CLUE 5- SOLUTION

This was one of my favorite clues. It's a meta-clue, where the answer is the solution!

First, look at the drawing. It's from the scene in "The Matrix" when Neo goes to the Oracle to see whether he is "The One" and while he is waiting in the waiting room, he encounters a Buddha-like child who attempts to educate him. The child shows him a spoon and says "There is no spoon.:"

click on image to see it full-size

Next, the writing on the inside of the envelope gives you a hint that this is a meta-clue, containing a quotation from Goedel, Escher and Bach: "The poem contains its own commentary..."

click on image to see it full-size


Each of the seven pieces of paper contains a puzzle whose answer is "THERE IS NO SPOON." There is no need to decipher each puzzle. The important thing is how the puzzles were encoded. When you figure out the encoding method on each puzzle, fill in the blanks at the top of the puzzle with the name of the encoding method. Then take all of the letters that have numbers beneath them, and sort those letters into numerical order. That yields the next clue destination.

In the meantime, just for fun, we'll "solve" each puzzle. But we already know all the answers - THERE IS NO SPOON.

The first puzzle is an ASCII code. In ASCII, the upper case letters of the alphabet are represented by the numbers 65 (A) to 90 (Z). For each line, count the number of characters it contains (including spaces) and then convert to the corresponding letter in ASCII.

It does matter # chars ASCII
A     S    C     I     I    
3            8     9    
Happiness is essential for both the individual and the group. The possibility of ha-
84
T
ving available all the means to attain it creates a kind of electronic "
72
H
high", a kind of happiness so evident that it ends up having no more-
69
E
raison d'etre. There, there is a general problem of critical mass of the means wh-
82
R
ich puts an end to ends. What happens when everything has been reali-
69
E
zed in modernity, when everything is virtually given? The question is cr-
73
I
ucial: where does one go from there? That is the problem: from the moment the subj-
83
S
ect is perfectly realized, it automatically becomes the objecct, and there is-
78
N
panic. I am not sure that with the virtual world we are moving closer still to-
79
O
happiness, because vrituality only gives possibilities virtually, while taking back
83
S
the reference and the density of things, their meaning. It gives you everything,
80
P
and subtly, surreptitiously it takes everything away at the same time. It is a-
79
O
game of which one does not know the rule[s]. One loses what one wins and vice -
79
O
versa. All that one can do is refuse to play, but it is not easy in our times.
78
N

In the next puzzle, we are given fourteen times of day to figure out. Each of these times of day can be represented by the two hands on a clock which, when positioned properly, also correspond to semaphore positions. In semaphore, the operator holds a flag in each of his hands and then extends each arm in one of eight positions corresponding to the directions N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW. It doesn't matter which hand is extended in which direction, so there are sixty-four semaphore positions of which 26 code for letters of the alphabet.  Note below that 6:10 and 2:30 look like the same position in semaphore so they both represent the letter 'E.'

Turing's true demise
Time
 
Dir1
Dir2
Letter
S     E     M     A     P     H     O     R     E
 
        
7    10                    18     2                     23 
 
        
One day, Alan Turing woke up at 10am. He was late, and he had to
10:00
 
NW N
T
run in a marathon after work. This meant he didn't get home for 9
7:45
   SW W
H
3/4 hours. He immediately settled in to read the newspaper he had
 
      
 
bought about 95 minutes before he got home. 90 minutes later, he

6:10
9:15

 

S
W

NE
E

E
R
had the idea that would change the world. Sitting at his writing desk
 
      
 
for only 5 hours and 15 minutes, he had penned the words that would
2:30
   NE S
E
turn out to be not famous, but prophetic of his own downfall.  He
 
 
   
 
then slept easily, and awoke just over 2 hours before he had the
7:55
   SW N
I
previous day, all excited to get to work. In just 90 minutes, he had
9:25
   W SE
S
completed a coded letter that he would send to the masonry society of
 
 
   
 
which he was a member. It explained how to attain true worldly
 
      
 
power, by exploiting the power and reasoning abilities of machines.
 
      
 
After going on what would be his last bike ride and eating lunch he
 
 
   
 
delivered the letter into the mail a little more than 3 hours before he
4:40
   SE SW
N
had gotten home the previous day, thus sealing his fate.   Off to work
 
      
 
he went, and stayed there for 365 minutes. His letter arrived at its
10:45
 
NW W
O
destination early the next morning, a quarter hour before five. It took
4:45
   SE W
S
the masons just 8 hours to decide Turing's fate. He had been outed,
12:45
   N W
P
and jailed, as the UK was not the place it would become. So, the
 
 
   
 
public might well believe Turing to be in a depressed state. They left
 
 
   
 
word for him to meet them at his house 10 hours later. Although he
10:45
   NW W
O
was suspicious, he had no choice but to comply. When they showed
 
      
 
up, they overpowered him, and kept him tied up for just over 11
9:50
 
W W
O
hours while they prepared his house. Finally, they killed him. He was
 
      
 
found just under 7 hours later, by his maid, who announced to the
4:40
   SE W
N
world that Alan Turing had committed suicide.
 
