Difference between revisions of "Talk:The Riddle Of Stratoniche's Tomb"

Revision as of 15:01, 13 June 2006

Kerry: Hmm. After a lot of thought, I think the answer is 1H8Posideon. 733t speak in the BC, wooo yeah!

Noah: Owing much to an astute line of reasoning proposed by Danble, I believe I have cracked the riddle. The answer is not entirely perfect, but it is an answer and does 'fit' with the options available to us. There is also a 'key' to the riddle that any math or engineering major would pick up automatically, but since we are idiot humanities majors, it went over our heads.

Unfortunately, even assuming the answer proposed here is correct, there isn't any way that those presently involved with the riddle could have deduced it. Indeed, there is exactly one (extremely annoying) individual in the Greater Byzantium area with the knowledge to solve it, and as of yet he's never heard it (so far as we know).

Be that as it may, I believe the answer is as follows:

A Potential Answer to the Riddle of Stratoniche

"Change a single Greek stroke into a single Arabic stroke in the wise healer of one hundred bulls. Before his fee place the number of arms of the enemy, after it place the name of the father who hoards the most flour that is ground in the mill Sampo-Groti"

I started off by realizing that a hundred bulls is a unit of measuring sacrifice known as a hecatomb. I then wasted a significant amount of time following the line of reasoning that the goddess Hecate could be the 'wise healer of a hundred bulls' since her name is, indeed, 'of' the word hecatomb.

This was not the correct line of thinking however.

Danble's contribution was to suggest that the "mill Sampo-Groti" might refer to the theory that the mill is in fact the night sky, and is responsible for the progression of the Equinox. Therefore the "flour that is ground" in it would either be stars, literally, or astronomical data, metaphorically. Therefore, the 'father' would be an astronomer of some sort.

[From here on out, I think, Wikipedia gets the bulk of the credit, since, with a few exceptions, my own knowledge had been exhausted.]

It so happens, as Danble's research revealed, that an astronomer by the name of Hipparchus was famously known as the "father of scientific astronomy." And with that, I could tell which way the wind was blowing.

More on Hipparchus later.

If Hecate was *not* the wise healer referenced, who else could there be? Well, there is another, very well known "wise healer": Hippocrates. What's more, he was of the Pythagorean school -- the school that was founded when Pythagoras sacrificed a hundred bulls to signify his accomplishment of discovering what we know as the Pythagorean theorem. The wise healer of one hundred bulls = Hippocrates.

It helps to know that his full name is Hippocrates of Cos and that he is frequently confused with a contemporaneous mathematician, Hippocrates of Chios. There is your single stroke (here not a literal stroke, but rather a single letter) -- by changing the kappa in 'Cos' to zye you get 'Chios', and, not coincidentally, the symbol for zye is the same as the Arabic symbol for the number 3:

Ξ

Now, Hippocrates of Chios is known for attempting to tackle two of the three famous classical mathematics problems: squaring the circle and doubling the cube (both of which, it should be mentioned, are of great importance in Masonic tradition). While the math involved in these problems is beyond me, they both involve approximating the golden ratio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Now, the clincher.

The Greek letter used by mathematicians to represent the golden ratio is phi, pronounced 'fee.' Fee = 'phi.'

This is why the riddle doesn't work if written down.

Thus on one side of the ratio you place the number of arms of the enemy, the one thing we know: eight.

On the other, as Danble figured out, you place the name of the 'father' who gathered the most information about astronomy. This guy is Hipparchus. It just so happens that a (an?) "hipparchia" is a unit of measuring cavalry which equals ~500 horsemen. Thus, on the other side of the ratio, we can put '500'. Now we have an equation we can solve:

8 / 500 = .016

16 is a location listed on Stratoniche's map, on the bottom right.

Possible Unintended Bonus That Gives a Slightly Better Answer

Since there are two Hippocrates discussed here, before "his" fee could mean both of them. In the Hippocratic Oath, Hippocrates wrote that if anyone wished to be instructed in medicine it was his duty, "to teach them this art if they so desire without fee[.]" Thus, Hippocrates of Cos' fee is 0 and placing the number of arms of the enemy before it yields a slightly different formula:

80/500 = .16 = 16

Additional Evidence That This Answer is Correct

A close approximation of the golden ratio is 1.6, which is about as far as they got during the Hellenistic period.

Also, all three personages (four if you count Archimedes) are closely tied to matters of astrology, as well as being de facto members or associated with the Pythagorean school.

Epilogue

Aside from giving us Drelzna's location on the moon, this also verifies a connection that many of us had guessed at: in addition to the priests of Mithra, Ikulu disseminated information to the secret Pythagorean math cult which manifests itself in the contemporaneous 10th century as crazy schools of math monks with oriental adventures powers (monk, kensai and probably sohei too).

Abner of the Five Adventurers, who the Danger Gang Auxiliary recently rescued from the Ortheians, is one such monk from a school, I believe, in Germany. He will have sufficient in-game knowledge to figure out the riddle. I don't think there's any way anyone else close by who would have enough in-game knowledge to solve it (Reynaldo could probably do it, as could Harald, but they are thousands of miles away).

Shenanigans?

There are two potential reasons that I can think of which may make this answer, against all evidence, incorrect. However, it seems to me, in light of the evidence, that the answer may be correct, whilst the riddle itself, is, ah, wrong.

Archimedes, who is said to have known all the answers to the riddle except the arms of the enemy, died ~ 20+ years before Hipparchus was born. This would preclude him from knowing the answer to the last part of the riddle (and, technically, preclude the riddle from being written 100+ years prior to Hipparchus' birth; but since it was written by Ikkulu, we'll let that part slide).

