Another curious development in PPC is the discovery of stolen Academy equipment at the Five of Cups bar (located in Old Town, as is the Academy). The bar's owner, Bernardo Holyoke, was murdered on April 25th. According to The Sentinel, "among the items are an array of jury-rigged equipment which... could be used to jam keys, security systems, or driverless vehicles." Suddenly I'm very interested to know what Mr. Holyoke was doing on the night of last year's Academy Ball.

The Academy revealed its Cube Retrieval Project team. We've seen the team's members' names a few times already: in the e-mail handout from Abbey Road, on Scarlett's and Violet's blogs, and on the puzzle cards.

Finally, MindCandy's website goes fully live. Meet the PMs, follow yet more media coverage about the game, and even apply for a job. Lastly, this statement on the Clients page secures the PMs' place in the game: MindCandy is providing the Perplex City Academy "with a range of services, including assisting the Academy with the design, distribution and marketing of the Perplex City puzzle cards, as well as the maintenance of the Perplex City/Internet data link".

May 17

Ruth Coralhouse, that convergence theorist that passed away on May 10th left a pretty odd will: the Academy and the Centre for Reality Research are to share 45 million Lecks, provided the money will be used for developing "a method for transporting physical matter between Perplex City and Earth, with the aim that [Ruth's] ashes be transported to Greece and scattered over the Mediterranean Ocean on Earth." This, of course, brings back the old debate over the Academy's ability to transfer information between PPC and Earth, as well as the ever-so-present question: "How the hell did the Cube get to Earth?!"

May 22

News in brief since the last entry: Aiko Enterscore, the radical Perplexian artist and one of our puzzle scribes, said in an interview to The Sentinel that her sculptures (which have the ability to communicate with keys) were on display at the Academy Museum the night the Cube was stolen. The electronic componentes of the sculptures were studied by the police in an effort to determine whether they have been used to disable the Academy's security systems. Unfortunately, we do not have the results of this investigation.

The owner of the Five Cups bar, as it turns out, was a regular fence for high-tech stolen goods; Violet, who has been to the bar, says that "the place had a really odd vibe about it".

Also, there are some new puzzle cards from the E3 show.

June 2

The celebrity drama articles from the Sentinel seem to be forming some sort of a story: back in March popstar Joya announced her engagement to her producer, Horace Shockley.  Just a month before then, Joya was still dating Alejo Jackson (a lead singer for the band Roll for Damage and Violet's crush).  A few days later an article dedicated to the upcoming release of the band's new album claimed that Alejo was still "deeply disappointed in the end of his relationship with Joya."  At the end of April, the Sentinel published an article with speculation about Joya's possible pregnancy and some rather nasty comments from Satine Noir, Joya's rival.  Incidentally, Satine also used to date Jackson.  Oh, the drama.  A couple of weeks later the chivalrous Alejo punched some guy for his snide remarks on the identity of the hypothetical baby's father.  Finally, after Joya fainted in a theatre last week, it was Alejo - not Horace - who sat at her bedside after she was taken to a hospital.  Joya's all well now, and her fiancée Horace assures the public that they are happily proceeding with their wedding plans.  And that's where we're at with this soap opera at the moment.

As for our more familiar characters - Scarlett has been interviewed by talkSPORT radio (courtesy of dopefiend on uF).  As usual, she did not say anything particularly interesting.

Her sister, on the other hand, has been keeping quite busy.  On Friday, after having read the Jessica Holyoke article, she decided to "have a look around" the Recon Compound and, not the one to put things off, made an appointment.  The Reconstructionists, as you may remember, are a Cubist cult, and, in Violet's own words, believe that the Cube is "unjustly imprisoned" by the Academy.  A few years ago, in keeping with their alleged brainwashing methodology, they used to invite young people with an interest in the Academy to their compound to get them convinced in their cause in hopes that someday these people will head the Academy and... uh, help them free the Cube, I guess. 

On Monday this entry appeared on Violet's blog and was taken down almost immediately:

We weren't quite sure what to make of this, but, luckily, another blog entry went up shortly after. So, she didn't get to talk to Jessica, but she noticed that the Recons are only all too happy about the fact that the Cube is now "liberated", and that they use some antiquated version of keys. The most logical way to proceed from here, of course, would be to break in and steal one of the keys. However, as the lock on "key room" is an "old fashioned puzzle-lock"... you see where I'm going with this, don't you? The riddle is being discussed here.