       
 

This next puzzle is a Caesar shift cipher ("All Roads Lead to Rome" was a hint). This is a very simple letter substitution cipher in which every plaintext letter is shifted a certain number of letters to the right (or left, same thing if you consider the alphabet a continuous loop) and is replaced by the resulting letter to create the ciphertext. In this case, to make a nice 5 x 3 grid "THEREISNOSPOON" becomes "THEREISNOSPOONX" and then the letters get shifted two to the right to become "VJGTGKUPQURQQPZ."  (The X becomes a Z which is not really part of the solution.)

All roads lead to Rome
C     A     E     S      A     R     S     H     I     F     T

7            26    17                                           25 
22

VJGTJ
KUPQU
RQQPZ

 

This next puzzle is an anagram - "HOT ION RESPONSE" unscrambles into "THERE IS NO SPOON." In cryptic crossword puzzles, almost anything can signal an anagram - such as using the words "mixed up" or "scrambled" in the clue. I have no idea what "From unconnected bitter ancient robot" is supposed to mean other than that its acronym, FUBAR, could certainly be used as an anagram indicator.

 

From unconnected bitter ancient robot:
A     N     A     G     R     A     M

14   24   19

HOT ION RESPONSE

 

This next puzzle is a reflection - you can see "THERE IS NO SPOON" reflected backwards below.

It's pretty clear.
R     E     F     L     E     C     T     I     O     N

27   13                  21             6                   11

This next puzzle is in Morse Code - and again the title is a clue. On each line are between one and four people, some of whom are real (these would be dashes) and some of whom are fictional (these would be dots). Each line therefore becomes a letter in Morse Code.

Am I real, or am I Memorex?
Morse Code
Letter
 M     O     R     S     E     C     O     D     E
 
 

   5                         20,1           16

 
 
Thomas Jefferson
-
T
Sam Spade, Huckleberry Finn, Alex Delaware, James Bond
. . . .
H
Hiro Protagonist
.
E
Michael Valentine Smith, Neal Stephenson, Don Quixote
. - .
R
Philiip Marlowe
.
E
Emma Bovary, Chia Pao-yu
. .
I
Victoria Warshawski, Martin Quirk, Jubal Harshaw
. . .
S
Charlie Chaplin, Jean Valjean
- .
N
Gauguin, Malcolm X, Warhol
- - -
O
Phoebe Buffet, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Holden Caulfield
. . .
S
Willy Loman, Ulysses S. Grant, Michael Jordan, Jane Eyre
. - - .
P
Saul Bellow, MC Escher, Walt Whitman
- - -
O
Maxfield Parrish, Harold Pinter, Edgar Rice Burroughs
- - -
O
William Gibson, Genji
- .
N

 

The final puzzle is in binary code. Each word can be converted to a 5 digit binary number (I added with leading zeroes to make it look nicer but you don't have to) and then to a letter. In each word, a capital letter becomes a 1 and a lower case letter becomes a zero. ("Execution Matters" was a hint - Execution = CAPITAL punishment.) The first digit is 2^4 = 16, the next one is 2^3 = 8, the next one 2^2 = 4, the next 2^1 = 2 and the last one 2^0 = 1. The numbers are converted to the corresponding letter of the alphabet.

 

Execution matters Binary
Number
Base 10
Number
Letter
B     I     N      A     R     Y         

4           15

        
GiVen 10100 16 + 4 = 20
T
This 01000 8
H
ArT 00101 4 + 1 = 5
E
WhiCh 10010 16 + 2= 18
R
OnE 00101 4 + 1 = 5
E
WilL 01001 8 + 1 = 9
I
IdeAS 10011 16 + 2 + 1 = 19
S
WONt 01110 8 + 4 + 2= 14
N
KILL 01111 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15
O
ImaGE 10011 16 + 2 + 1 = 19
S
Seems 10000 16
P
LESS 01111 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15
O
EVIL 01111 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15
O
THEn 01110 8 + 4 + 2 = 14
N

Finally, to get the answer (our next clue destination), from each of the seven puzzles take the letters that have numbers beneath them, and arrange them in numerical order. And the answer is:

CHABOT SCIENCE AND SPACE CENTER

Clue 6