Secondly, in order for the riddle to work, some of it has to be read as it appears in Greek (to change one stroke into another) and some of it has to be read phonetically in English ('fee'). That is, I assume that the Greek word for fee doesn't sound like 'fee.'

Regardless, I believe this answer to be true and correct.

Kerry: Sure Shenanigans inculdes the fact that Arabic as a written language and number system doesn't exist until much later, with Arabic letters first used in the 3rd or 4th century AD. "Arabic" numerals are actually Indian, and don't get to Arabia until 500AD at the earliest. So "a single Arabic stroke" is an impossibility at the time or Stratonice's death, unnless Igwilf has crazy future linguistic powers.

Hal: Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions are rare; however, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whether anyone would call numerals "Arabic" before the middle ages is another matter.

That's It!

Now, for the small matter of getting to the moon. And back. And knowing when to do it. And keeping this knowledge from the enemy. And surviving 'the chill blood of Drelzna.'

Back to discussion

Hal: Obviously the only way to discover whose answer, Kerry's or Noah's, is correct is by trial and error. However, I will say that there are no shenanigans in the riddle, or at least not such blatant shenanigans, or there is a tricky way around the shenanigans, Archimedes and all.

Also, remember that sufficient access to a large library can substitute for (or rather provide) in-game knowledge.

Noah: Of course, we may not *want* the answer just now. Because what you don't know can't be tortured out of you. Not that it won't stop certain people from trying.

I'm just saying.

Kerry: I'm all with you as for the wise healer being Hippocrates, and the fee 0. So we've got 80. The rest seems a far stretch, though. Why is the bardic Sampo information (a DM gimme if there ever was one) totally unrelated? Where does the division sign come from? The riddle says "Place X before Y, and after it place Z". If XY = 80, then XYZ ought to be 80?. Also, remember how the numbers are writ on the map. It is a roman-numeral stlye way to write, and that means we are likely looking for a series of digits with a meaning that you might not think of using arabic numerals. The example I am thinking of is 111, which means one hundred and eleven to us and three to a Greek. Zero doesn't exist, meaning that the fee of Hippocrates is likely literally "nothing", and a good tricky piece of riddlery. Also, if the first part is eight that doesn't leave a lot of choices.

In addition, Harald is closer than you think and getting closer than that all the time. He's got super important stuff to talk about with Eorl, and he now is the only person (as far as I know) with all the Queens texts, the original party texts, and the Following Alexander party texts.

Noah: I did realize last night that zero did not exist and therefore 8 next to nothing would still be 8 and not 80. So no bonus points, I guess.

The legend lore on the Sampo isn't totally unrelated; that is to say, the information was also true. Or I should say, true-ish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no such thing as the Sampo-Groti. I mean, there's the Sampo, and there's the Groti, and they are mythologically equivalent, but one is Finnish and the other is... Dutch, I think? That says to me that the concept is more important than the thing itself.

The division sign is the 'fee' or 'phi' or ratio. That to me is what I'm most sure of. Although you are correct and a string of digits without an operator would also serve as an answer, which I never considered (I spent a lot of time looking for an operator, so when fee fit I thought I had it).

However, there are a number of confluences here, all of which indicate to me that this answer is correct, at least somewhat:

1. We know there is a crazy Pythagorean cult around. The four personages associated with this solution to the riddle were all Pythagoreans of one stripe or another.

2. Hippocrates of Chios is indeed a single letter away from Hippocrates of Cos, and that letter is also a number in Arabic.

3. 'phi' is indeed short hand for the golden ratio, which was an obsession of Greek mathematicians at the time (Hippocrates of Chios inclusive), many of whom believed it held some kind of crazy esoteric powers.

4. 8/500 is an expression of the golden ratio. These are not just random numbers here. Eight is the number we are *certain* of, 500 we may not be, but the result is reminiscent of the closest approximation to the golden ratio achieved during this time period = 1.6.

5. My gut tells me that this is the kind of answer we would be looking for, complete with internal checks that suggest we're on the right track.

None of that means that I've got the right answer with absolute certainty, or that I haven't missed a step along the way. But I think it's pretty solid. It is also true that the answer likely won't be of any use to us for quite some time, and, as I suggested before, might actually be more of a liability.

That said, as of March 1 or thereabouts, Chrysopolis is still standing and Eorl is alive. Large doings are afoot there, however, so who knows what tomorrow may bring. Still, machinations from a year ago are beginning to bear fruit, so to speak. Even if Eorl is dead and the city is in ruins by the time Harald arrives, I predict it will be worth the trip.

Kerry: The fee = phi is the fishiest part by far. I totally don't buy it, and Hal is too Simulationist to let something like that slip by. Also, the more I think about it the more I doubt Hippocrates. There are several much more famous healers: Ascelpius, Apollo, and Chiron, the centuar. Chiron is one letter away from Charon, a boatman who has a set fee or toll. I have to check out the Greek names. I asked Hal about the use of "of" in Greek, and he said it is less amnigous and points more to "realted to bulls" than "healed bulls". See Shenanigans for more thoughts.

Kerry: Even though it is Shenanigans, there are four arabic characters that look like greek alpha turned sideways. Changing iota in Chiron to alpha gives Charon. Charon's fee is one coin. Also, after rereading Ikkulu's Lament I wonder about the enemy. She uses the term to include the tailed men (maybe 3?), the octopuses (8), and their Goddess (none? 2? 4?).

Matt: moon or bust.