Phase 2 Answers!

Here's are the answers from the second set of puzzles. These are the ones that started with the letter from "H." that I found at my housewarming party on July 1st.

I'm going to hide the answers so as not to spoil the fun for people who want to try to solve the puzzles on their own. To see an answer, click your mouse above one of the pink boxes and then drag down until you can read the highlighted text.

Question 1 - What's the new webpage?

Well, the first webpage was at:
http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase1/index.shtml

And it turns out that the second one is at:
http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/index.shtml

Sigh, that was pretty easy. I should have been able to figure that one out on my own!

Question 2 - What's the answer to the "Memento" riddle?

www.imdb.com has a lot of movie-related information. It looks like "Memento" was directed by Christopher Nolan, and now he's working on a documentary called "Batman Begins".

So the answer is "batman", which leads us to the URL: http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/batman.shtml

Question 3 - What's the answer to the "role-model" question?

The big clues here are that the person was a Roman Emperor and a contemporary of Seneca; that gave us a fairly small list of names. We looked at some biographies, and the obvious match was Nero.

Actually, H.'s description of Nero seems awfully flattering. All the biographies we found portray Nero as a pretty nasty person. Here's a pretty typical one: http://www.roman-empire.net/emperors/nero.html.

And H. sees him as a role-model? This doesn't sound good!

Anyway, the link is: http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/nero.shtml

Question 4 - The coin game.
Hint:

Apparently you can figure out the winning strategy for this game by looking at the simple positions and then building to the more complicated ones.

If there are 0 or 1 coins on the table, then we can't make a move and so we lose.
If there are 2, 3, 4, or 5 coins on the table then we can make a move that will leave 0 or 1 coins on the table, and so we can win.
If there are 6 or 7 coins on the table, then any move we make will leave either 2, 3, 4, or 5 coins on the table. So in that case, we'll lose, unless the other player makes a mistake.

Someone told me that you're guaranteed to win if you can make a move that will leave either 6x or 6x+1 coins on the table. I don't get it, though. I mean, 6x isn't even a number. I hope this makes sense to you guys!

Answer:

On your first move, you should always take 4 coins. All the rest of the moves depend on how H. plays: If she takes 4 coins, you take 2. If she takes 3 coins, you take 3. If she takes 2 coins, you take 4.

When you win the game, you'll be taken to this page: http://extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/lethe.shtml

Question 5 - The impossible coin game.
Proof that it's impossible:

Apparently 24 is one of those 6x numbers, so there's no way to win unless your opponent makes a mistake. H. seems to understand the strategy and never makes mistakes.

Well, if it's impossible, then how come there are more spoiler boxes down here?

H. never makes mistakes, but there might be a way to win by cheating. Of course superheroes don't usually cheat, but maybe these are exceptional circumstances?

Solution:

Try taking 4 coins. Notice that the URL page changes to: http://extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/game2.php?move=24_4

24 is the number of coins you started with, and 4 is the number of coins you took. So you can cheat by putting an illegal move in the URL. For example, you could change the "move=24_4" to "move=24_24".

Once you've won, you'll wind up at the URL: http://extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase2/hmmm.shtml

That's all!

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