Descent of the Durtle into eGoooott - NOW AT B8!

Clue recap for myself:

text clue
Oh. Hello there.
So, you figured out that simple Caeser Cipher?
I suppose Rome wasn’t built in a day, ha ha. Time reference :heavy_check_mark: Rome/Romaji?
And the Shift JIS riddle?
Talk about dated! Date reference :heavy_check_mark:
But, this durtle won’t be so easy on you.
You see, I believe that this isn’t a place
for Disciples of the Crabigator. “this isn’t a place for…” could refer to having to go to Tofugu, or it might still be an unused clue
You seek spiritual ascendence
through your Lessons and Reviews.
We seek physical descendence, “physical descendence” seems to be a clue but hasn’t been significant yet
and that is the key key[board] :heavy_check_mark:
difference between you and I. “You and I” might be a clue
We’re just a different type from you. Typing reference :heavy_check_mark:
死から開始。
[the four encrypted lines, obviously]
注意!スペースも必要です
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@Omun, nice find with the HTML comment!

It’s possible that DURT is a word that we need to CHOP apart to form an acrostic that starts with Death, and that the words that make up the acrostic would be the four key words.

D - Death
U - ???
R - ???
T - ???

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CHOP DURT
CHORD PUT
DUTCH PRO
CROP THUD
PRODUCT H

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HOW MANY sorry

How many items on WK are repeated words? 人々,着々, etc
Edit: that was easy. I just put 々 in the search bar. Aaand, nothing looks good.

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Thirty-two.

(Citation: Did a ctrl-F for 々 on the Vocabulary Lattice page, and it gave me 32 results.)

Though, seven of those are of the form X々しい

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Are all the repeated words accompanied by an exclamation mark? As in haha!, Chop chop!, Etc?

Because that might matter too.

Chop chop is the sound of a cleaver at work. Chop chop! is ‘get it done yesterday, you lazy —k.’

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I can see all the typing clues and the “isn’t a place for Disciples of the Crabigator” being pointers to the Tofugu page (if we didn’t figure out the dates). And I can see the descending and begin from death relating to telling us what order to put in the keywords once we know them. That still leaves the begin from death thing. It can’t NOT be a clue, and we have no idea what that means.

Begin from death.
I thought maybe there would be a vocab word meaning begin in the death levels, but no.

Tried imagining “death” doesn’t mean the state of being dead, but the name of something

There doesn’t seem to be anything there either.

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I took that to mean that Durtle Heaven wasn’t a place for us; as it’s been said before.

Death could also be the decoded phrase of one of those 4 clues and it’s telling us to start with that one when arranging them.

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I took that to mean we have to look at stroke order, which is not taught on Wanikani.

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Could spiritual ascendance be moving from an unhatched turtle, apprentice, guru, master, enlightenment

And then Physical Descendence as in Burned (death, the start)
Enlightened
Master
Guru
Apprentice
:sleeping:

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you should try it

Indeed, none of those terms work, directly

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I will start from death
Descending into madness
Reviews left untouched

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I think all our reviews will be untouched if this puzzle continues any longer. I still have 80 lessons I’m sorta avoiding :s

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Hah, I just came across this one too. Also Codes and Ciphers of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy in the Meiji Period: 1874-1912

I quite like the idea of checkerboard codes or telegraph codes that turn two kana, into one considering that each of the four codes has an even number of characters, except that (a) no codes on either of those pages has ちち (or AA) as an encoded symbol, and (b) I feel like we’re introducing new information that’s not been hinted at.

Honestly, I’ve been staring at this all day, and nothing’s jumping out at me. But then, nothing jumped out at me about the original five kanji either.

@Masayoshiro, come here and let me run an electric current across your brainpan, see what happens.

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Well that ending turned dark quickly didn’t it.

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I’m kind of back to hoping they will interact with us more frequently, (durtle visiting us every 500 posts maybe? <3 We miss you Mr Durtle!) but I guess that is in vain :cry:

That being said, yesterday evening I thought the 死 in 死から開始 could be there for reading mostly and it might mean 四 instead… so starting from the fourth… and then I dreamed this was totally right and it lead us to a clue about something with two… but sadly I forgot all the details…

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I read about those codes, too, and thought maybe two characters represent one kana. Except, the only pair that repeats itself is D0 I think, all others are unique. That would mean we‘re looking at a sentence/sentences where no kana except one figures twice - I think that‘s unlikely.
In my opinion a Japanese keyboard is our best bet - after all the clue is in an article about keyboards. Then again, none of my ideas so far turned out to be worth anything, so if I have an opinion about this, you can probably disregard it.

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Though, then there’s Koichi’s “Matrix” not-clue…

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