POST 01 – WHO IS THAT CLOWN? AND OTHER CLUE CONUNDRUMS

Does the name Hoo Gon Choi mean anything to you? It should since it was recently used as a password to gain access to the video of Hugh and Darla’s flat. Does anyone remember seeing it before? No? Hoo Gon Choi is the Korean Foreign Minister from week six clues whose worry-filled letter about mutated species was "light in animus, but weighty in urgency." The map above was included as part of that clue, which Persephone posted. Take a second look at it. Is it just us, or is that in fact not an island but a clown's head? Huh? Was somebody screwing with Persephone? Or is the joke on us?

And by us, we mean you, too, since if you're reading this we know you're spending your summer vacation chasing Rachel's vagrant meanderings through The Lost Experience. So now we've just gotta ask: are we the only ones who find that the “clues” seem to raise many more questions than ever get answered?

Aside from the technical puzzles like decompiling Photoshop images, breaking ASCII codes, viewing page source and using anagram decoders for passwords, does it ever seem to you that none of the data leads anywhere? Or does it circle around on itself before getting... Lost?

The “clues” have sent us off to research ships, spiders, Jimmy Durante, Portsmouth, The Netherlands, South American Tango composers, Russian legal services, Eventology, The Philadelphia Experiment, Feng Shui... ad infinitum. One hundred MacGuffins might be a more apt title for this Experience since the research has failed to produce a solution to even one clue.

The players on the blogs we follow seem to be of the opinion that it's best to leave well enough alone, and maybe they've got a point. With so many avid players, if no one "solves" the puzzle in the first few hours, there must not be a puzzle there to solve, right? And, at least until the Glyphalysis epidemic, a new clue would soon come along to take our minds off the most recent stumper.

Yet, they nag at us. Rachel offers up something like “Good night, Mrs. Calabash,” so we Google the phrase and... the number one hit is a spider-covered page describing Jimmy Durante's “secret sign off.” Spider covered? Can that really be a coincidence? We couldn't find the connection and we haven't heard of anyone else doing so either... but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Oh, Mrs. Calabash, please explain yourself. Certainly, Rachel never will. For all her talk about revealing the truth, Rachel turns out to be the best little secret-keeper around.

That's not to say the Experience hasn't proved entertaining, but we think it could be so much more satisfying if, for instance, we were able to find some answers to all those May, June and July clues. We think maybe someone out there could help us figure out what that floating clown is all about, and that's just for starters. Maybe this would be a good time to revisit week six and all the other weeks when clues left us clueless. At least it's a distraction...until the next glyph chase begins.