Descent of the Durtle into eGoooott - NOW AT B8!

[emucat]

Thanks! Although nothing seems to make sense…

[Kumirei]

Yeah, it was more so that you wouldn’t waste any time

[emucat]

If we follow the other 3 books, it should be eGoooott…

[ctmf]

@Weirdmind

“Oooh hoo”? That is a very odd greeting, even for a durtle.

Another reminder to reverse something? Oooh and hoo are almost mirrored. (Also, a lot of o’s, like egoooot, but that’s probably coincidence.)

[Belthazar]

@rfindley

More confirmation of the right version:

Yeah, that does seem to be right.

… now what?

@Kumirei

If you use the string “Gakkoo e itte kimasu” you get "sGoooi "

@rfindley

Almost looks like Sugoooi.

The issue is, almost isn’t good enough, and also every other book has required us to not count spaces. Also, it’s "sgooooi " with the space. Why have eight letters in the code if one of them’s going to land on a space?

@magiconic

In what world was anyone close to the answer here? I mean, sure , we kind of had all the pieces of evidence, but clearly we aren’t there yet.

I’ll say. The clue that busted everything wide open came after the last hint post.

@Weirdmind

No matter where we start counting, we would still have the issue of a triple letter.
Why encode only one word?
Does “Space is required” only mean that the keywords are separated by spaces?

My feeling is that it’s a drawn-out letter for emphasis (like “loooove” or something"), but that’s just a gut feeling. @Okanekure’s theory that it’s a hyphenated word (like “cross-section”) also holds water.

The argument against it being two words with a space is that we’re explicitly asked to find four keywords, and I don’t know if it still counts as one keyword with a space in it.

@Ethan

Getting dangerously close to NSFW.

It’s getting close to witchery, is what it is.

@magiconic

But both pictures contain what I call “slippers”

@rfindley

And that’s what you call slippers?

Oh, I was given a pair of “slippers” when I stayed at the New York HI Hostel. They were thongs. (Ah… “flip flops”)

@atonement

D: i shouldn’t have helped this happen

I would have found a way anyway. You helped it to only be half an hour, instead of a whole hour. Or two.

Still, that surge of action got us quite close to the next clue. Maybe @koichi would be willing to answer a direct a question as “is this actually the right page?” this time…

[magiconic]

@Belthazar

Still, that surge of action got us quite close to the next clue. Maybe @koichi would be willing to answer a direct a question as “is this actually the right page?” this time…

You know what that means…

• post garbage until we get to 5.5k!
• Don’t do that, we should actually try.
• Why does the slip-on footwear talked about earlier have to many local terms?

[emucat]

Turtle looooove eating unko

BOOMM!!

[Weirdmind]

@Belthazar

My feeling is that it’s a drawn-out letter for emphasis (like “loooove” or something"), but that’s just a gut feeling.

So maybe it’s an onomatopoeia? The repeated letters could be translated to use the “ー Long Vowel Mark” and those are often used in onomatopoeia.

Japanese Onomatopoeia: The Definitive Guide

Also, in recent posts, a-regular-durtle has been using ––. Maybe a further hint?

@a-regular-durtle

Durtle Pope––no matter how durtverted the methods!

@a-regular-durtle

Together––with your smarts and my cryptic knowledge––there is no stopping us!

EDIT: Actually, a-regular-durtle is using – – not ー.

[ragakanji]

Good morning! Thanks for the confirmation that it is the right page.
I was thinking that a possibility for why the book code for one of the words could be different would be to stop us from brute force solving the puzzle without first understanding the cipher. Which wouldn’t be totally unfair on Koichi’s part. Another way to do that would have been to have all of the books in the html comments produce plausible keywords so we needed the cipher to determine the order… But with those it just came out as something garbled. Anyway maybe it could be a good idea to try thinking of different possibilities for a way to leave a clue in this format.

[emucat]

Now that we have decrypted the keyboard page… what did the durtle told us in the last “clue”?

[emucat]

@a-regular-durtle

I hope to see all of you–my bestest friends–soon!

I think we need “-“ in eGooott

[tombo]

Ahh yes, eGooott didn’t make a lot of sense, but when you consider Gooott as the modern online version as in “e-Gooott” all the pieces suddenly fall into place. Not bad.

[ShaunOfTheLive]

eGo is a type of e-cigarette, but I’m not sure what oott is.

[Belthazar]

Ego is what happens when I cogito.

Edit: No wait, that’s cogito ergo sum. Well, that little reference fell flat.

Um… id?

[Safarigirl]

Okay guys, world-shatteringly important discussions of summer footwear aside (for the record, NEVER socks with sandals unless you’re Japanese), has anyone actually tried
@ragakanji 's suggestion about the number pun? “Grey turtle eating unko”?

It’s the only thing we got that isn’t a major brick wall…

@Ethan : Foot appreciation isn’t always a bad thing:

although I prefer hands:

[atonement]

and if we want to pick it apart even more cogito is also i think by itself so you would have said i i think

@Tombow

Gooott as the modern online version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ-2DxrRxA Probably refers to this, so hopefully someone knows icelandic

[gojarappe]

Your avatar makes me very happy for some reason. Did you draw that yourself?

[Belthazar]

@atonement

and if we want to pick it apart even more cogito is also i think by itself so you would have said i i think

I think?

Anyway, it occurs to me that 憂鬱 (melancholy) written in romaji is “yuuutsu”, which has three Us in a row. Is there any similar word that’d work for the pattern of this book ciper?

[ctmf]

My favorite train stop is Kamioooka (上大岡), so a three-time repeating letter is not unheard-of if it represents romaji of a Japanese word. (But that one doesn’t work)

[Safarigirl]

Goooott → Godot?

As in, trying to solve this is like waiting for Godot…