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Re: [Palindrome] Postcard mailed to me



Hi,

That's some great detective work. I have one other thing to add: I peeled off the stamp, because it suddenly occurred to me there might be writing underneath.

Indeed, there is.  It says,

"STAMP
 HERE

HOLBEIN"  (minus the quotes)

Um... holbein has seven letters, and it translates to 465-2346. So I called it (with 617 area code) and it gives a fast busy for a while and then silence, but it does not hang up. Anyone else want to fool around with this?

Also, if any MIT people are going to the party, feel free to stop by and pick up this card from me beforehand. I won't be making it to the party, because I'm picking Mike Korn up from the airport.

NW61-433 looks to be a dorm room in Random Hall. In case you're interested, I stuck a floor plan on my website at:
http://web.mit.edu/carol/www/NW61_4.pdf


Carol

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Joseph DeVincentis wrote:

The small dashes on the front of the postcard encode the zip code in a form
some of the postal sorting equipment uses.
Link.<http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/8867C90A424D6DFD86256B4F007ABF5D>I
have seen those orange dashes on a lot of mail too. I do not know what
they represent, but it is probably some postal thing.

So the things of interest that we did not already know from the picture on
the web page are:

These seven boxes. Could they be for a telephone number?

The Wilma Rudolph stamp.

The Washington DC postmark. This could go along with the mission: 
impossible
theme.

The return address at NW61-433, somewhere in Random Hall. Anybody know what
is there or visited the place? They can't possibly be having their
headquarters during the hunt way out there, but it might just be a real
address where one of the hunt organizers lives, and they really wanted to
know that the cards got through (except for the fact that since the card 
got
to us so late, if they get returned they will come back to them too late).
Otherwise it seems to me to be a clue. Google didn't know anything about 
the
location except some files that appear to be ethernet wiring logs for the
campus.

Joe

On 1/12/06, Carol A Meyers <carol mit edu> wrote:

Sure.  The scanning equipment in this office isn't great, but I did the
best I
could.

The only thing I was able to figure out so far is that the pattern of
short and
long dashes at the bottom of the front part is exactly the same as that on
an
unrelated letter I got at the same time.  So that's not anything special.

I don't know about the orange dashes on the back.  They might just be a
postal
thing.  My unrelated mail has orange dashes on it too, but they are
slightly
different.


Carol

Quoting Sofiya Vasina <sofiya sonic net>:

Any chance of getting the front scanned in (or taking a digital picture)
and
posting it for all to see?  With those empty red squares it sounds like
a
puzzle, and we might be expected to have it solved before we get our
next
"assignment".

Sofiya


On 1/12/06, Carol A Meyers <carol mit edu> wrote:

Hi mystery hunters,

I thought I'd let you know that the same postcard on the mystery hunt
front page was mailed to me at my office.  It was addressed to "The
Palindrome Team, c/o Agent Meyers".

The reverse of the card looks exactly like the one on the webpage.  The
front of the card looks more or less like a standard postcard address
form, with a few exceptions.  Interestingly, it was mailed from
Washington, DC on January 3, 2006.  There are seven empty red squares
on
the right hand side, which may or may not mean anything.  The stamp is
a
Wilma Rudolph postcard stamp.

Anyway, I'm sure you can all analyze this tomorrow if you want to.



Carol


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