ERLA Fragments

Following the decision to pursue the information that would allow Taskforce Earth to reach beyond the Quiet Place to realities beyond, ERLA presented us with the beginning of the ERLA Fragments puzzle, which was described as follows.

> There once was a scientist. They discovered so much. But they grew wary of their discoveries. Pieces were stolen. Knowledge destroyed. Only one copy remained. Five nonsensical phrases to open the way. 256 chambers to guard the way. The chambers are hidden, waiting for the rest to discover. But within this data, another method to access them lies. Row and Column.
>
>

We then sent a row and column number of (1,1) which returned the following:

"1,1 = INTEROPERABILITYFRAMEWORK, In their purest form, these rooms contained parts of a whole, the last words of a brilliant mind."

From this we deduced that each grid square on this 16x16 grid would return a question, which upon answering would return a piece of lore. We would later determine that the first letters of each answer would contribute to spelling out a larger message. The following is a list of all known grid locations and their related questions, answers and lore if available.

### Fragments Direct From ERLA

* (1,1)
	+ No question required
	+ INTEROPERABILITYFRAMEWORK
	+ "In their purest form, these rooms contained parts of a whole, the last words of a brilliant mind."
* (1,2)
	+ déf ilé dem ode (7 4)
	+ The question is the french for FASHIONSHOW
	+ "The scientist joined by Sam, Oak, Tara, and Elliot begun an adventure immemorable."
* (1,3)
	+ 1 of 2: ????, 2 of 2: ???????????
	+ Lead to a series of guesses to find appropriate letters, solves to YEARAPPOINTMENT
	+ "In some ways they were lucky, their world was spared from being subsumed by the Entity and their travels would reveal what happened to worlds that were."
* (1,6)
	+ AONOKVEA///////HVUVRCLH
	+ The above is a rotation cipher and taking one letter from each stage of rotation yields APPROACH
	+ "Pineapple on pizza was the meal they ate."
* (2,1)
	+ 13:06:01 07:11:02 14:03:01 09:06:14 01:02:11 01:01:01 16:16:05 04:02:02 02:04:09 02:01:10
	+ These all were (Row, Col, Letter) for solution we had access to and yielded HELDWITHIN
	+ "It wouldn't be until later that the scientist would realize that the story was still unfolding."
* (2,2)
	+ ((Acronym) Other Fictional Name) and Pound Foolish
	+ Pound Foolish is reference to the phrase "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish", Pennywise is the name of a character also name It, which is an acronym for INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGY
	+ "At the time, taken as distant history of a distant world."
* (2,4)
	+ 96 Janissaries + El Salvador International + Conifer
	+ A book series named "Janissaries" released a new edition in 1996 named "Tran", El Salvador international uses code SAL, and a type of conifer is a pine Tran+Sal+Pine yields TRANSALPINE.
	+ "They spent the last years of their life working on the quiet place, a means to protect their home from the dangers of morphic fields and the worlds beyond."
* (4,2)
	+ Ancient Greek Symbol of Death
	+ This was a simple google, the answer being THETA
	+ "They were exploring old ruins of an ancient structure in another world."
* (5,4)
	+ ThE S oLuT i OnIsR ePrEhEnSi Bl E.GoOd LuCk.
	+ Simply a horridly written "The solution is reprehensible. Good Luck." REPREHENSIBLE
	+ "When they discovered the means to protect themselves from other's fates."
* (5,5)
	+ BTO5EIY:AES1SB:7
	+ A box cipher which translates to "Beastie Boys 5:17" The Beastie Boys' 5th album 17th song is named ELECTRIFY.
	+ "Of the world's past, where a great darkness had overtaken."
* (6,6)
	+ DLBRT@060314:OBIMWJ\*\*D
	+ The solution was to check the Dilbert comic strip released on 06/03/14 and fill in the missing words PERFORMANCEENHANCING
