CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

This quote should definitely be part of your promotional material

Fair enough, and I forgot about the password box idea. That would fit very nicely numerically.

So if we work under that assumption... then what would be on the last 2 amulets? X-Y on 12, and Z on 13? Or are you thinking that because of the number reversal, maybe T-U is on 13 and 2 of X,Y,Z are on 12?

Interesting. AnoHito clearly knows that 1 letter is missing from the first set, so maybe there are a different number of symbols (only 1) on #13? If this were also the case for either 12 or 10, it would reconcile what I noticed.

Really? It seems off by an amulet to me.

    Left
12    N-O
13    P-Q
10    R-S
9    T-U
8    V-W
7    X-Y

    Top
1    A-B
2    C-D
3    E-F
4    G-H
5    I-K
6    L-M

Interesting, I thought you had created that seal Jason. Hmm...

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thescienc … d-age.html

Here is the book mentioned:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=n … =1up;seq=5

Right now before sharing the runes on your amulet you have an advantage in solving the puzzle if there is some kind of reward at the end. My guess is that this is what is holding some people back from sharing theirs.

I think there is probably a solution to this, although it might be difficult to implement. If we could somehow convince everyone to send a screenshot of their amulet to a single trusted person, then they could post them all at the same time and there would not be an asymmetric information advantage. The two difficulties are a) deciding on a trusted person, and b) getting everyone with an amulet to agree to this plan.

Also I found this picture, seems like the squiggles are meaningless but cool nonetheless. The numbers are surprisingly close to those on the main page/envelope seal.

Here are the signs in order starting from the upper left of the board and going down/right.

    Left
12    Sagittarius
13    Scorpio
10    Libra
9    Virgo
8    Leo
7    Cancer

    Top
1    Capricorn
2    Aquarius
3    Pisces
4    Aries
5    Taurus
6    Gemini

Based on the pattern so far, amulet 1 will have A,B, amulet 3 will have E,F, and amulet 4 will have G,H - all with 2 symbols as well. This also means that there should be 2 letters on each of the left side amulets, with 1 letter skipped on one of them.
I wonder why the letter J is skipped on amulet 5?
Also, has anyone figured out if the symbols have meaning yet?

2 letters on each amulet seem to lend strength to the theory that the entry boxes on the main page will be used in the solution. Maybe there are 2 words with 6 letters each that need to be entered there.

So it could just be a simple alphabetic cipher. I wonder what for?

In listening to the interview it got me thinking ... why aren't other completely skill-based games like chess available to play for money online in a similar way to CM? (You bet on each game before going into it)

Maybe they are available, but in that case I wonder why they aren't more popular. I suppose people could try to game the ELO system if enough money was on the line, so maybe that's why.

I think your proposed game definitely has merit but here are my initial thoughts:

-It is hard to know without playing but it seems like it could be more complex than CM. I think two of CM's strengths are purity of experience and ease of introduction, both of which could be potentially lost.
-Without the score graph, I think the game would lose a major psychological element that makes it fun to me personally. Would you still have a reveal?
-Losing the magical stuff would be a major bummer, although I suppose you could still try to use the same art style.

Hopefully these are not too harsh, I am just trying to provide some food for thought.

A problem with this is that there needs to be a significant player volume to ensure that there are enough games available in the new player area. Otherwise they will just become frustrated that they can't play games / see games in the regular player area that they aren't able to play. Also I don't think that losing too frequently is scaring many people away - I could be wrong of course. At $0.01/game I feel like the stakes are fairly low for losing anyways.

The source code is available via the hacking challenge: http://cordialminuet.com/hackingChallenge.php
I noticed this in game.cpp, a nice touch

// world with of one view
double viewWidth = 666;

My current theory is that entering a message when exiting the game could have some effect, I am investigating this by looking at the source code. I also wonder if there is a solution to a puzzle on the front page that could be appended to the URL. I might be looking for a puzzle where none exists.