Curio #130
Problem: Stuck in the Crowd
Figure 1: Together, some nodes refuse to be “Stuck in the Crowd.”
Initial Thoughts
Perusing the unsolved Curios I viewed many blocks of numbers, a blizzard of snowflakes, and a lovely excerpt from Freud’s Dream Psychology before stumbling upon Curio #130. The kinetic nature of this Curio caught my attention. At first, I believed the movement would make this unsolved Curio more complicated than its static siblings, but this was not the case. The following immediate observations led me quickly to the answer.
- Likely every movement corresponds to an individual word or letter.
- Some specific nodes move up often while others not at all.
- There are 26 nodes.
Following Process
Together, the three original observations suggest each node corresponds to a letter and each movement corresponds to a word (and nodes moving with decent frequency likely being vowels). With 26 nodes, I assigned the ith letter of the alphabet to the ith node. The first movement produced the string “ADIS”. Realizing each movement would produce a string in alphabetical order, I decided it was an anagram for “Said”. Thinking this was a strange first word for a hidden message, I continued. After getting “Said sugar make it slow and” I had complete confidence I would have the solution soon. I was a bit confused when I stopped at ”ELW”, but I noticed the “L” node was about twice the height of the others so I simply counted it twice. Following this rule, while also taking many, many screenshots, I uncovered the message.
Answer