	+ "Where the unworthy were purged and the rest put to work in the great cycle."
* (6,8)
	+ 36 AT AY ED ME NE NT OF TH TO
	+ Unscrambles to Day of Attonement, aka YOMKIPPUR
	+ "Lines of data, research funded through dubious means."
* (6,9)
	+ 07231886ACT (13)
	+ An act enstated on 07/23/1886, the OLEOMARGARINE Act
	+ "Only one would recall, and the horrors they saw would drive them to complete their life's work."
* (7,11)
	+ /MOST/0711.png
	+ lead to an image which simply says "TEXTURE"
	+ "Sacrifices made and knowledge destroyed, but they found that their curiosity was not worth the chaos untold."
* (7,14)
	+ A sound made when understanding. Clock type. Early human, according to some religious texts. Feeling that could be of spiders or high places. Found in movies as Morgan or a videogame as Gordon. This word count. Three letter word compressed to a single letter that is a drink or equipment for golf.
	+ Each clue had a one word solution "Ah, Cuckoo, Eve, Fear, Freeman, Three, T" and when put in length order and the last letter of each taken yields "THEREON"
	+ "One signal, another signal, opposite in scope."
* (8,16)
	+ L.......: Darrel Russell, John Livsey Jr, Jim Jennings
	+ All are names of LACROSSE players
	+ "Enough to disrupt the links between this world to the rest."
* (9,6)
	+ /MOST/0906.png
	+ Another image, this one showing the phonetic spelling of the german for GERMANSHEPHERD.
	+ "A grand design to subsume all realities as one."
* (10,5)
	+ 1108FRANCE01101791TO20091792
	+ Describes the operational time of the French LEGASLATIVEASSEMBLY
	+ "From North to South, many realities created similar havens, but none so fundamental and all-encompassing."
* (12,10)
	+ /MOST/1210.png
	+ Another image, this one showing 13 bars of varying shades of white to black. Each bar is 26 pixels long and the darkest pixel represents the letter of the alphabet the bar denotes (top = A, bottom = Z) and thus spelled out UPPERCLASSMEN.
	+ "It would take years, and a fundamental flaw would avoid notice."
* (13,6)
	+ W&P: A AGITATION AND AND AND AND ANDREW AS BEFORE BEGAN BORE CHINA DECORATED DETERMINES DINING ELBOWS ELEGANT ENTERED EVERYTHING FACE FOUND FROM GLASS HAD HAD HAS HIS HIS HIS HOUSEHOLDS IMPRINT IN LEANED LONG LOOK LUXURIOUS MARRIED MIND NAPKINS NERVOUS NEVER NEWLY NEWLY NEWNESS OF OF OF ON ON ON ONE OUT PIERRE PRINCE ROOM SEEN SILVER SOMETHING SPEAK SUCH SUDDENLY SUPPER TABLE TABLE TALKAS THAT THE THE THE THE THE THE THEY TO TO TO WHO WITH
	+ This is an excerpt from War and Peace Chapter 8, the code was HALFWAYTHROUGH
	+ "Once upon a time, at a small University a group of friends were gathered together."
* (14,3)
	+ Naked bruising around the eye (6)
	+ A bruise around the eye refers to a "blackeye" while the term naked in some puzzle solving circles refers to the removal of the first and last letters of a given word. Thus LACKEY is the answer.
	+ "Finding the lost secrets that lay buried in the Alchemists' tomb."
* (15,16)
	+ "op;/.,ki9olkju78gbvcdertfdsw234rxzaqwedclo90-['; QWSXZgHJM B"
	+ When you split the above into 8 character pieces, each one will encircle a key on a standard QWERTY keyboard, each character spelling out the word LIFESPAN.
	+ "When the scientist would put the last vestiges of their work in a secret."
* (16,13)
	+ Taking pairs of digits and using an A1Z26 cipher yields the word SMOTHER (with an extra 0 due to corruption of the data).
	+ "But eventually the signal was transmitted and reforged reality."
* (16,16)
	+ FLIPFOURADDTHREEUTOODROPH
	+ Follow the instructions the clue gives. Flip the word "four" to "ruof", add "three" > "ruofthree", U to O > "roofthree", and finally drop the H > "ROOFTREE"
	+ "Exposure to the morphic fields would leaving a mark on the scientist."

