Thursday, May 04, 2006

Student Rant: Google Da Vinci Code Quest # 18 :Geography Challenge

Hello everyone ... welcome back to day #18 of the Google Da Vinci Code webquests. I received some very valuable input with respect to the manner in which the puzzles are discussed. Thanks a lot for that... and I will be doing my best to incorporate as many of those suggestions as possible.

Today's challenge is being called the" Geography Challenge"

The instructions are as follows
"Paul Bettany is Silas, a man who in blind faith will do whatever it takes to track down a secret that must be destroyed, no matter where it leads him.

Assemble the jigsaw puzzle pieces to reveal and identify a geographical location."

So, lets get started....

Step # 1: Start of with identifying any pieces with text on them which indicate the copyright of Google images. I had three of them. Find the one with a flat end on its right hand side and with text on it and place in on the bottom right. Attach the remainder of the pieces with text on it on bottom right section

Step # 2: Since we completed most of the bottom section, finish up the one last component by looking for the right piece and attaching it.

Note: you will observe that as soon as a right piece is in place, those sections are locked and you can't move them anymore.

Step # 3: Keep it up this way. First bottom row. Finish up bottom row. Attach the section on the left hand side... finish up the row. Then attach the section on the right hand side... keep going left until you finish the whole puzzle... bottom --> top ; left -->right ; right <-- left.

The next question we are asked is
"Leonardo's reverse-handwriting manuscript on perpetual motion wheels can be found in this city. What is its name?
(For another clue, Hyde in the north;)"

The first thing, I did was assume the black flowing spot might be a river or some water body and the hint Hyde is being referred to that.

However the answer of New York does not work. Next, assumed that it might be a park or some nature resource.

This time, I was more successful. A Google search for "Hyde park" would help you find the answer. Warning: There are multiple locations for Hyde park but the location could be found in the first page.


Next, we are given another trivia question.
"Well done ! There are four Blades hidden around the city. Please find them and click on them"

This is pretty easy. A blade is a symbol that looks like a triangle.



We are asked one more trivia question after that.
"You have found all four blades, and lo! they draw an X over a place just slightly north of the Victoria and Albert Museum, home of Leonardo's Codex Forster. What is its name?"

You need to log on to Google Maps , and once you check on here, the location of the college is easily found. It is very near to the location of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Good Luck solving !!

Update: As ScottJG points out, Using google maps, instead of using satellite use.. Map and where the 4 blades point will have a name.. " .... ".

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42 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Psh I should have gotten some credit :P

ScottJG

Anonymous said...

London
Imperial College

Anonymous said...

yeah right.. but dude dont answer immediately let others :) try their ownselves.. otherwise it might not worth to solve puzzle for them..

Anonymous said...

hay i only found three blades. one in left side and other two bottom. But where is ther other one?

Anonymous said...

at the top in the middle

Anonymous said...

found the blades.. can't believe i had a hard time with that

Anonymous said...

Hmm, Still do not see it

Anonymous said...

it's kinda hard to see because it's right on a lighter place, it's at the very top in the middle, right above that long black place

Anonymous said...

dude... loved your approach for hyde park. I was too dense to get to that obvious hint in the puzzle

Anonymous said...

OK, found it finally. It is the very tip of what appears t be a large, almost triangular) light area along the top.

Anonymous said...

Hey Student, maybe you can post a section for the next day's puzzle before it starts so in case someone solved it, they can start discussion there instead of on the previous day's blog. I am sure Johnnnny would be very happy with this

Anonymous said...

Another thing I tried with the "Hyde" hint... I have NO clue if this is it.. haha, but I searched for the setting place of the story "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".. lo and behold, it's set in London.

Anonymous said...

ya agreed with brandon. hopefully no one will provide answers in that section tho

Anonymous said...

Dr.jekyll and mr.hyde
thats funny stuff mush. How on earth did you think of that ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh ya, i want a section too there for the next day's post.

Anonymous said...

hey man, sorry to be so anal about this but in step three of the directions, I think it should be left--> right and then left <-- right and not right <-- left. What say?

Genti said...

today was fun,

not too easy since im not too familiar with london, however still easily found through a search.

the blades were nice too, the 4rth one not too easy to find.

The college in my opinion was the "hardest" as i think it is not exactly NORTH of the museum. i was looking at at the 'longest' time at the princes gardens instead of the college.
However since that didnt work, it was obvious that it was asking for another location. (i.e the college)

see ya tomorow :)

Anonymous said...

I found finding the blades to be the hardest. However, using google maps, i think i got lucky and found the location in the first try

Anonymous said...

Hi,

How do you use Google Maps to find the answer (Imperial College)? I clicked the map of the museum (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Victoria+and+Albert+Museum+london&ll=51.49795,-0.155268&spn=0.018862,0.058537&t=k&om=1) but I couldn't find any building names. How would I find the name "Imperial College" if I didn't know it in advance?