June 8

Well, the puzzle was solved (though the validity of the solve is still subject to debate), and we're now waiting for Violet to visit the Recon compound on Friday and attempt to steal one of their keys.

June 13

She's done it (stole the key, that is) - though not without help from Kurt. Kurt hacked the key, and now we're waiting for him to get something more interesting then scripture files from it. And we're also waiting for the puzzle cards to go on sale. Waiting... I think to say that we've all become experts at it would be a huge understatement.

"Something interesting" turned out to be this file, which was devoured by unfictioners³ within a matter of hours (you can follow that solve here). Here is the solution (credit to hawk for recognizing befunge, and to fabs_uk for decoding the text):

Btw, note that Aiko Entrescore is our puzzle scribe from the Academy Team. StarryNight recognized other familiar names among the uber-sekrit attendees. Let's see what Violet will have to say about that.

drizjr found www.perplexcitysubway.com (we're not quite sure how long the site's been live) - looks like people will soon be looking at PerplexCity posters in the London subway.

June 15

While some of us kept mumbling inaudibly about lack of patience, Macavity e-mailed Sente with the solution to the Recon puzzle. As I mentioned, the deciphered text pins Aiko as a member of the Recon group, but you will recall that she is also hired by Academy for the Cube retrieval project. The problem, of course, is that the Academy wants the Cube, while the Recons very ardently want the Academy not to have the Cube. You can see that Aiko's position has become, to put it mildly, problematic. Apparently, Sente thought that it merited the involvement of authorities, and turned her over to the police. She is now under arrest as she, according to the police chief Eoin Morgan, had "both opportunity and motive". Violet, being the one who divulged the puzzle to us in the first place, feels like she "[doesn't] know how to trust [us]". And that's where we're at on this lovely Wednesday night.

June 23

Perplexians certainly have their reasons to have their affiliations with the Recons kept secret: another Recon whose name was on the hacked key file - Ryan Klein, Advertising Manager for the Sentinel - has been replaced by Tanika Rogers shortly after Aiko got arrested. Btw, Aiko is no longer under arrest - apparently, the judge did not find "the new evidence of her ties to the religious group" to be sufficient grounds for indictment. Well, duh.

For those interested: Violet did speak with her Dad about Aiko, but didn't manage to work up the nerve to tell him that she was involved. Of course, Sente seems to be the sort of man who would be able to find the leak quickly enough (especially considering that all the Earth net information gets transferred through his setup), but so far there has been no word from him to indicate he knows of Violet's recent... um, pastimes.

Our favorite PC celebrity (segues? what's that??), Joya, fled her wedding. Or, rather, failed to show up in the first place. Why am I not surprised? Interestingly, the chivalrous Alejo was among the guests, and Horace (the groom), even managed to pick a fight with him.

And now for the most exciting update: the Salk family website. Pietro Salk was a reporter for the Sentinel - he wrote the Recon Eight release article, covered the Holyoke and Five of Cups bar ordeal (murdered bar owner, clearing house for stolen Academy equipment), and recently followed Aiko's arrest and subsequent release. He suddenly and inexplicably went into coma on Monday, was rushed to a hospital (the ambulance was warned via his key - woo, more key speculation), emerged from the coma on Wednesday for a few hours only to spend them fixated on his key... and now we have the new website. Apparently, he saved some sort of puzzle on his key, which is available for your solving pleasure here (discussion here).

June 28

Let me get all the not-so-exciting updates out of the way first: The Sentinel's Editor-in-Chief, Michiko Clark, gave an interview to TalkSport radio (those so inclined can read a text transcript here). Quick summary: she doesn't know "where Earth is" in relation to PC (so we can keep spec'ing a-la inflationary period quantum verses, yay); she reprimands Mind Candy for the continuous delays in the release of the puzzle cards; she thinks Scarlett is a ditz; she briefly talked about PCAG, Joya's wedding fiasco, The Lab, and Ruth Coralhouse's will (though most of it is stuff we already know); and, finally, she mentioned Pietro Salk's maze leading "to a few old items from his files".

Also, Centrifuge's head developer of next-gen keys has been fired.

And now, as promised, the exciting stuff, which may take a while to explain :-)

Pietro's maze, which originally would have been available only to Mac users, was heavily improved upon by a few people³ on uF (notably, BriEnigma and SteveC). However, despite their efforts to enhance the application, no one was able to get past level 6, which seemed to be randomly generated with each reboot of the maze. A couple of days into level 6 Simon posted a highly controversial solution, which included: the compiled text of 4-character outputs occurring at the end of each level after 6:

and a series of secluded areas on every tenth map starting at 69, which amounted to roughly this picture.