### Other Sources of Acquisition

Two other sources of acquiring further answers were used to complete a large amount of the grid before moving on to the final stage of piecing them together to find our "5 Nonsensical Phrases". The full final list of phrases from all sources is present on this google sheet.

#### Grand Theft Floppy

The first of these was a floppy disk, the drop was telegraphed by Dr Elliot Tarzer via his twitter, but another group intercepted this drop prior to us. But fortunately, one member of Taskforce Earth was monitoring the ST Streams for chat about it and managed to intercept the data as this secondary group (known as C) uploaded the data to trade with Dr. Tarzer. Using this data from the floppy disk we were able to extract a number of new answers to fit into our existing grid and expanding what we knew.

#### John-tervention

The second source was via another of the ST Streams, this one given to us by the AE known as John, he offered us the choice of collaborating with others to "Join the pieces, find the secret, open the way, kill a god." In typical TE fashion we accepted and were soon joined by another group who were identified as "S" or "Salamanders" and over the course of that day we traded all of our pieces with all of theirs before the stream was cut to an end. By the end of these two data acquisitions we were left with 62.11% of the data recovered and with no further way of accruing more data we were to set about finding our final 5 phrases to move forward.

### Making Sense of Nonsense

Our final task then, it seemed was to take our partially completed grid and use that to extract "Five nonsensical phrases". This part however would take quite a long time on our part as the solution to this was not exactly the most evident. It would in fact take a hint from another source (the INFINITESEQUENCE, given then to ERLA) to tip us off to the final solution.

Following our dealings with the entity which makes its home in the INFINITESEQUENCE stream, ERLA was able to access a small piece of the archive which contained a set of directions which were as follows.

> Start with the Alchemist.
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> Standing behind such an imposing figure, you can see how the beginning separates eternity from something small.
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> Index the small into the large for a direction.
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> Proceed that way.
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> Before you cross, you will find a building with two forms of anger.
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> There is a word related to alcohol, take it and turn in the direction of the building.
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> Continuing down until the road ends.
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> If the central word of the previous word is a vowel, turn left. Otherwise right.
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> Cross the first bridge you see and stop at the intersection.
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> What street are you intersecting?
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This is a set of directions from a sculpture named "The Alchemist" outside of MIT's Stratton Student Center, to the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Beacon Street in Boston. Following our entry of the word "Beacon" we were given access to the following image:

This image shows a set of 16 words and a message beneath which states "GOOD WORK, Travel 4 roads and find their intersection." We would initially notice that the first letters of each of the 16 words spell out "THIS IS A SMALL GRID" this comes into play later. We would then notice the fact that each row and column shares a common letter, for instance the top row all share the letter "G" and the rows below that share an "O', "O" and "D" respectively. The same is true for the columns, which from left to right share "W", "O", "R" and "K" this very clearly spells out the two capitalized and underlines words "GOOD WORK". It then clicked that the message "THIS IS A SMALL GRID" is a hint to apply this method to our larger 16x16 grid, which is exactly what we did next.

Tackling the columns first each column was checked for a common letter, and then these letters were strung together to form a phrase. The same method was applied for the rows and the two diagonal directions, this method would yield the following phrases:

> Phrase 1: ONETIMEASSISTANT
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> Phrase 2: SPEECHESONBEHALF
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> Phrase 3: WHENTHEREAREMORE
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> Phrase 4: THENEARBYCARPARK
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Taking each of these phrases and then zig-zagging through them as the image to the right shows would yield the fifth and final phrase "OPENTHESECRETARK"

Entering these phrases would then reveal the entire message left by the Scientist who created it:

> "If you are reading this then you have begun to find the secrets hidden here. If you are one of SOTE then I hope you will forgive me for the trail that you have walked to get here. This knowledge is dangerous and only with time and maturity can it be handled carefully. May the discoveries you make help our world prosper."
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With that, ERLA departed and we wait to see where this puzzle now leads.