Anonymous said...

the key is get your bearings with respect to where the cross is intersecting. Then in google maps without the satellite view, in the maps section, if u click near the right place, there will a small sticky showing up with the name. check it out

Anonymous said...

have any of you tried to unlock the secret passage on the da vinci code website? the one that has got all the hidden symbols in the gallery? i'm having trouble finding the fleur de lis if anyone has any clue where it might be...

Anonymous said...

have any of you tried to unlock the secret passage on the da vinci code website? the one that has got all the hidden symbols in the gallery? i'm having trouble finding the fleur de lis if anyone has any clue where it might be...

Anonymous said...

ok here is more help... when u click on the link on this blog to go to the google maps, check out map view. Where they highlight the museum, there is the name of the college and it matches the place where the cross interests. That would then be a good first guess

Anonymous said...

muwahah, Brandon yeah i love ur idea .. i agreed .. pls. student consider that particular idea..

Anonymous said...

I like this site, it's handy when you're missing something. But I live in the North-East of England, and I got Hyde Park straight away :P I didn't even think of anything remotely American until I came here looking for the Imperial College hints.

Oh, and @gimperial:
"You have found all four blades, and lo! they draw an X over a place just slightly north of the Victoria and Albert Museum, home of Leonardo's Codex Forster. What is its name?"

Another way of saying that is "The X hits a place just north of the V&A Museum which is the home of the Codex Forster. Where does the X hit?"

They aren't saying the Imp College is the location of it; they're saying it's north of where the CF is =)

Anonymous said...

I had some difficulty getting Quest 17 to load. In actuality it would not load at all, so I would upgrade that from difficulty to inability. Every other one has loaded fine; can anyone help?

Anonymous said...

hi I google perpetual motion wheels
got:

Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza
Piazza dei Giudici 1
5012p2 Firenze
ITALIA.

from here a link to Forster

LEONARDO DA VINCI - Forster Ms. II
Place: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Note the upper triangle and lower three but nothing happen before entering london. At this point I forgot about the upper triagle. It took a bit to get the right pixle to click on too.

Wish I had thought of looking on London before searching for the p-wheel We did paris and rome. New York and London should have been on the short list to check. Its still fun

Anonymous said...

have any of you tried to unlock the secret passage on the da vinci code website? the one that has got all the hidden symbols in the gallery? i'm having trouble finding the fleur de lis if anyone has any clue where it might be...

Its really easy. Just do the gallery in slow motion by controlling the picture frame at the bottom of the screen. Each painting has a symbol excepts for the last one if I remember correctly. Then to access the secrest passageways look for the torn pieces of paper on the pages. There is one under each character. You have to hold the mouse down and drag it to reveal the code. Then punch the code in with the symbols to access the secret passageways. Its not much just a fast 3 second clip of the movie.

Anonymous said...

I just searched for 'leonardo hyde in north' and was able to find my answer from there.

About the secret passageway, I found all the symbols, and was having the hardest of times, trying to actually open the secret passage way. I was clicking away at the torn pieces of paper, never thinking of holding the mouse than dragging it. Thanks for the advice.

Anonymous said...

For the Secret Passageway quest on the webiste I am missing one. The ones I have so far are the blade, ank, greek cross, chalice, and fleur-de-lis. If someone could tell me the last symbol and give a hint to where it is, I would greatly appreciate it.

Anonymous said...

first time i'm looking for a tutorial to a puzzle

i couldn't find the fourth blade, i've been trying to find it by comparing the flash game to the actual map in google maps

couldn't find it, any more hints? lol

Anonymous said...

ok... found it, just after i clicked "Publish Your Comment"
sorry for spamming..

Anonymous said...

I couldn't find the last answer because I can't understand what you guys are saying about getting a "sticky" on google maps that shows the name of the college. Please someone get back to me on this because I've never seen a feature like this before on google; it could be very handy elsewhere too.

Julie P. (babyofmine) said...

That was a freakin' PIA. LOL Now that I finally "clicked in the right place" the hints make sense. But I was lost, so just started zooming out and in, thinking another bubble would appear. oh, silly me! Thanks for this lovely blog.

Anonymous said...

If you want to use your own brain a bit, try starting from here: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/menteleonardo/emdl.asp?c=13419&k=13362&rif=13384&xsl=1 to figure out the location of the perpetual motion documents.

Anonymous said...

I found it really hard to find the answers to the first question - I am NOT familiar with Hyde whatsoever so the searching with google maps in US didn't help me much...

Eventually I got there...thankz to this site, but the blades were easy.

Anonymous said...

hybrid maps are better...

Anonymous said...

hm I had to put in "imperial college" not "london imperial college" for some reason.

Anonymous said...

Well as an Imperial College student I thought this task was very easy indeed. However what perplexed me was that the lines actually cross over the Royal College of Music which is also on this site. Additionally, the V&A is not directly south of IC!

Anonymous said...

Will you put solution to the cryptex also?

Unknown said...

#22 Solution: City of Light is Paris
Sequence is Square

Unknown said...

Errr... that is solution 23 rather :p