Michiko's mention of Pietro's "old files" along with the otherwise nonsensical "maze of words" stuff prompted BriEnigma to try "she" as a directory on www.salkfamily.com. Well, whaddaya know - all the sentences from the text above turned out to be working directories on the website. There are loads and loads of Pietro's files for us to digest (you can see them in chronological order here). There are also four password-protected directories:

http://salkfamily.com/myvoicereturnstome
http://salkfamily.com/iwalkalittlefaster/
http://salkfamily.com/andnowshebeginstopursueme/
http://salkfamily.com/theyarethisstory/

You can follow the search for logins here.

So, what's Pietro been up to? Unfortunately, we can't ask him that, since he died on Monday, but let's see what we can make sense of so far.

He got contacted by a mysterious "Advisor" back in May, and The Advisor gave him information on the Five of Cups bar, which scored Pietro an exclusive story at The Sentinel. In exchange for immunity from prosecution and the protection of his identity, The Advisor promised Pietro "the biggest scoop of his life" - and he wasn't kidding: he said he was hired to steal The Cube. In The Advisor's own words, "As was Mr Holyoke, I believe. And he is now dead. That is what I am afraid of."

o_O

Then, it seems, Pietro went down the wrong track: he assumed Jessica Holyoke had something to do with the scam, but The Advisor insisted that Pietro follow the lead about some uber-secret "them" who might or might not have existed a long time ago, who have a symbol (this one?), who are hardcore Cube believers (in fact, The Advisor insinuated that they know precisely what The Cube's powers are), and who are so dangerous that folklore turned them into child-scaring monsters. According to TA, the danger is very real, and it seems that "they" might have had something to do with Pietro's death (after all, *someone* did wait for Pietro at the meeting with The Advisor).

Everything else is uncertain to varying degrees: the identity, or even the gender, of The Advisor; the possible infiltration of "them" in the Academy; the Recon involvement; the circumstances of Pietro's death, etc. !updates :-)

July 12

And updates there were. But I was too busy to list them here *hangs head*...

Ahem, so with apologies [sort of] out of the way, we'll move on to Pietro: one of his protected directories has been opened (user: pietro; pw: Vincent) - Pietro asks for proof of the money The Advisor has been paid to steal The Cube. Pay special attention to the fact that TA is "with Comprendo through [his/her] building" - you'll need that later. Also, keep in mind that there are still three directories on Pietro's site that need to be unlocked - you can help with that here.

There hasn't been much joy from either Scarlett or Violet: Violet felt like someone was watching her as she walked through Old Town; and Scarlett celebrated her birthday and wrote two articles about PerplexCity's points of interest. She did have something actually important to tell us, but we'll get to that a little later.

Sentinel's news have been mild (aren't they always?), but here are two things that I find noteworthy: Keenan Thoreau of Roll for Damage (one of the people named in the Recon sekrit memo) announced that he's a Recon; and Aurora and Alejo are now an item. If the relatively psychotic Aurora is to be trusted, that is.

The Sentinel also ran an article about the problems at the Ascendancy Point that seem to have gone under the public radar up 'till now, and with that we have a new website: www.ascendancypoint.com. Unsurprisingly, the site is not terribly informative, but this (found by Daffy889 through a mention at the Sentinel) fills us with happy, puzzle-anxious joy. Help solve the login here (and remember that it is likely to be hinted at in Pietro-TA correspondence describes two paragraphs above).

And now for Scarlett's cool news: puzzle cards are now on sale in London. The cards have already led us to at least four new websites: www.cognivia.com, where you can volunteer for brain testing - unless you would rather apply for a position in Neuroscience Research; www.cheapceretin.com - your one-stop shop for generic ceretin; www.perplexcitybankingcorporation.com - with no hint for a login atm; and www.brotherhoodofthesix.com - epileptics beware. In usual fashion, there aren't any breaking story developments yet, but here's an interesting bit of news about Comprendo from The Sentinel: Rupert Ayano, formerly of Comprendo Finance, has been convicted on charges of fraud.

Lastly, loads of cards are now in need of solves; get cracking here!

*** CLOSED August 26 ***

For updates, go here